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The household book

Write down what a sitter or a grandparent asks for, copy it in one tap, keep a password hidden, and give a sitter a read-only link. The moments your family kept sit beside it.

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On this page

The household book is the page a sitter, a grandparent or a new partner needs: the wifi, which bin goes out when, the doctor, the school and the sitter's number. It lives in a family workspace at Household book, under Home in the sidebar, and you can reach it from More on the family page and from search.

Before you have written anything#

An empty book shows an example of a filled one, labeled Example: what your book looks like: a made-up family's wifi (with the password hidden), bin days, doctor, school and sitter, and a few kept moments, laid out the way yours will be. It is faded and nothing in it can be pressed. It is never saved to your workspace. Press Add the wifi first to start your own book; the example goes away as soon as anything real is in it, a fact, a kept moment or a moment waiting for Keep.

What goes in it#

The book has two shelves.

  • The house: the wifi, the bins, and anything else about the house, like where the spare key is.
  • People who help: the doctor, the school and the sitter.

Each entry has a name ("Dr. Okafor, Elm Street Pediatrics"), the thing to copy (a phone number, the wifi password) and an optional note ("Recycling Tuesdays, out by 7 am"). Copy beside an entry copies the thing to copy, so nobody has to type a phone number off a screen.

  1. Press Add to the book.
  2. Pick what it is, give it a name, and fill in the thing to copy.
  3. Tick Hide it until someone taps Show for a password. A wifi entry starts hidden.

Press the pencil beside an entry to change it or remove it. Grown-ups write in the book; a child reads it and is offered no buttons. The book works offline like the rest of the app.

The moments#

Beside the facts are the moments your family has kept: a birthday, a first night in a tent, the day the shed was finished. Each one is a card with its drawing and its date. Margin Intelligence suggests moments on Sundays, and you choose Keep or Skip. Remove takes a moment out, and the toast's Put back brings it back. A year ago today comes back here on its day, and on the wall display.

The companion's room keeps a door to the book with the newest moment on it.

Press Give a sitter a link and make a view-only link. The person you send it to does not need The Margin. They see the facts and nothing else. The moments your family kept stay off the link, because a moment's title can name a child.

Passwords stay hidden on the link unless you tick Include the hidden facts, like the wifi password. Changing that keeps the same link, so the address you already sent still works. Stop the link turns it off for everyone who has it. Only a grown-up can make or change the link. The phone app has the same link on the book's screen, where it goes straight to the share sheet.

With an assistant#

Margin Intelligence and any connected assistant can read and write the book with list_household_facts, set_household_fact and remove_household_fact. A hidden value is masked in what the assistant reads unless it asks for it on purpose, and a child's assistant cannot change the book.