How to Use the SimpliHome Personal Planner

The shared calendar handles household events — school plays, dentist appointments, family dinners. The to-do lists handle tasks that need doing. But there's a third layer of household organisation that often gets overlooked: the weekly routine.

Who does the school run on which days? Who handles the food shopping? When does each person do their exercise? What's the recurring pattern of how your household actually operates week to week?

The SimpliHome Planner is built for this. It's a day-by-day grid — Monday to Sunday — where you can plan and record the regular activities and responsibilities of your household week.

#How the Planner Differs from the Calendar and To-Do Lists

It helps to understand what each tool is for:

| Tool | Best for | |------|---------| | Calendar | Specific events with dates and times (appointments, school events, holidays) | | To-Do Lists | One-off tasks that need doing (call the plumber, order a birthday present) | | Planner | Regular recurring activities and household structure (school run, shopping day, exercise routine) |

The planner isn't about specific dates — it's about the structure of a typical week in your household.

#Viewing the Planner

Go to Planner in the navigation.

You'll see a grid view with 7 columns (Monday to Sunday) and planning items in each day.

#Adding Planning Items

1. Click on a day in the planner
2. Click Add Item
3. Fill in the item details:

Item details:

• Title — the activity or responsibility (e.g., "School Run", "Food Shopping", "Gym")
• Details — any additional context (e.g., "8:20am drop-off at St. Mary's", "Tesco on the way home from work")
• Category — organise items by type (optional)
• Assign to members — select which household members this item applies to

4. Click Save

The item appears on the selected day in the planner.

#Assigning Items to Household Members

Each planner item can be assigned to one or more household members. This is key to using the planner for household coordination.

Examples:

• "School Run AM" → Mum (Monday, Wednesday, Friday), Dad (Tuesday, Thursday)
• "Dog Walk" → Tom (Monday–Friday), Everyone (Saturday–Sunday)
• "Dinner Cooking" → Dad (Monday, Wednesday), Mum (Tuesday, Thursday, Friday)
• "Food Shopping" → Mum (Saturday morning)

When you assign an item to multiple members, all of them are shown as responsible for it.

#Categories

Use categories to visually organise different types of activities:

• Childcare — school runs, pickups, clubs
• Household — chores, shopping, maintenance tasks
• Personal — exercise, hobbies, personal appointments
• Work — working from home days, commuting schedule

Categories add colour-coding to the planner, making it easy to see the balance of different activity types across the week.

#Copying a Day's Plan to Another Day

If several days have the same structure (e.g., Monday to Thursday are similar), rather than building each day individually:

1. Set up Monday fully
2. Look for Copy Day
3. Select which other days to copy to (e.g., Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday)
4. Confirm

All items from Monday — including their assignments — are duplicated to the selected days. You can then edit any day where the schedule differs.

This makes setting up the initial planner structure much faster.

#The Planner vs the Chores Schedule

The Planner and Chores section both use a day-of-week structure. The distinction:

Chores — household maintenance tasks (cleaning, bins, laundry) Planner — lifestyle activities, commitments, and routines (school runs, exercise, shopping)

Both are weekly grids. Use Chores specifically for cleaning and maintenance; use the Planner for everything else about how your household week operates.

In practice, many households use just one of the two tools. If you find you're putting similar items in both, pick the one that fits better for your household and use that consistently.

#Keeping the Planner Realistic

The planner works best when it reflects what actually happens in your household rather than an aspiration.

Common mistakes:

• Adding items that nobody actually does consistently
• Over-scheduling — planning every hour of every day
• Not assigning items to anyone (items without owners don't get done)

Start with the basics:

• School runs (who, which days)
• Food shopping (who, which day)
• Exercise or personal time (each adult)
• Major recurring household tasks

Five to ten items per week is a realistic, useful planner. Twenty items per day is a schedule that quickly gets ignored.

#Reviewing and Updating

Life changes — school terms end, work schedules shift, kids join new clubs, someone starts working from home. Review the planner at these natural transition points and update it to reflect the new reality.

A planner that reflects life 6 months ago is less useful than a blank planner. Keep it current and it becomes a genuine household reference.

#The Planner as a Household Reference

When the planner is properly maintained, it answers questions the household often struggles with:

• "Who's doing the school pickup on Tuesday?" — check the planner
• "Is there anyone home on Thursday afternoon?" — check the planner
• "Can we book something on Saturday morning?" — check the planner

It moves these coordination questions from needing a conversation to being self-service information.