What is Household?

Household is a website that started off as a very small, locally hosted chore tracker put in place to motivate my kids to help around the house more. There is a certain psychological effect that gamifying things does to the human brain. People like unlocking things. They like achieving goals. They like the feeling of progression and having a record of their work. Household emulates the science that video games use to entice players to continue.

Household is/was created, developed and maintained by a family who needed a way to motivate their younger ones to help more, as well as instill a good work ethic. We also dabble in indie game development, and we understood the power of gamifying certain aspects of life. So we thought, why not combine these two things?

When we're young, we are told that we need to help because we want to, not because we have to. But is anyone truly motivated to do manual labor? It's understandable that people can't just magic up motivation to do certain things. Even as an adult we still find it hard to motivate ourselves to keep a spotless house.

Enter Household, which started off as a simple timestamp application that we hosted locally. There was only about three html pages total, and their only real functionality was logging the timestamp of the chore that was completed. We would then need to scour the database every Friday and tally up allowances. We eventually added more styling and features which snowballed into the fully featured website that you are on today. I knew that I had to share this with the world once I watched the psychological effect it had on my kids. They were suddenly wanting to do chores. They were even fighting over who got to do what!

It has seemingly automated a lot of our routine household tasks by keeping them organized and in a central place that the entire family can see what needs to routinely get done.

When will Household launch?

Household has a target launch of Dec 2025, but may launch sooner.

Currently, Household contains the Chores, Scheduling, XP, and Badges modules. In development is the Books and Gaming modules. These are fully built, but still in a polishing phase. They should be released in the next six months. The price will not increase when they are released for any current users. In fact, the price you pay when you start the service will always be the price you will pay. If prices increase in the future, you will be grandfathered at the price you first signed up with. You will always get the latest updates and features without needing to upgrade. There is only one tier of the service, and it has access to 100% of the released website.

And of course, an official App is in the works. The app should be out in 6 months to 1 year following the hard launch in Dec 2025. It will not be extra for current subscribers. Household may increase in price after the official release of the mobile app, but if you sign up prior to its release, you will be grandfathered in for life. This is to signify my appreciation for early adopters.

Modules released:

Chores

The Chores module is the OG module and the entire reason the program was built. This module allows managers of the Household (Any user in the Privileged group) to create chores and set the monetary value of one accomplishment of the task. This is also known as an "allowance." The chores can be set to however low or high the manager prefers. For instance, in my Household, we award $0.50 for feeding the dogs. Taking the trash out earns them $1.00, etc. If you do not use an allowance system for your home, you can toggle this setting off in the settings. Chores also reward Reward Points as well, which can be used for the workers to redeem things in the Prize page.

If you do use the allowance feature, there is a Payout function where the laborer's "bank" can be reset to zero when money is distributed in real life. The wage is optional, and again, reward points can be used instead for Households that use other tangible rewards. I use a combination of both systems where I award an allowance based on what they have earned in real money since they collected the last payout, and I also award trading card packs and other presents once they have collected a certain amount of points. Think of this like a ticket counter gift shop at a popular arcade.

Scheduling

The Scheduling module came about because my wife wanted a way to assign specific chores to laborers. You can set recurring chores in this module as well. This will create a notification for laborers in their user account, and email if they have it set up. Laborers can claim tasks on the calendar and mark them as complete on the same page.

XP and Levels Module

The XP system was added to help laborers feel like they were making progress with their accumulated chore output. Video games usually use a leveling system that takes a base amount, and then a curve. For example, a base of 100 with a curve of 1.00, means that it will take 100 XP points to get to level 2, and then another 100 to get to level 3. But a curve of 1.10 will result in level 2 at 100 points, and level 3 at 214 total experience. There is a graphing feature that displays the projected base and curve for leveling up.

There are currently levels for Overall, Chores, and when released, a Reading level and even a Gaming Level (which can be excluded from Overall) if desired. You can set the XP Base and Curve separately for each different type of level. For example, I can set Chore to a base of 50 and a curve of 1.15 for a faster feeling leveling experience, and Gaming to a base of 100 and a curve of 1.25 for longer levels.

When released, Books experience will be based on number of words read, which the manager sets, and Gaming will be based on hours played, which the manager sets. There are also bonus settings for xp per book or game completed.

Badges

The Badges module is akin to Achievements or Trophies found in video games. The Household manager can create the badges that users can unlock. For example, if the chore "Mop" exists, the manager can create a badge that unlocks when a user accomplishes 10 entries for Mop. There can be many badges for accomplishing mop at different values, such as Mopping 10 times, Mopping 100 times, etc.

Badges can currently be set for individual chores, earning money or points, and gaining levels. When the Reading and Gaming modules are released, badges can be made for them based on number of books read, number of words read, and number of hours played, beating or mastering specific books, etc.

Leaderboards

As another way to motivate laborers, as well as bring about some healthy competition, leaderboards exist. Users of a household all compete with each other. Currently, leaderboards exist for earned wages and words read (releasing with books module) but more will always be added as Leaderboards are a central tenet of the application. One incredible side effect of leaderboards is it shows the children just how much we do around the house. My wife and I tend to dominate the chore based leaderboards because we simply do more chores than the kids.

Modules Coming

Book Club (coming soonest)

This module tracks books read, progress in individual books, and books the user wants to read. Books are added to a User's Household by a manager using either the Household master library, or an API call to Google Books or Open Library. The data is then saved to the Household as a tracked book that a user can mark as read, in progress, or wanting to read.

This module will be the next to launch as it is almost complete and is in final testing phases.

Gaming (coming sooner)

This module is also almost complete, but has more moving pieces and will be released after the book tracking module. In the gaming module, users track the games they have Beaten, Mastered, or are currently playing. Information is pulled from the Household master library, or through the Internet Gaming Database. Hours are pulled from HowLongToBeat, but are for informational purposes only and do not determine when or if a game is completed. Collectibles can be created per game, i.e. find all 33 records in a game, so the users can track how many they need still. Links are also generated for the Achievement website of choice, such as RetroAchievements, TrueAchievements, Steam, and Sony. These appear as links on the Game's detail page. Eventually we will implement specialized Achievement pages, but this will be in a future update to come after the gaming module is released.

Journaling (coming soon)

A Journaling module is planned for note-taking and, well, journaling. This module will have enhanced encryption and will ensure the utmost privacy for your journals by obscuring the text at the database level. This means nobody, even employees or site staff will not have access to your journals.

Pets (coming soon)

A module is planned for tracking all things pets. This can be vet visits, vaccines, medication, and general maintenance.

Vehicle / Home Maintenance (coming soonish)

A module is planned for tracking maintenance on the vehicles or house itself. These can be things such as last time the oil was changed on the car, the next engine swap in your civic, to when the pool was re-vinyl'd. ANd speaking of pools

Pool module (coming soonish)

This will serve the purpose of tracking maintenance for the pool. Names of parts and filters and chemical levels can also be tracked.