Chores: Cleaning Schedule

Chores is a household cleaning schedule that also settles whose turn it is — worked out from what actually got done, not from a rota everyone has quietly stopped following.

Living alone? Leave the household empty and it is simply a cleaning schedule.

WHOSE TURN, ANSWERED HONESTLY

Most chore apps keep a pointer that steps to the next person. It is wrong the first time anybody swaps: do somebody else's turn as a favour and the app either makes you do two in a row or lets them off entirely.

This app has no pointer. The turn goes to whoever has done that chore least, which fixes itself after any swap — and the counts are right there on the chore, so it is something you can show rather than something the app insists on.

Fairness is counted per chore, on purpose. The app never adds the bins and the bathroom together, because that would be claiming they are worth the same.

NOBODY ARRIVES OWING A HUNDRED TURNS

Someone moves in. Counting turns from the beginning of time would hand them every job for weeks; counting nothing would make the feature pointless. So turns are counted over the time you have all actually been here. A new flatmate starts level with everybody else, and no invisible credit is stored on anyone.

TWO KINDS OF CHORE, BECAUSE THERE REALLY ARE TWO

• The bins go out on Saturday. They go out on Saturday whether or not you dragged them to the kerb on Thursday.
• The bathroom gets cleaned every 7 days — seven days after the last time it was actually cleaned, not on a fixed day.

Apps that model only the second one move bin day: miss Saturday, do it Monday, and from then on the app thinks bin day is Monday. Both kinds are first class here, and the editor asks which in one plain sentence.

OVERDUE DOES NOT PILE UP

Go away for a month and a weekly chore does not come back as four things to tick. You cannot take the bins out four times. There is one outstanding job, it says how late it is and how many went by, and ticking it clears the lot.

ONE NOTICE A DAY, NOT FIVE

A single notification listing what is due, at a time you choose. It can name whose turn it is, or not, for a phone other people can see. No exact-alarm permission: a chore is a day-level thing, so the app does not ask to wake your device.

YOUR DATA STAYS ON YOUR PHONE

No account. No sign-up for you and none for anybody you live with. No cloud, no sync, no server of ours anywhere. It is one phone's copy of the rota, and Save a copy is how you move it to a new one — a plain file you can read.

Everything except the ads works with no connection at all.

WHAT IT DELIBERATELY DOES NOT DO

• It does not read your contacts. Members are names you type.
• It does not use your camera or your photos.
• It does not know where you are. No location permission.
• It does not ask for an exact alarm.

ADS

Free, with an occasional full-screen ad — only after you clear the board for the day, never in the middle of ticking something off, and never when you open the app. There is an optional video you can watch to turn ads off for 24 hours. Nothing in the app is behind it, and saving a copy of your data never is.

Made by Dash Fusion.