The fridge door, except everybody can see it from anywhere.
A dentist appointment on a sticky note helps whoever is standing in the kitchen. The same appointment on a family board helps the parent who is at work, the grandmother who is picking up, and the child who wants to know if it is before or after swimming.
Ready to open
Eight boards a family actually uses
Every one is a real design, ready to open. Start from the one closest to your kitchen and make it the family's own.
Anything you can pin: drawings, dates, the shopping list, “call grandma” — the fridge door, made digital and readable from anywhere.
Open this board Sketchbook for everyoneA shared wall where every family member draws, doodles and signs their masterpiece.
Open this board Vacation albumThe map of where you went, and the pictures to prove it.
Open this board Journey organiserFlights, routes and pins — the whole trip on one board before anyone packs.
Open this board Housekeeping plannerWho does what, and when it's actually done — the rota nobody can claim they didn't see.
Open this board Birthdays & namedaysNamedays, birthdays, holidays and “on this day” — never caught without a card again.
Open this board School weekTimetables, pickups and homework due — the week every parent is quietly tracking anyway.
Open this board Weekend plannerWhat's on nearby this weekend, on a map the whole family can argue over.
Open this boardType it, and watch it build
Say what the house needs on it
Pick one of these, or type what this week actually involves — and watch the board build itself. The shapes are the real widgets; the numbers are missing because they are not yours yet.
One screen the whole house actually looks at
Not an app anybody has to be persuaded to open. A page on a tablet in the hall, the same page on every phone, and the drawing that went up this morning already on it.
Time to make your fridge door digital.The drawing, the dentist on Tuesday and the trip money due Friday — on one screen the whole house can see.
The appointments stop living in one person's head
Doctor, dentist, parents' evening, the trip money that is due Friday — put them on the board once and they are on everybody's screen. The person who booked it is not the only person who knows about it any more, which is the whole argument.
Add a calendar tile per person if the house works that way, or one shared week if it does not. A board is not a system anybody has to adopt; it is whatever shape your week already is.
A child's picture is not clutter here — it is a tile
Photograph the drawing, drop it on the board, and it is on the family page until somebody takes it down. Grandparents two hundred kilometres away see it the same minute the fridge door would have.
Give the child a corner of their own and something happens that no chore chart manages: they start putting things on it. A star for every book. A note about Fridays. It is theirs, and a seven-year-old can work out how to change it.
Nobody has to ask what time you are back
Work trips, late shifts, the week somebody is away — one tile each and the question stops being asked. It is not surveillance and it is not a rota. It is the same information that was already being texted around, written down once.
The school side goes on the same page: term dates, the test on Thursday, the form that has to be signed. Two lives that were kept in two places, on one screen that either of them can open.
Send a link. That is the whole of it.
Publishing a board gives you an address you can put in a message. Whoever opens it sees the board — on a phone, on a laptop, on the tablet in the hall. No app to install, no account to make, no invitation to accept. Grandparents in particular will thank you for this.
Take the link down and it stops working. Put it back and it works again. You are not handing anybody an account, you are handing them a page.
An evening, and you did not have to learn anything
Open the designer and there is a family board already made — the calendar, the list, the picture, the countdown. Drag what you do not want off it, drag what you do want on, type your own names in. There is no account to make and nothing leaves your browser while you work.
Designing is free and stays free. You pay when you want the board published at a link and kept in sync for everybody — which is exactly the point at which it stops being a project and starts being the thing the house runs on.