Cleaning Plan Feature (for households without a cleaning helper)

[elmocito]

📋 Requirement: Cleaning Plan Feature (for households without a cleaning helper)

Context / Motivation

Users without a cleaning helper need a simple way to organize cleaning tasks and keep track of what's urgent or pending.

Goal

A cleaning plan module that organizes tasks by urgency and by room.

User Stories

• As a user, I want to create rooms, so I can organize cleaning tasks in a structured way.
• As a user, I want to add tasks to individual rooms, so I know what needs to be done where.
• As a user, I want to switch between the "Urgent" and "Rooms" views, so I can quickly see what has priority.
• As a user, I want to see an empty state with a hint when no tasks exist yet, so I know how to get started.

Functional Requirements

1. "Urgent" tab: Shows all tasks marked as urgent, sorted by priority/due date.
2. "Rooms" tab: Shows tasks grouped by room.
3. Create room: Users can create new rooms (e.g., Kitchen, Bathroom, Bedroom).
4. Add task: Tasks can be assigned to a room and optionally marked as "urgent".
5. Empty state: Displays "No cleaning tasks yet. Create a room and add tasks."

Acceptance Criteria

• A room can be created, renamed, and deleted.
• A task can be created, edited, marked as done, and deleted.
• Tasks can be flagged as "urgent" and appear in the "Urgent" tab.
• The empty state is displayed correctly when no tasks exist.
• Switching between tabs works without data loss.

Optional Enhancements (Nice-to-have)

• Recurring tasks (e.g., "vacuum weekly")
• Reminders / notifications
• Assignment to multiple people (for multi-user households)

[Kyrodan]

Isn't it already be possible with the tasks module?

• Rooms: create a task category per room
• tasks can be assigned to a category (= a room) and may have a priority and/or a due date
• switch between "urgent" and "room" view: switch in tasks view top right "category" and "due date"
• didn't understand what you mean with the last user story.
• recurring already exists (not only "fixed" occurances, also "recurr after completion", see Option to make tasks reoccur n days/weeks from completed #658
• Notifications exists
• Assignment to none, one and more assignees are already possible

I do exactly what you describe in my household :-)

Is there something you are still missing?

[elmocito]

The templates that exist for house keepers are not existing for Tasks or am I missing something?

[Kyrodan]

That's right, templates do not exist.

In our househould templates are not necessary because things have to be done (if they are more or less due - like everyday, once a week, etc.) and I do not want to have the additional doing of "planing the tasks". That's all done if a family member suggests a task (in our daily family time in the evening): we immediately create a task with repetition. We have all family tasks - not only the chores - in one place. Plus we like gaining points and battle who has most points this week.

That's just my opinion and I'm not a maintainer :-)

[elmocito]

Yeah, but the entry barrier is high, we have dozens of repetitive tasks at the moment in a tool called Sweepy. It just takes too long to move them all over. 😮‍💨

[Kyrodan]

After reading a little bit about Sweepy and fiddleing around a little bit with my suggestion and your input, I think I now understood your point. And for me this totally makes sense.

I will explain my goals, my current workkflow and try to differntiate between "Tasks" and "Chores in a Household" afterwards.

My goals:

• getting ongoing and short-recurring chores done by all persons of our household (children and parents)
• having an incentive for my kids: gain points and redeem them - some kind of gamification/battle/quest
• let members of household create tasks (other than chores) with the well-know task pattern

My curren workflow:

• have tasks for everything that needs to be done (including chores)
• have points assigned to tasks
• the family is able to see all tasks or the ones on the dashboard
• in the evening we do daily family meetings and talk about the completed tasks:
  • We edit a task and assign the completer - save
  • tick the task afterwards to gain the points
  • task reaapears with new due date (most of our tasks have a recurring on completion) e.g. the next day or the next week
  • we take a look at the "Scoreboard" and the tasks and appoitments for tomorrow

What I like:

• the point-system - most important thing for me
• Having different views for tasks, depending on what I want to see/analyze
• Sync with CalDAV VTODO - create Tasks on my mobile on the go that appear in Yuvomi to get "refined" later on

What I dislike:

• we have a lot of tasks and so it gets confusing - espcially all the chore-tasks "pollute" the other tasks
• recurring tasks can initially start without a due date but get one after first repetition. This leads to an entry in the calendar views. So the calendar gets polluted with the cores (which are not important for me in my calendar-view - but the "other" tasks are important to be in calendar view).
• the need to edit a task first to (re-)assign the person that today completed the chore. And editing the task this way has this assigne also assigned for next repetition

So now I see, that "chores" are something different in contrast to tasks - and I think that's your main point. My current workflow does not differtiate this but should do.

So what makes a chore different to a task?
At first both are things to get done. But the difference is the expectation

1. how it is planned
2. the point in time when it is overdue
3. the importance in your complete household-view
4. how to track

For chores:

1. "a chore is due" means "should be started not earlier since last completion plus the recurring-setting". could or could not be assigned to one or more persons. Someone should complete it. So a task gets done by pulling it out of pool of other "due" chores. It's not important when someone has startet a chore and when it exactly ended. It's only important to see, that it's done/completed.
2. a chore may or may not be overdue. Most chores have no exact defined date to be completed. It's more or less something like "should be done in near time". If a chore is not completed for a longer time, then maybe it is more important to get them done.
3. Every single day chores need to be done. Chores have it's own part in household-planning (like appointments, other tasks, meal planning, etc.). But they do not belong to calendar-based due/overdue views.
4. completing a chore means it is out of sight until next occurance. It's important to see, what can be picked today or just now (because I just have time to empty the dish washer).

For tasks:

1. may be plannable or not. If they are plannable, then calendar-based. The time between start and completion could be several days, so start and completion are both attributes for tracking.
2. it's overdue, when the due-date is arrived. It's the point in time when it needs to be completed latest.
3. tasks need to be done but the timeframe to get completed is not immediately - more important things have an importance indicator assigned and/or a due date. Others are on the pile to do it, when someone (or the assignee) has time to do it (like "repair kitchen light")
4. Important things have a due date which is important to see in calendar. Daily checking routine means, you take a look at the todo-list or the kanban board.

With this in mind I checked the "Household-Staff" functionality: it's exactly what is required for all kind of chores, not only for external staffs. Defining a chore has some of the basic aspects I mentioned above already implemented.
What's missing is

• household members are allowed to complete chores (and gain points).
• an overview/dashboard what should be done today and where/which room
• simple task completion for my pulled chores
• simple task completion for others (like kids)
• better room/area definition and selection
• more attributes like "important"

These things may also be interested if you have staff for different chores (like "cleaning inhouse", "cleaning windows", "gardening")

What do you think?

[ulsklyc]

Most of what you describe already exists and already works without a cleaning helper - it is just not where you would look for it.

The Housekeeping module contains a feature called decay tasks:

CREATE TABLE housekeeping_decay_tasks (
  name           TEXT NOT NULL,
  area           TEXT NOT NULL,
  frequency_days INTEGER NOT NULL,
  last_completed TEXT,
  ...
);

A task, the room it belongs to, how often it needs doing, and when it was last done - which is exactly "urgent" and "by room". The list is sorted by area, and none of it is tied to a worker: GET/POST /housekeeping/decay-tasks never touches housekeeping_workers. A household with no cleaning helper can open the module today and use this part of it.

So the real problem your report describes is a naming one, and it is a genuine one. The module is called Housekeeping and is presented as the place where you manage a cleaning helper - check-ins, supply requests, maintenance log. Anybody without a helper reasonably concludes the whole module is not for them, and never finds the cleaning plan inside it. You are the second person to arrive at this from a different direction; #787 proposes widening the module beyond "the helper", and your report is the strongest argument for it that I have seen.

Two things from your list that are genuinely missing rather than hidden: rooms are a free-text area field, not managed entities you create and reuse, and there is no dedicated "Urgent / Rooms" view toggle - urgency is implied by frequency_days and last_completed rather than presented as its own list.

Could you try the decay tasks as they are and say where they fall short? That would separate "needs a new module" from "needs to be findable", and right now I suspect it is mostly the latter.