House Chores (Separate List or At Home List)

[ianfh10]

I had all my home-related chores on my @home list, and found they were just clogging it up and ultimately repulsing me. I now have more of a weekly chores checklist stored in a notes app that I tick off throughout the week, and reset on Sunday evening. To be honest, if they don't get done, it's not the end of the world for another week, but I know if I didn't have some stake in the ground I could let things slip for months.

I reserve my @home list for 'one-off' type actions, or actions that don't occur with any sort of frequency (replace office lightbulb, fix kitchen faucet, organise bookshelves etc).

 

[fooddude]

Do you have a separate list for chores or does that just make things more complicated instead of including them in your At Home List?

I use Asana to manage my GTD system. I use My Tasks for a complete list of open loops and projects. My next actions are captured in subtasks. I use tags for Next Actions, At Home, Waiting For, Phone, At Computer, etc...

Right now I have a Chore List in My Tasks, but I'm thinking about eliminating this list and just tagging each chore with the At Home tag and then making them recurring tasks to recur x amount of days each time I mark them complete. The Chore List is not really a project, and it seems to be complicating the flow of my system.

I know there are many ways to handle these types of things, but I'm looking for some insight from someone with more experience with GTD. I've only been using the methodology for about 4 months.

Any project goes on my project list. The very next action goes on a context list. ie: Project list- Replace motion light back corner. Next action:
Store- buy motion light. I know which one so the next action is not research motion lights. I might come home and replace it. Done. If not I would put install motion light on my at home list. Admittedly, some projects are more intense and have more steps. But i only put the vey next action on a list. I don't have projects with every action I'm going to take. Now if the very next action is rake leaves, or mow lawn. They will be on my @Home list. I can only do those at home and they would be done when i finish. In other words, I never have more than one next action for any project ever.

 

[Oogiem]

Do you have a separate list for chores or does that just make things more complicated instead of including them in your At Home List?

Chores can span multiple contexts for me. InsideByMyself is a context. Some are OutsideByMyself, some are various places where I need assistance some are other specific locations.

Since I've moved to Obsidian for my task management tracking and getting chores done is much easier than it used to be. Like @cfoley I only have on my chores list the things that I forget. My note with the items is a single note that corresponds to a frequency for recurring tasks. Then each task item has it's own context and I have a dashboard view that show me them all by context.

It takes a while to set up the recurring items (How often do I need to wash the shower curtain? for example) but once done it's a set and forget and I get that task showing up in my GTD task dashboard without any effort.

I must admit I am playing with some checklist notes where the task is something like "Clean Little House after Guests" and then the note has all the things to check and do. Part of that is so I can delegate that task to someone else easily. I can print off a copy of the checklist and the person has the list of details to go by and get the job done.

 

[Jared Caron]

Do you have a separate list for chores or does that just make things more complicated instead of including them in your At Home List?

I use Asana to manage my GTD system. I use My Tasks for a complete list of open loops and projects. My next actions are captured in subtasks. I use tags for Next Actions, At Home, Waiting For, Phone, At Computer, etc...

Right now I have a Chore List in My Tasks, but I'm thinking about eliminating this list and just tagging each chore with the At Home tag and then making them recurring tasks to recur x amount of days each time I mark them complete. The Chore List is not really a project, and it seems to be complicating the flow of my system.

I know there are many ways to handle these types of things, but I'm looking for some insight from someone with more experience with GTD. I've only been using the methodology for about 4 months.

This type of recurring maintenance tends to trip people up with GTD bc I dont think DA talks about it much in the GTD book, but I believe there's more on this in his second book Making it all work. (reader: there's a second book??? ). Either way there are a few approaches that can work.

a checklist in your calendar or a tickler file can work well. I find I look at my digital calendar less when Im at home so I use my list manager instead.
If your list manager has good robust recurring task features, that might work well as a digital version.

I use a version of this where i split my digital tickler file into 2 categories - "later" and "routines". The difference is "routines" repeat/recurr, whereas all the items in later just need to reappear in the future.

The challenge for me has always been keeping the "future" recurrences out of my context lists so that I dont see them when I don't need to be doing them (e.g. just vacuumed the house, so i don't want to see vacuum on my @home list until it needs to be done again). I solved this in Todoist with a tickler label (The "Later" and routines" as above) and checklists (great for seasonal/periodic stuff). If i cant do the task on the day it shows up in "Today" I will move/copy it to my context list with a new due date and complete the "tickler" task so it moves to the next recurrence)

 

[ellobogrande]

I've found the FlyLady system very helpful in maintaining my home. I use a combination of control journal checklists and calendar reminders (all-day events) with notifications to put reminders of chores. I built my GTD system in Google. My checklists are in Keep and date-specific recurring chore reminders like changing filters are on a dedicated Google Calendar called "Housekeeping".

One nice thing about these tools is the ability to set notifications at specific times. I set notifications on calendar events and checklists for 6:00 AM on the day. At 6:00 AM each morning my phone blows up with notifications. As part of my morning routine, I review each notification like an inbox item and decide whether to take action on it and what that action is.

Sometimes I discard chores if my intuition tells me to do so, as long as I won't suffer a penalty for letting it go (e.g., not dusting a particular room is okay, not changing the air filter on my HVAC is not). If I decide to define a Google Task for the chore, I highlight the title, share it to my Google Tasks application (which creates a new task), and set a due date halfway to the next reminder unless it's something I know that I have to do that day (like changing the water filter in my refrigerator). I found that assigning due dates helps me to prioritize my decisions when I'm looking at my action lists in the war zone.

When I've processed all of these notifications, I quickly review my action lists and "star" the most important tasks for the day, starting with the ones that are due that day. I know full well that something could come up and wreck that plan, but I need to start the day with some kind of plan otherwise I tend to miss the most important things on my lists. By then the caffeine has started to kick in and I'm ready for work.

Although I could set up recurring tasks, I don't do that because I don't want my system bypassing my mental processes and cluttering up my action lists with actions that I never consciously committed to doing. The calendar reminders are ideal because they remind me that I *might* want to consider doing a specific chore, but ultimately I get to decide if I can handle it, if I need to delegate it, or if I need to defer it or dump it.