Tody: An App that Helps You Clean

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This will be another post for fellow members of the untidy tribe. Members of the tidy tribe will find it as unnecessary as those warning stickers on buckets and ladders. But we’ll let the tidy tribesters go on with their advanced cleaning tasks: Polishing brass? Dust bunny witch hunts? Chastising the untidy?

Back to us untidy folks. Let’s say you’ve taken the sage advice to clear the decks, as I discussed in my last blog post. You now have a clean slate, a vast playa on which to party with your broom and mop. But, as will come as no surprise to tidy tribe members, we untidy folks need a push. That’s where a simple little iPhone app called Tody comes in.

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Tody gives you a room by room schedule for tasks such as cleaning the bathroom sink, dusting the living room and wiping down electronics. You can create your own custom tasks. For instance, I made a reminders to change the cat’s water and sweep the front porch.

Setup is simple and the app suggests common sense cleaning intervals (which you can also customize to your own taste). The app generates a daily to-do list and has a kind of red, yellow and green color warning system. The interface is clean and simple, like a well tended house. Other apps that I tried had too many reminders, cluttered interfaces, distracting ads and annoying notifications. We untidy tribe members are easily distracted from our cleaning tasks and don’t need an app that offers temptations to sit on the couch and slack off.

Tody is well worth $3.99. An extra $2.99 a year gets you a family sharing plan that will let you chastise your spouse/kids/housemates via their phones.

Tidy tribesters who have read this far are, no doubt, wondering why it is that we untidy folks need an app and can’t simply look around the house and see those magazine piles or dirty toilet seat. Just remember that we untidy folks lack the visual acuity to see messes, kind of like how dogs can’t see things that aren’t moving. We need all the help we can get.

Tody is only for the iPhone. If you’re an Android user, feel free to suggest cleaning apps you’ve tried in the comments.

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8 Comments

  1. Genius. I’ll try this, though it makes me realise that I may be able to set up something similar with recurring tasks in my main to-do app, Remember The Milk (https://www.rememberthemilk.com ).

    Love the idea of being able to allocate tasks to others in the household via the app! Again, this is doable through RTM…. I’d just never thought of it.

  2. Not to be a negative Nelly, but I’m thinking this is just going to be something to clutter up your screen and you’ll soon quit using it. I do hope you’ll keep us posted on how long you follow the schedule.

  3. No smart phone? No problem! I’ve been using a sophisticated app for years: I call it a ‘list’. I have a sticky pad (bigger than the little notes, with lines) and I write down all the household jobs that need to be done in the coming week, then stick it to the refrigerator. The best part is checking them off when I’ve finished each one; it is immensely satisfying. At the end of the week, the paper goes into the recycling pile and I start a new list.

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