Ask HN: How do you manage all of the recurring chores a home needs?

3 points·mr_coffee··4 comments

I am wondering if anyone has good tech enabled solutions for basic care and maintanenace of a home (replacing HVAC filters, Washing machine repair etc.).

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I don't really worry about it - yearly stuff on a google cal, other stuff I just condense onto one day a week, others one day a month. Over planning does the opposite of removing other things I need to keep in my head that don't really matter.

I use Todoist (todo list software). The killer features for me are that it has natural language parsing for recurring things like "take out the garbage every tuesday", "replace the A/C filters every six months", etc., and that it has mobile and desktop apps with quick-add hotkeys.

Basically, I can create tasks on any schedule or recurring cadence in 2-5 seconds by typing a sentence on any platform.

It's called the 'alarm clock' on the phone, for the weekly stuff

You know what needs doing. You just need a gentle nudge to do it.

The other stuff that's months or weeks apart gets an icon with a descriptive and dated label on the desktop. As stuff gets done, you either delete it or reschedule it and move it back down to the bottom of the list. As stuff gets done and removed from the top of the list, the icons move upwards. It's very simple, and it's very effective.

I find that silly songs are pretty essential for actually doing it. Calendly is good for scheduling phone chats with friends while you do annoying tasks.

Also the Reader’s Digest New Complete Do-It-Yourself-Manual is pretty great.

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