Build a routine

A routine is a short sequence done in order — getting ready in the morning, the bedtime run-up, what happens after school. Written down, it stops being a set of instructions somebody has to give out loud every day.

1. More → Routines → New routine.
2. Name it and add the steps in order.
3. Tap the face of whoever it is for. Everyone, at the start of the row, ticks the whole family at once, and each person gets a checklist of their own; tap it again to clear them all.

There is no picture to choose. Equal House gives each routine one from its name and its time of day: the moon for a bedtime routine, the sun for a morning one, a piano for piano practice. Rename a routine and its picture follows the new name. A picture somebody picked on an older version of the app is kept.

When it runs

A routine used to run every day, which made the weekend a long argument about school bags. At the top of When, under Which days, you pick one of six:

• Every day.
• Weekdays — Monday to Friday.
• Weekends — Saturday and Sunday.
• Specific days — tap the days it belongs to. Tapping all seven is every day, and they all stay lit.
• When I work — the days you work, from your hours and rota under More → Work Patterns. A Work event on the calendar counts as work, a repeating one on every day it repeats; a holiday or leave does not. If two grown-ups have working hours you can pick whose work it follows, and if nobody is picked yet (say the grown-up it followed has left) it shows everyone to pick from. If the person has no hours, rota or Work events yet the form says so and links to their hours, and it will not save a routine that could never run.
• School days — when school is actually on (below). Turn on Only on some school days for something like Tuesday swimming kit, or choose When school’s off for the days it is not: weekends, bank holidays, and the school’s INSET days, half terms and holidays.

Weekdays, Specific days and When I work can also Skip bank holidays, for your region. It is on by default for When I work. A rota day, or a Work event, that says you work a bank holiday still counts: you put it there.

Under the options, Next shows the next few days the routine will run, and names the first day it skips and why — “Skips Fri 23 Oct: INSET day.” Change anything and the dates change with it.

School days are worked out from the school you set up under More → School Routines: its days, any closures you enter, and the bank holidays for your region. If the school is one we hold term dates for, its INSET days, half terms and holidays count too, without you typing them in. Its “last day of term”, “break up”, “back to school” and “pupils return” days are ordinary school days. A note about the day back does not open a closure, though: “INSET day – pupils return Tuesday” is still an INSET day, and a half term that runs all week is still half term, whatever it says about when school reopens. With no school set up it means Monday to Friday, except bank holidays, and When school’s off means weekends and bank holidays.

A routine that is not on today still appears in More → Routines, with when it runs written under its name. It is left off the child’s own screen, because that is a list of what to do now. Its reminder only goes off on the days it runs, too. Your phone sets the reminders for the next 14 days each time it refreshes your routines, so open the app now and then.

The kid planner

More → Kid Planner sets a child’s whole week up in one screen. Pick the child and you get the ordinary list for their age, under three headings — School days, Weekends & holidays and Every day — to tick what they actually do. Each heading becomes one routine, with the right days already set, so “pack a snack” is a school-day job and “brush your teeth” is not.

You can add your own lines, and reopening the planner shows what is already set, so it is a way to keep a week rather than only to start one. Ticks and streaks survive an edit.

Where it shows

In the child’s own screen, as a list they work down. The last step earns the routine’s stars, and any pocket money it pays, and the routine says what that is under its name (from age 7). The routines they finished this week are listed under Great work this week, with how many days.

Stars and pocket money

When a child is picked, the Rewards card asks what finishing the routine is worth: Stars, from 0 to 10, and Pocket money per day. It is the card New task has, without Auto. Leave the money blank and it pays nothing. It is paid when the child ticks the last step, without waiting for your OK; unticking a step the same day takes that day’s stars and money back, and ticking it again pays once. A routine for grown-ups only has no Rewards card. Pocket money has the rest.

Children’s boards don’t show a streak. A streak punishes a missed day, which is the wrong lesson for a child who was ill or away. The grown-ups’ Routines screen still shows how many days in a row a routine has been done — counting only the days it runs, so a weekday routine keeps its streak over the weekend.

Why sequences rather than tasks

Because the nagging is usually not about the individual jobs — it is about the order and the remembering. A child who can see what comes next does not need to be told, and the adult stops being the sequence.

Adults can have them too

Routines are not children-only. A wind-down or a Sunday reset works the same way.

Ticking the last step of your own routine shows a small card, That’s your routine done, with a firmer “done” — once a day for each routine, so unticking and ticking it again does nothing more. Finishing a child’s routine for them from the same screen gives the child their stars and any pocket money, and no card for you.

Editing

Change the steps whenever. Reordering does not lose the streak on the grown-ups’ screen — the streak belongs to the routine, not to a particular list of steps.