Keeping track of home maintenance and repair tasks

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Bret MI

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I'm curious about how people keep track of home maintenance and repair tasks. I bounce between a Google spreadsheet, a big whiteboard, and paper to-do lists. They each have their uses but also come with issues like being easy to lose, or harder to update, or difficult to share.

How do you keep track of recurring home maintenance tasks?
How do you keep track of one-off home repair tasks?

Thanks!
 
I do have a "to-do" list that I keep written on a sheet of paper on my kitchen counter. But I don't find I need to remind myself of tasks such as painting a room. Some tasks, that need to be done at a specific time, I will put as an appointment in my Outlook calendar ---- such as end of November task "sprinklers should be blown out by now".
 
Good range of options so far for keeping track. We ended up with several lists or calendar reminders but none became the best way to stay on top of things. We have a large whiteboard that has worked pretty well. It's hard to miss seeing the list of things to do.
 
I just let the season changes remind me of what needs to be done.
 
I'm curious about how people keep track of home maintenance and repair tasks. I bounce between a Google spreadsheet, a big whiteboard, and paper to-do lists. They each have their uses but also come with issues like being easy to lose, or harder to update, or difficult to share.

How do you keep track of recurring home maintenance tasks?
How do you keep track of one-off home repair tasks?

Thanks!
Iphone calendar and reminders. I set some reminders for when I'm at the home store or a certain address to alert me and other timed reminders (don't forget to get x at 5:00 PM when leaving work). A LOT of my tasks are scheduled for the fall. Things like clearing the hot-water heaters, cleaning gutters, touch up paint, changing filters, blowing out sprinklers, winterize the lawn mowers, prep the snow blowers etc. I make it an event ever year complete with vacation days. I find it much easier to get things done during the week when all stores are open rather than being forced to one store on the weekend. Holding out hope that the home store will always have what I need (I've been bitten by that a couple of times.) The phone is great because almost always have it on me to remind me or add to it.
I "manage" 4 rental properties, my grandparents, uncle, and my own house this way. I don't always get to everything and it seems like I'm constantly added to the list ( my in-laws are moving just down the road from me so I'm pretty sure I'll be adding that to my list.) but I can just change the date on the calendar appointment and move along. If your asking me if this way is the "perfect way" the answer is no. The perfect way would be to have somebody else do it all for you, and you can hold them accountable to the tasks! That's why my parents had me and I have 2 of my own now. Now the little money suckers just gotta get strong enough to do the work. :D My boy is helping me mow for a while now and he's 9. He honestly has been working longer than most college students.

If you don't have kids then get out there and make some! What's wrong with you! Just kidding I know it's not for everybody.
 
As a millennial home owner...I was hoping to see "Yup, I use this app". Would be great to have something to remind me when to do preventive maintenance around the house and track tasks I've completed and even if I brought someone in to do work, to track that along with the receipts.
 
I'm curious about how people keep track of home maintenance and repair tasks. I bounce between a Google spreadsheet, a big whiteboard, and paper to-do lists. They each have their uses but also come with issues like being easy to lose, or harder to update, or difficult to share.

How do you keep track of recurring home maintenance tasks?
How do you keep track of one-off home repair tasks?

Thanks!

Evernote... You can set up jobs in notebooks and assign tags, and link with your calendar. Oh yeah, nice to add the manual to a notebook for reference. Think of a notebook list as the table of contents at the front of a book; a tag list is like the index in the back of the book. Attached is a partial list of HVAC-related tags I have. If I want to see all the details on what I did on "Sys#3" at the TAWA location, I simply click on "HVAC-TAWA-Sys#3". It works as a pretty good work order database/diary.
 

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As a millennial home owner...I was hoping to see "Yup, I use this app". Would be great to have something to remind me when to do preventive maintenance around the house and track tasks I've completed and even if I brought someone in to do work, to track that along with the receipts.

So what your basically describing is a Project/time management software (in a round about way) As mentioned previously Evernote, wunderlist, MS Project, E-Builder, Pocket, Even Microsoft Outlook has calendaring and task scheduling you can put attachments on, but all of them require you to come up with your own system inside the app. That you must then adhere to consistently for all of your "tasks", and most have costs or significant trade offs for their product. I have a decent amount of both professional and personal project management experience and ultimately the only flaw in any of the mentioned "apps" inevitably ends up being the consistence in which the users applies the system. They all work really well if your consistent with them. So that's why I ended up using mostly small simple apps on my phone like reminders and calendar items, because there application is specific, readily available, cost effective, and has a very low learning curve. The other Project/time management software I have used was always to cumbersome, expensive, very high learning curve, or is better used for some one who's only job is Project/time management. My system works for me because it's quick, simple, and I can apply it to anything I have going on, and I learn to adapt inside of it. Again it has to fit your personality and the way you work best doing things or you just won't use it. Which is probably why you don't have an app already. How you get things done is so very VERY personal no one thing can fix it for you.

So maybe what might work for you is pick one of the suggestions and try it for 3 months. If you just can't seem to get the knack to it try another. Project/Time management is a corporate and individual epidemic. If there was a silver bullet for it you would have all business knocking at your door within the hour. My system is a result of changing it constantly for probably 20+ years.... I'm sure it will grow and adapt with me in the future too.

Dismount my soap box sorry.
 
Cedric, I didn't think Millennials purchased homes.
MrMiz, I didn't think Millennials have kids.

Just kidding, I know some Millennials don't represent the stereotype.;)
 
I agree with the point that most current project/task software requires you to come up with your own system and keep with it. I used Jira for years in software development but it is overkill or clunky for personal or house tasks.
 
I didn't find any site or app that did what I really wanted for keeping track of home tasks. So, I created one.

It's like a Trello task board but supports both recurring tasks and one-off tasks. It supports daily or weekly reminder emails and the task boards can be shared with other people.

If anyone is interested in trying it out and giving feedback, it would be much appreciated.

https://homlina.com/signup
Invitation code: HRTFORUM
 
Bret: I gotta ask you to be upfront with this. What is Homlina.com? Is it yours? Did you just noodle up an app or is this something bigger? If it's just something you're working on or beta testing, what am I signing up for?
 
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