How to get your family actually using Homie (four things that work)

The rest of this is why each of them helps, and what we got wrong before we worked it out.

Your family needs to quickly see how Homie makes their life easier, so take a look and pick whichever method will resonate best with your family.

You set the whole thing up on a Sunday evening after the kids have gone to bed, because that's the only quiet hour you get, and by the time you close the laptop you've got the school term dates in, the football training, and the dentist appointment you keep moving. You send everyone the invite link. Then nothing happens. By Wednesday you're halfway up the stairs shouting about swimming kit again.

We know how this goes because it happened to us. My wife took at least a month of watching the rest of us use Homie before she gave it a go. Which was painful considering I was the one that built it. She wasn't being difficult, but she wasn't going to move her whole life into something until she could see it was worth the hassle.

So if you're wondering how to get your family to use a family calendar app, that's the question worth asking. Plenty of articles will help you choose one. Very few of them deal with the part that comes afterwards.

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1. Start with a shared family shopping list

A shared family shopping list is the easiest place to start, and it's what we suggest to every family who signs up.

Nobody has to learn anything to use it. There's nothing to set up and nothing to understand, someone notices we're out of milk and adds milk, and whoever ends up nearest a shop that day buys it. That's the whole feature.

It also fixes something small and properly annoying, which counts for more than fixing something big and abstract.

The useful bit is that you can share a Homie list with people who haven't got the app. Your partner, your mum, the teenager with strong views about which crisps. They can see it and add to it without downloading anything.

Put five things on the shopping list today and share it. Day one done.

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2. Get your weekly family routines into Homie

This is probably the most valuable thing you can get working.

Routines are the invisible engine of a household. Swimming on Tuesday, football kit on Thursday, bins out Sunday night, instrument practice, the reading log, the gym bag.

Our 11 year old always struggled to remember her gym kit. Mum ended up as the human reminder system, which was a sub par solution for both of them.

That's why Homie has repeating routines. The point is for the nagging to stop.

Once the week is written down, nobody has to carry it around in their head. The kids can check it themselves, and this is the part that surprises people, because if you give a child a clear list that belongs to them, a lot of them will simply get on with it.

Routines are tracked, and yes, that includes streaks. Seeing a run of days you haven't broken turns out to be genuinely motivating, and not only for children, we've watched it work on adults in our own house.

What Homie won't do is hand out rewards. If you want to put a reward against a routine, that's a conversation for your family and the terms are entirely yours. Homie keeps the record of what actually happened and you decide what it's worth (because sometimes some minor bribery is necessary).

Start by adding the morning routine and go from there.

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3. Fill two whole weeks before you invite anybody

This is the counterintuitive one, and it makes more difference than the other three put together.

The instinct is to send the invites the moment you've got an account, because sending them feels like progress. Resist it for a week or two. An empty shared family calendar is worse than no calendar at all, because your family opens it, finds a blank week, works out that this is now another thing they're expected to fill in, and closes it again. You've spent your one good first impression on nothing.

So spend that time adding in the things the family needs to see. The shopping list, the routines.

Then send the invites.

Now when your family opens Homie they find their own life already sitting in there, described more accurately than they'd have managed themselves.

Homie becomes the place where the answer lives, and so slowly it becomes the first place they look.

We wanted something that feels like a whiteboard on the fridge, only better.

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4. Start planning your family meals in Homie

Meal planning works on everybody, for a completely different reason to the other three, which is that food is the one subject every member of a family usually has an opinion about.

Get the week's dinners into Homie and two arguments go quiet at once. Nobody has to ask what's for dinner at five o'clock. And the shopping stops being guesswork, because you can see what's planned and what it needs.

Recipes work like lists, so you can share them with people who haven't got the app yet. Send over the one you're considering for Thursday and let them weigh in.

Then when they do download Homie the meals are already there.

No need to go overboard, start with the first four dinners.

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You don't have to do all four

None of these depends on the others. Each one works on its own and they work happily together, so there's no sequence to get right and nothing you have to unlock first. Take whichever fits your family and leave the rest.

If your household runs on food, start with the meals. If the mornings are the part that hurts, go straight to routines. And if you've got four minutes and no appetite for a project, share a shopping list this afternoon and leave it there.

What they've all got in common is that they put something useful into Homie before anyone is asked to do anything with it.

My wife took a month. Your family might take a fortnight. Either way it isn't resistance, they just need to see that it works.

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Common questions

Why won't my family use our shared calendar?

Usually because it was empty the first time they opened it, or because the only things in it were jobs assigned to them. Fill it with information they actually want, especially the routines that already run their week, and invite them afterwards.

How do I get my partner to use a family organiser?

Don't ask them to set anything up. Do it yourself, get a fortnight of real life in there, and share a shopping list with them while you're waiting. Let them see it working before they're asked to do anything at all. It took my wife a month, and she's now happily part of the Homie family.

Can I share a list with someone who hasn't downloaded Homie?

Yes. Shopping lists and recipes can both be shared with people who aren't in your Homie family yet, and it's often the easiest way in.

Does Homie have streaks?

Routines are tracked and you can see your streaks, because a run of days you haven't broken is a decent motivator. There's nothing beyond that, no points and no badges. Any reward attached to a streak is between you and your family.

What should I put into Homie first?

Whatever your family will notice. A shopping list takes the least effort and the weekly routines tend to deliver the most, so either is a sensible start, but there's no required order and nothing gets unlocked by doing one before another.

How long before a family is properly using it?

For most, a couple of weeks after everyone's in. For some, considerably longer. Nobody reorganises a household in an afternoon, and any app promising they will is selling you something.

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Homie is a simple family planner built by a family in Norway who got tired of being everybody else's reminder system. Shared calendar, family lists, repeating routines and meal planning. No AI, no rules or permissions, everyone can do everything. Free to try, and a full refund if it turns out not to be for you.

PS: If you reach the end of your first fortnight and nobody has looked at it yet, you might need to up the ante with the rewards.