Free Online Household Management Aids

Here's a shortlist of online stuff, all of it free, that could help you organize your life, manage your household, or declutter. Some of them we have played with, one we use routinely, and others just look promising.

Chores

Childzilla is an interactive chore chart to sic on your kids. You assign, track, and offer rewards through its interface, and kids access their own chore chart to check off chores. If you don't mind using reward systems to reinforce chore-completion, this might be a good solution. It's currently in beta mode, which you can sign up for on their site. No word at this point on plans for revenue - membership fees, advertising, or what? Get in and poke around. [Link]

Chorewars: We love this application. Routine tasks get assigned point values, and players compete to "level up" their character, randomly encountering monsters along the way. Characters can also earn "gold" which can then be "spent," meaning you could design an agreed-upon reward system based around the accumulation and dispensation of the virtual currency. The best thing about Chorewars is that user assigning of point values to tasks means you can balance them however you like, and make sure people are "sharing" the workload in a way that accounts for all the stuff that has to get done but allows for individual choices to work towards that "credit." For those who like bizarre extrinsic motivators, Chorewars is likely to be a hit. And it's free. [Link]

Chore Buster takes chore assignments a bit further - it does it for you. Create chore listings and designate how "hard" they are and Chore Buster will assign them "fairly" to however many individuals you like. This would work well for siblings within the same age range or for parents to divvy up chores with a bit of a twist, ensuring that no one has to do the same things all the time. You'd probably want to leave certain chores out of Chore Buster that you do like to have certain people do routinely, and create a "shuffle" mode for those you'd like to randomize. [Link]

Scheduling

Cozi offers a family calendar, shopping list, messaging system, and "family journal" that will sync with email application Outlook and has a PC-only desktop version. One benefit of using their calendar system is that it, like Sandy, accepts and interprets natural-language typing - instead of clicking a bunch of buttons to place an item in the calendar before typing the description, you just type "Dr. appointment for Z on Feb. 5 at 8 a.m." and it will drop it in place. [Link]

Sandy is an email reminder system that is simple and easy to integrate into your online life. All you do is set up an email address through their free service and then email the address whenever you want to be reminded of something. It's like Remember the Milk except you can cc Sandy on emails you send to others - setting up an appointment, confirming a reservation, outlining a task, et cetera - and say something like "Sandy, remind me on January 31 at 5 a.m. that I said I'd eat lunch with John." At the appointed date and time the service will send a reminder to your inbox or even your cell phone if you're into the text thing. You can also email Sandy with a note like "Send me my reminders" and you'll get back a list of all the things in your reminder list. Remember the Milk has a dizzying array of additional features - mapping, list management, scheduling - but sometimes simple is what works best. [Link]

Decluttering

Craigslist: Go on, just give it away. [Link]

Lala: Get rid of your old CDs. Warning: You may have to keep them around a long time while you wait for someone to request them. [Link]

Paperback Swap: A great place to exchange books and now CDs as well. We use it frequently to get rid of books we don't want and get great kids' books in return. [Link]

Swaptree: Exchange books, movies, CDs, and more. Swaptree (an advertiser on Z Recommends) has a new feature that allows you to swap stuff within a local "friends" list - your office mates, play group partners, etc. - for a more customized swapping experience. [Link]