Part One: Getting Started!

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In this first session, we’re going to get you signed up with Trello and show you how to make your first two boards. Then you will spend some time setting up your To Do lists, for each room or are in your house.

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Trello is a web-based visual work organization app. Jobs are broken into small tasks on “cards” that can be given due dates and claimed by people in your household. It includes a robust automation tool that lets you do all of your planning at once, and refine your plan easily.

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This is the Action Board. You and your household will collaborate on chores together here.

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I rely on Trello to help me keep track of all the little things the Red House needs. It is the most convenient and adaptable method that I have found to separate planning from execution, to refine my plan, and to share the work between all members of my household in an equitable way. (I am not receiving compensation from Trello to share this with you.)

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First Step: Sign up for Trello

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Open this link in a new tab, and sign up for a FREE Trello account.

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The first thing it will do is ask you to name your workspace, aka your household, and invite some people. Skip the invites for now, you can decide who you want to invite later.

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It will ask if you want to try a Premium plan. This is up to you, but my recommendation is to skip it for now. Premium would be overkill, that’s meant for small businesses. There are reasons why a Standard plan may be useful for you down the road, but you don’t need it now, and this way you can avoid entering payment information.

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Next Step: Make A Planning Board

This is the dashboard. Once you have some boards they will show up here.

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I made some templates to get you started:

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Open this link in a new tab to create a Planning Board for your home chores.

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Open this link in a new tab to create an Action Board to get them done.

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Trello doesn’t allow the templates to include Automations, so we will begin setting those up in Part Two of this series.

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Now Do SomE Planning!

This is the Planning Board. There’s a lot going on here. Luckily, you can set it and forget it.

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Let’s think about this for a second.

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How many rooms are in your house? Kitchen, Living Room, Bathroom, Bedroom, more? Every week there are simple tidying up jobs to do in each of these rooms. Every once in a while deep cleaning needs to happen too, as well as basic maintenance like cleaning filters and taking care of appliances.

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Every month we focus on one part of the house for special attention and detail cleaning. Right now, think about dividing your home up into 3, 4, or 6 areas that have about a month’s worth of jobs in them. Keep in mind that the rest of the house will be getting regular attention every week, and you don’t want it to be too much to handle.

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Set up your ListS

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I’ve made some sample lists for you and populated them with the sort of tasks that we do regularly in each area. Look them over and make any changes you need to in order to make them relevant to your life. Copy the Room list to add any rooms or areas that I missed.

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Make sure to add the name of the room or area to the checklist item, for example “wash windows in Living Room.” These items will turn into task cards on your action board, so be specific.

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Plan the Work, Work the Plan

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My biggest challenge to keeping the house organized is that I become overwhelmed by the number of things that there are to do. Sitting down and listing them all in excruciating detail, room by room? It can feel like too much all at once.

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When I set up my Planning board I left it open on a laptop on my kitchen table. As I went about my days, moving through my house, I would think of things I’d like to do. When something occurred to me I would go to the computer and add it to the appropriate checklist. Take this work in manageable chunks. Once you get it all set up that part will be done, and all you’ll need to do is refine it from time to time as your needs change.

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Ready for Action!

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In Part Two I will show you how to set up some Trello Automations to move tasks from your Planning Board to your Action Board. For now, head over to your action board and make sure that every member of your household has their own list.

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