Notes on a calmer household.

August 16, 2026 · 3 min read

The boring week

Nothing on your board looks different this week. Underneath it: faster scans, faster vehicle pages, quieter nights, and an app that can heal itself.

August 6, 2026 · 3 min read

Eleven recalls, one card

Alerts now group by the thing they're about, count themselves honestly, and sort by severity — so the loudest thing on the board is the one that matters.

August 1, 2026 · 3 min read

Your house has renewal dates

Insurance policies now live alongside the things they cover — with the renewal date working for you instead of for your provider.

July 25, 2026 · 4 min read

Sherpsy is a departure board now

We redesigned the whole product around one metaphor: the airport board. Type and geometry carry the identity, and color still means exactly one thing.

July 18, 2026 · 3 min read

Allowance is a ledger, not a promise

Chores now carry real money: effort points, payouts, approval, and three jars — Spend, Save, Give.

July 12, 2026 · 4 min read

What's for dinner is a data question

Meals just shipped: recipes, a week of planned dinners, and an honest answer to "what can I make with what's in the house."

July 3, 2026 · 3 min read

An invite is a front door

Getting the rest of the household in is the step most family apps fumble. Here's how joining Sherpsy works, and why nobody shares a password.

June 25, 2026 · 3 min read

The command center you already own

A calm family wall display usually costs several hundred dollars. You probably have the parts in a drawer.

June 18, 2026 · 4 min read

The best home screen is a blank one

Why Sherpsy is achromatic by default, and reserves a single color for the one thing that needs you.

June 10, 2026 · 4 min read

One product, two screens

A feature that exists on the web and not on the phone is not a shipped feature. On keeping two codebases honest.

June 4, 2026 · 4 min read

Nothing is written without you confirming it

Extraction from a photo is useful and occasionally wrong. The rule that makes it safe is boring and absolute.

May 25, 2026 · 3 min read

Getting the house ready for summer

Cooling, water, and the outdoor equipment that has been sitting untouched since September.

May 13, 2026 · 5 min read

Two-way calendar sync, and the echo problem

Syncing calendars in one direction is straightforward. In both directions, an event can bounce forever.

May 4, 2026 · 3 min read

Every number needs a reference point

A dashboard that shows you a 3 has told you nothing. On the design of figures that mean something.

April 27, 2026 · 4 min read

A chore rotation that survives a bad week

Every system works when everyone is well and present. The test is the week when they are not.

April 17, 2026 · 3 min read

The tools you own and can't find

The second-most-common reason to buy a tool is not owning one. The most common is owning one somewhere.

April 6, 2026 · 4 min read

What we mean by "private by design"

The phrase is on everybody's marketing page. Here are the specific decisions it stands for here.

March 27, 2026 · 4 min read

Reading a screen from across the kitchen

Designing for eight feet is not designing for arm's length with bigger text.

March 16, 2026 · 3 min read

Spring cleaning is an inventory

You are already touching every object in the house. That is the expensive part of knowing what you own.

March 7, 2026 · 3 min read

Warranty windows close quietly

No manufacturer will remind you that you have six weeks left. The date is knowable and almost never known.

February 24, 2026 · 3 min read

Receipts are the most boring important paper you own

Thermal paper fades in about two years. Warranties and returns both need what was printed on it.

February 11, 2026 · 3 min read

The app should be silent

Most software measures success by engagement. For a household system, engagement is the symptom.

February 6, 2026 · 5 min read

Row-level security, explained at the kitchen table

How a multi-household app keeps one family's data away from another's — and why the answer should not be application code.

January 31, 2026 · 4 min read

Estimating mileage without tracking you

You can know roughly how far a car has gone without following it. The math is simple; the restraint is the point.

January 25, 2026 · 4 min read

Everything we didn't build

A household app can absorb any feature you point at it. Here is what we have deliberately left out, and why.

January 20, 2026 · 4 min read

Winter is hard on cars

Cold does not break cars randomly. It exposes the battery, the tires, and the fluid you meant to top up in October.

January 10, 2026 · 3 min read

Resolutions fail; routines don't

January promises are a bet on future willpower. The households that stay on top of things made a different bet.

December 29, 2025 · 4 min read

The year-end household reset

Ninety minutes between the holidays and January that pays for itself several times over.

December 17, 2025 · 3 min read

A house that's empty for a week

Leaving is mostly about water, heat, and one other person knowing what to do.

December 10, 2025 · 3 min read

The gift list nobody else can see

A household app that shows everything to everyone has a specific problem in December.

November 30, 2025 · 4 min read

December is a scheduling problem

The stress is not the shopping. It is four calendars converging on three weeks with no slack.

November 16, 2025 · 4 min read

Cooking for a crowd is a list problem

The cooking is not what goes wrong at a big meal. The sequencing and the shopping are.

November 3, 2025 · 3 min read

The clocks change and so should your reminders

One of the few remaining household rituals that everyone still performs on the same weekend. Use it.

October 22, 2025 · 4 min read

Passwords are not the hard part; access is

Every household has a password problem. Very few have thought about the access problem underneath it.

October 10, 2025 · 5 min read

What happens if you're in the hospital

An uncomfortable question with a practical answer, and it is not "give someone your password".

September 29, 2025 · 3 min read

The furnace filter problem

A five-dollar part on a ninety-day interval, and almost nobody manages it. Worth understanding why.

September 22, 2025 · 3 min read

Fall maintenance, in the order that matters

Not a list of everything. The four things that are much cheaper done in October than in February.

September 11, 2025 · 5 min read

A vault the server cannot read

What end-to-end encryption actually means for household documents, and the trade it forces you to accept.

August 30, 2025 · 3 min read

The recipe you make every week

Most households cook from a repertoire of about nine meals. Writing them down is worth more than any recipe app.

August 22, 2025 · 4 min read

Two households, one kid, one calendar

Co-parenting is a coordination problem with unusually high stakes for getting the details wrong.

August 11, 2025 · 4 min read

Back to school without the group chat

Every September a household absorbs a hundred dates from six sources. Here is how to land them once.

August 2, 2025 · 4 min read

What a household should keep in writing

Not a filing system. A short list of facts that are expensive to reconstruct and cheap to record.

July 26, 2025 · 4 min read

Teaching a teenager to own a chore

The goal is not compliance. It is handing over a piece of the household's operation, permanently.

July 19, 2025 · 3 min read

The five-minute household audit

Six questions. If you cannot answer them, you have found this quarter's work.

July 5, 2025 · 4 min read

Notifications are a budget

Every alert an app sends spends attention it cannot earn back. Most household apps are overdrawn by week two.

June 26, 2025 · 3 min read

A pantry you can see from the store

Half of grocery waste is buying what you already have. The other half is not buying what you needed.

June 12, 2025 · 3 min read

The lawn mower is an asset too

Households track cars and ignore the twenty other machines they own, most of which have a service interval and a warranty.

June 7, 2025 · 3 min read

Lending things without losing them

Nobody steals a borrowed drill. They just forget, and so do you, and eighteen months later it is gone.

June 1, 2025 · 3 min read

Summer breaks the routine on purpose

School term is a scaffold. When it comes down for eight weeks, most household systems fall over with it.

May 22, 2025 · 3 min read

Before the road trip

A twenty-minute check that costs nothing and occasionally saves a vacation.

May 13, 2025 · 3 min read

Who's picking up whom

The hardest scheduling problem in a house is not the events. It is the transportation between them.

May 3, 2025 · 3 min read

The appliance manual you'll never read again

Keep the serial number and the purchase date. You can find the manual online in ten seconds; you cannot find those.

April 23, 2025 · 3 min read

An odometer reading is a fact; everything else is an estimate

On the difference between a number a person typed in and a number software worked out — and why that difference should always be visible.

April 13, 2025 · 4 min read

Recalls don't come to you

Safety recalls are published constantly and almost never reach the person holding the product. That gap is not your fault, but it is your problem.

April 3, 2025 · 3 min read

The paperwork drawer is a search problem

You do not need to file everything. You need to find six things quickly, usually on a bad day.

March 23, 2025 · 3 min read

Spring is when the house tells you what it needs

A short, unromantic walk-around for the end of winter — and why writing down what you find matters more than fixing it today.

March 15, 2025 · 4 min read

What your car actually needs, and when

Service intervals are written in two units at once — months and miles — and that is why people miss them.

March 6, 2025 · 4 min read

Chores are a routing problem

Chore charts fail because they assign work to whoever was standing there when the chart was made. Households are not that static.

February 26, 2025 · 3 min read

A grocery list two people can edit at once

The shopping list is the most-used shared object in a house, and the one most likely to lose your edits.

February 16, 2025 · 4 min read

Why the shared calendar keeps failing

Everybody has tried sharing a calendar. Here is the specific thing that breaks, and what a household calendar has to do differently.

February 3, 2025 · 3 min read

One household, one account each

Why we did not build a family app around a single shared login, and what changes when everyone has their own.

January 26, 2025 · 4 min read

The household runs on someone's memory

In most families one person is quietly holding the whole schedule in their head. That is not organization — it is a single point of failure.