Part Four: Use Trello To Manage Your Home Chore To Do List

Planning Board Automations for Special Focus tasks

In the first session you made two Trello boards from our templates: the Planning Board and the Action Board. In the second session you set up some automations on your Action Board that allow you to claim tasks and complete them. In the third session you built all the automations that send your regularly occuring task lists from your Planning Board to you Action Board.

This is the last of the four core sessions. Once you have finished this, you will be all set up with a Planning Board where you can manage your list of things you want to remember to do, and your Action Board that you and your household can use to share the work and get things done.

A very cute blue heeler dog lying on a bed, looking at the camera with puppy dog eyes

Rudy the Motivational Heeler is very proud of you.

Butler for Trello: More Due Date Rules

The last Automations we need to set up on your Planning Board are the ones that send the Special Focus tasks over to the Action board, one room per month. The butler commands that make this happen use Due Date rules, just like the ones we set up last week. The difference is that instead of grabbing the tasks from all of the cards on all of the lists at the right time depending on the name of the card (ie Weekly Tasks), we want trello to treat each room list separately.

We are going to tell trello: When a card with the yellow Special Focus label in [Room] is due, change its due date to 6 months from now. Find all the tasks in the checklist and turn them into cards. Put the room name on the cards so we don’t get confused, label them Special Focus, and make them due at the end of this month, and then send them all the the Action Board so we can get them done.

First Rule: Kitchen

Before you get started with Trello Automations, open your Planning Board in a second tab. In a few minutes you are going to be copy-pasting the checklist names from your Special Focus cards into your Butler commands.

Just like last time, open Automations and choose Due Date, and then Create Command.

We only need to set up one rule this time, and then it is very easy to copy it for every room list on your Planning Board.

Start your trigger with this command: “The moment a card in list Kitchen” and click +

Then add this command: “with the yellow ‘Special Focus’ label” and click +

Screen shot of complete Trello Butler trigger reding the moment a card in list Kitchen with the yellow Special Focus label is due

Then add some actions. The first one is simple: “Move the due date by 6 months”

The next action is a little more complicated. On the Cascade tab, find “for each checklist item” and click the input box.

Go into your second Planning Board tab, open the Special Focus Tasks card in the Kitchen list, and copy the checklist name “Special Focus Tasks- Kitchen”

And paste it into your command.

The end of the command will read “create a new card with title {checklistitemname} in list New Tasks on board Action Board, add the yellow Special Focus label, and set due next Sunday at 5:00 PM.”

Start in Add/Remove using these commands:

and enter the information like this:

Do this to get the due date:

It should look like this when you save:

Use that Rule to Create Some MOre

Copy the command to open it up. It will look like this:

In the trigger section, use the drop-down menu to choose your next list. Then in the action section, copy-paste in the corresponding checklist name.

Save this command, and then repeat this procedure for all of the room lists on your planning board.

Last Steps: Set your Due Dates

We’re finally almost done! You just need to set the due dates in your Special Focus cards. Everyone’s home has similarities and differences. We probably all have a kitchen, but we definitely don’t all have guest rooms. Still, if you can sync up with us, we can support each other as we clean our way through the year.

My recommendation is that you divide your house into 6 zones, that way you can hit each one twice per year. The first time through is always the worst, but if you keep going, you’ll see that it doesn’t ever get that chaotic again and the jobs go a lot faster. Here’s our schedule:

- Kitchen and Laundry Room: May and November

- Living Room and Dining Room: June and December

- Downstairs Office, Guest Room, Bathroom, Hall, Coat Closet, and Stairs: July and January

- Upstairs Hall and Sewing Room: August and February

- Primary Bedroom and Bathroom: September and March

- Garage, Porch, Patio: April and October

Organize your rooms roughly into these categories, and set your due dates for the first of the next coming month at 7:00 AM!

You’re Finished Creating Trello Automations!

You’ve done a fantastic job with this. Now you can begin to use these lists to organize your household chores, and we will be right here with you, cheering you on and providing inspiration and support.

What’s next?

Now that we are all working together with our trello boards, we’ll be posting more about the ways that we fit doing home chores into our busy lives without feeling like we’re living just to clean the house. I will be very honest about the emotions and unwelcome thoughts that I struggle with around house work, organization, and letting go of unwanted items. We’ll share our cleaning tips and our mental tricks that get us through the basic upkeep and into the fun projects.

Remember, at the Red House, organization is self-care. We plan in advance so we don’t have to overthink when it’s chore time. We take care of our space so we can feel good, but the moment it starts to provoke anxiety and harmful self-recriminations, we choose to breathe and take care of ourselves. More about that in future blogs!

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