Percy
When my partner and I moved in together, we struggled to share the responsibility of household chores. Although we were both generally tidy, it was difficult to stay on top of recurring tasks like dusting, cleaning the bathroom and windows.
I searched for an app that could help us establish a routine, but nothing quite fit our needs. So I decided to build my own platform, Percy, named after the street we lived on at the time.
Percy lets us add tasks, assign deadlines and manage them collaboratively. Tasks can be one-off or recurring, with flexible schedules to suit our routine. For example, taking out the rubbish can be scheduled for every Sunday, with public holidays accounted for.
There’s also support for trigger-based tasks, which are automatically added to the task list when a task is completed. This makes it possible to build more natural workflows around household responsibilities, without having to remember to schedule every task manually.
While Percy helped us organise our responsibilities, we still needed to check the app regularly to see what needed doing. I wanted something that would make chores more visible without having to actively seek it out.
To achieve this, I integrated Percy with a lamp on our living room bookshelf. I replaced its bulb with an energy-efficient, colour-changing smart bulb connected to our Wi-Fi network. Every day, the lamp turns on at 4pm and off at midnight. When everything is up to date, it matches the other lighting in the room. If a task is overdue, the light turns red, updating instantly when tasks become overdue or everything is marked complete.
I also created a live calendar that displays chores as all-day events on their due dates. By subscribing to the calendar on our phones, tasks appear alongside our regular events, and we can simply ask Siri what’s on the calendar to find out what needs doing.
Percy has evolved beyond a simple chore tracker into a small ecosystem that helps us manage our home. By integrating everyday tasks into our environment and existing tools, it’s made staying organised feel less like another responsibility and more like a natural part of our routine.