The Orbyt blog
Getting the household plan out of one head.
Real stories about the mental load, running a home with someone else, and how to stop being the household's only memory.
Featured · Mental load
We had a shared calendar for three years. It didn't solve the problem I had.
March 28, 2026 · 4 min read
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- CouplesI got tired of being the reminder system. So I found one that actually works. · 4 min read
- Comparing appsWe tried every household management app. Most of them made us argue more. · 4 min read
- Comparing appsI used Cozi for three years. Here's why I switched. · 4 min read
- Comparing appsCozi vs FamilyWall — We Used Both for Six Months. Here's What Decides It. · 4 min read
- Comparing appsFamilyWall has every feature. We used none of them. · 4 min read
- Comparing appsWe tried OurHome to split household tasks. It made things worse. · 4 min read
- Mental loadThe 71% problem: why moms still run the household — and what actually helpsA major study found mothers still handle 71% of household tasks — not their share of the work, but the full load. Most apps don't fix it. Here's what actually does. · 3 min read
- Mental loadWhat is the mental load app — and why every household app fails at itMost apps call themselves a mental load app. Most of them just move the sticky notes to a screen. Here's what an app actually designed for the mental load problem does differently. · 3 min read
- Comparing appsI manage a team at work. At home I was managing on fumes.I have systems at work that would embarrass most teams. At home I was running everything from memory and breaking down twice a year. Here's what changed. · 4 min read
- Running the houseI used to find out we owed money when the late fee showed upI tracked our household bills with a spreadsheet for four years. It worked until it didn't. Here's what actually fixed it. · 4 min read
- CouplesThe app that finally stopped the 'you never help' argument · 4 min read
- Comparing appsFiftyFifty was supposed to fix our chore problem. It didn't. · 4 min read
- Comparing appsThe mental load is real and I finally found something that helpsThe mental load isn't about chores. It's about being the only one who knows what needs to happen. Here's the app that finally changed that. · 4 min read
- Comparing appsI tried Mental Loadless for a month. Here's what actually happened. · 4 min read
- Comparing appsI used Cozi for a year before I figured out it was solving the wrong problemI want to be fair to Cozi because I used it for over a year and it genuinely did what it said it would do. The shared calendar worked. The grocery list synced in real time. I could color-code by ki… · 3 min read
- Comparing appsOurHome is built for your kids. That's also why it didn't work for us.I found OurHome on a Reddit thread where someone asked what apps families actually use to manage chores. It had good reviews. People talked about their kids earning points for doing dishes, the gam… · 3 min read
- Comparing appsI spent a Sunday afternoon downloading every family organizer app I could find. These are my notes.It was one of those Sundays in October where the weather was bad and I had convinced myself that if I just found the right app, the household would get easier. I know how that sounds. I downloaded … · 3 min read
- Comparing appsWorking full time and still managing the whole house. The app gap is real.I was in a meeting on a Tuesday morning when I remembered that Eli's prescription was almost out. Not almost out as in I'd have a few days to deal with it — almost out as in there were two pills le… · 3 min read
- CouplesHe helps when I ask. That's the problem.I spent a long time thinking the problem was that Marcus wouldn't help. It wasn't. When I ask him to do something, he does it. He's not resistant. He's not lazy. He's pretty consistently willing to… · 3 min read
- Running the houseThe medication that ran out on a Tuesday morning when I had a 9am meetingEli has taken the same medication every morning for three years. Every 30 days, the prescription needs to be refilled. I have known this for three years. · 3 min read
- Running the houseTwo kids, four communication channels, and the permission slip I found in his backpack the morning it was dueThe permission slip situation went like this: Evan had a field trip. I knew about the field trip. I had been informed of the field trip via the school's parent portal, which I check, and also via a… · 3 min read
- Running the houseThe HVAC filter that went 14 months because I kept assuming Marcus was thinking about itWe bought our house in 2019. I had read somewhere that HVAC filters should be changed every three months. I added this to my mental model of "things that need to happen" and then did not change the… · 3 min read
- Mental loadI found the term for what I'd been trying to explain for three yearsI was at Nora's dentist appointment, doing that thing where you're sitting in the waiting room being present while also running the rest of the week in your head. Eli had a follow-up with the aller… · 3 min read
- Mental loadI noticed I was the one. Then I figured out why.It started with something small. I noticed, over the course of a few weeks, that every time a household decision needed to be made — what to do about the thing with the roof, whether we needed a ne… · 3 min read
- Comparing appsI didn't want to nag him. I wanted an app to do it for me.At some point I typed "is there an app that reminds my husband to do things" into Google and felt a specific combination of tired and hopeful that I imagine a lot of people in my situation know ver… · 3 min read
- Mental loadThe thing I carry that I didn't even know I was carryingMy husband asked me where the kids' dental insurance cards were, and I knew. Not because I had looked them up recently. Not because I'd filed them somewhere logical. I just knew. And in the three s… · 4 min read
- CouplesI tried every household app. Here's what I actually kept using.I spent a Sunday afternoon going down a rabbit hole I didn't plan on falling into. Marcus and I had just argued — not really argued, more like that low-grade friction where nobody's technically wro… · 4 min read
- Comparing appsI stopped reminding him. Something unexpected happened.I heard myself say "did you take the trash out" for what felt like the fourteenth time in two weeks, and I stopped mid-sentence not because I was wrong but because I was so tired of being the perso… · 3 min read
- Mental loadWhat the mental load actually is (and why "just tell me what to do" doesn't help)I was making dinner one night when I remembered that Eli had an orthodontist consultation on Thursday, which meant I needed to leave work by 3:15, which meant I had to move my 3:00 call, which I ha… · 3 min read
- Comparing appsI used Cozi for a year. Then I went looking for something else.I used Cozi for about a year before I started wondering if there was something that went deeper. That's not a complaint about Cozi. It did what it said it would do. The calendar worked. The shoppin… · 4 min read
- Mental loadWhat my evenings actually look like when the day is "doneBy 8pm on a Tuesday, both kids are in bed, my husband is watching something, and by all appearances the day is done. I'm in the kitchen with my laptop open because I remembered during bath time tha… · 3 min read
- CouplesThe chore conversation that never stays about choresWe weren't even fighting. We were just standing in the kitchen on a Sunday night and I said, flatly, "I need us to figure out how to share household tasks better" and he said "okay, what do you wan… · 4 min read
- Mental loadWe had a shared calendar for three years. It didn't solve the problem I had.Last Tuesday, Marcus looked up from his phone and asked me what time Lily's soccer thing was on Saturday. We have a shared Google Calendar. It has been shared for three years. The soccer thing was … · 4 min read
- Running the houseThe bill that caught me off guard every single yearThe pest control bill hit in October. I knew we had it. I knew we'd paid it every fall for four years. I just hadn't accounted for it in that particular week, and when the charge showed up I did th… · 4 min read
- Mental loadI tried mentally checking out for a week. Here's what I realized.My friend Cass said it at dinner, half joking: "Have you ever thought about just not? Not tracking any of it for a week? See what your husband does?" · 3 min read
- Comparing appsI tried OurHome. Here's what it's actually built for.There's a specific kind of frustration that comes from setting up an app carefully, actually putting in the work, and then realizing after two weeks that it was solving a slightly different problem… · 3 min read
- Comparing appsThe duplicate yogurt incident that made me actually fix our grocery situationThe third time it happened I decided to actually fix it. I came home with a bag of groceries and my husband was already putting away the exact same items. Two containers of Greek yogurt. Two bags o… · 5 min read
- CouplesEvery household system we've tried died the same deathThere's a corner of our kitchen where systems go to die. Not literally, but in my head that's where I put them. The magnetic whiteboard with the chore chart that worked for exactly nine days. The T… · 4 min read
- Mental loadWhat he meant when he said he didn't know I needed helpI'd been managing Nora's back-to-school forms for two weeks. Not because I wanted to. Because it never seemed to occur to anyone else that they needed to happen. There were six separate forms, two … · 3 min read
- CouplesI set up a shared calendar in 2019. He never opened it.I set up a shared Google Calendar in, I think, 2019. Added both of our accounts. Color coded it. Made a calendar for school stuff, one for medical, one for household. Sent him the invite. Told him … · 3 min read
- Running the houseThe camping trip argument that wasn't actually about the camping tripIt started because Marcus mentioned he'd picked up a couple of things for the camping trip. I asked what he'd spent. He said around eighty dollars. I pulled up the bank account later that evening a… · 4 min read
- Mental loadWhat I was wrong about when it comes to AI and your householdI almost didn't try it. Every time I heard the phrase "AI household assistant," I pictured someone in a tech ad handing a tablet to a smiling family while dinner made itself. That wasn't my house. … · 4 min read
- CouplesThe five minutes after dinner that changed how our week runsThere was a week in November where I looked around and realized nothing had been handled in about ten days. Not catastrophically. Nothing was on fire. But the permission slip for the field trip was… · 3 min read
- Mental loadThere's finally a word for the thing I've been trying to explain for yearsEli's asthma prescription needs to be refilled before the end of the month. We're down to about four days of his daily inhaler. The last time we let it run out was a Monday and the pediatrician's o… · 3 min read
- Mental loadOur house was running a system. It just lived entirely in my head.There was a moment, a few years into running a household with two kids and two jobs and all the invisible infrastructure that requires, when I realized we did have a system. It just lived entirely … · 4 min read
- Mental loadThe day I was sick in bed and still the only one who knew how the house ranI had a fever of 101 and I was in bed by ten in the morning. Marcus had the kids. He had work calls. He was doing everything, genuinely, and I was not needed. · 4 min read