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Ask HN: How do you organize life with your partner?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you organize life with your partner?

#11

Post by znq »

We have a shared Google calendar called "Family" where we put family events for ourselves and the kids.

Then we use Google Keep for quick TODO lists and shopping lists.

For recurring events (admin, payment reminders, car maintenance, etc.) we use Asana projects. Or we create an Asana project to plan our trips, which are usually very individualistic.

We also have Asana templates for checklists and packing lists.

Google Drive to store scanned documents, admin paperwork and docs and spreadsheets for various long-term notes.

A lot of people we know think that this might be overkill and that we are crazy for setting up a "complex" system like this. Truth is, we never forgot anything and never have to worry either. This frees up our minds to "work" on more creative things.

My wife never used systems like this before and she now recommends it to all her friends and family.

Re: Ask HN: How do you organize life with your partner?

#12

Post by lotsofpulp »

We both use macOS/iOS so we use various shared notes for things like grocery lists or memos, and shared calendars.

We each have our own personal Keepass database for our personal accounts and then a shared Keepass database for stuff we both might need to access. We save this database in iCloud Drive and use Strongbox to use these on iOS/macOS.

All of our documents are scanned and saved in a shared iCloud folder, and both computers are regularly backed up to a RAID 1 NAS by Time Machine.

Re: Ask HN: How do you organize life with your partner?

#14

Post by colinwilyb »

The only shared resource is a whiteboard on the fridge. It has immediate lists (ie: Phoned 3 plumbers, these are quotes for work to be done and phone number.) and immediate purchase lists (milk, eggs, prescriptions) and immediate ToDos (call Aunt Tracey re:insider trading).

Small whiteboard means it gets cleared and refreshed frequently.

I schedule myself a week at a time, and she prefers a month at a time. So before I schedule anything I speak with her. My family now contacts her to plan holidays however.

Re: Ask HN: How do you organize life with your partner?

#16

Post by themadturk »

We are pretty non-technical in our partnership. We do have a shared Apple calendar, but I'm the only one who maintains events. My wife is on her iPad all the time, so she sees it, but her phone is never on, so (as I would like to) we don't text. Virtually everything is done face to face. We might have gotten more technical when our children were growing up and we had a more complicated schedule, but by the time smartphones were widely available they were just about out of school and things became simpler.

Re: Ask HN: How do you organize life with your partner?

#17

Post by figassis »

For the most part we just talk things over. But we use Microsoft Todos (Which replaced Wunderlist), to share shopping lists for big item purchases, important tasks that can't be done immediately and might get forgotten and travel destinations that we can check off the list each year.

We also share a spreadsheet to plan monthly expenses. Finally I am looking for a better app for financial management. Currently we use Spendee, but want something simpler, but it seems all apps in this category cater specifically to the top 5 currencies or want to do things like sync to your bank, none of which are supported in my country, hence, the spreadsheet.

Re: Ask HN: How do you organize life with your partner?

#18

Post by hypertele-Xii »

The most important bit is that whatever she does on a computer, she saves it into the Syncthing'd folder that I set up to copy into my persistent storage system.

Regardless of organization, search, and coordination, step 1 is making sure the data is saved. There's always time to shuffle it around later.

Re: Ask HN: How do you organize life with your partner?

#19

Post by BlameKaneda »

My SO is a full-time student and I'm 100% remote, with my desk in our bedroom and their desk in the living room. Our desks used to be in the same room, but only for a day. We'd both had separate meetings going on at the same time and realized it wasn't possible at all.

Usually in the morning we'll ask the other if they "have anything going on that day (i.e. have to be at school from noon to 2pm)" or "if they have any meetings". We like to keep each other in the loop.

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