Ta-da

Jobs around the house that add up to something

Write down what needs doing, tick it off, and watch something worth having get closer. Free, no account, and it lives on your own phone.

Open Ta-da How the scoring works
Braai for the four of us 24 of 30

An example. The people and the jobs are invented.

A big job is worth eight quick ones

Three sizes, and the gaps between them are wide on purpose. A quick job scores 1, a proper job 3, and a big one 8.

If a big job were worth two quick ones, everybody would do quick ones — and the person who cleaned the pool would watch somebody change four lightbulbs and draw level. That is the unfairness that makes a reward system feel like a swindle, and eight to one says plainly that the big jobs are the point.

Three sizes rather than a number, too. Nobody wants to price a task, and everybody can tell the difference between changing a bulb and cleaning a pool.

Somebody sets them, somebody does them

One person writes down what needs doing and what it is worth working towards; the other gets on with it. Send them a link and you are both looking at the same list — there is nothing for either of you to sign up for.

It works perfectly well for one person too, setting their own jobs and their own prize. It is just less fun.

The prize lands on your shopping list

A prize, not a goal: a goal is something you set yourself, and this is something somebody gives you. If it is a thing you buy — the meat for that braai, a new drill — it goes straight onto your ShopPal shopping list when you get there, in the order you walk the shop.

That hand-off is the reason this is part of ShopPal rather than a to-do list with a progress bar on it. A prize that is not a thing — a lie-in, a Saturday off — simply leaves that bit empty.

What else it does

Open Ta-da

Ta-da is free and there is nothing to buy. Part of eshoppal.app — a handful of small apps for home and for work, which hand things to each other where it helps.