A project board without a subscription: Kanban for the house
A project board is one of the best tools there is for keeping track of work that takes more than a day. It’s also one of the most common things people end up paying for every month. This guide covers how a board works, how to set one up for a household, and why we built our own.
What a Kanban board is
Kanban is a way of showing work as cards that move across columns. The idea came out of Toyota’s factories, where cards signaled when parts were needed. Software teams picked it up later, and now it shows up everywhere from offices to kitchen whiteboards.
The simplest board has three columns:
- To do: everything you’ve said yes to.
- Doing: what you’re working on right now.
- Done: what’s finished.
Each project or task is a card. When you start it, it moves right. When it’s done, it moves right again. You can see the state of everything at a glance.
Why it works for a house
Home projects are a lot like work projects. They have steps, they need things bought, they wait on other people, and they stall. A board helps because:
- Nothing hides. The half-finished bathroom trim is a card you see every day, not a thought you have once a month.
- You see what’s stuck. A card that sits in Doing for weeks is telling you something.
- Two people can share it. No more “I thought you were handling that.”
Columns that fit a household
Three columns is fine to start. Many people end up with five:
- Backlog: ideas and someday projects. Repaint the shed. Plan an elk hunt.
- Up next: what you’ve decided to do soon.
- Doing: what’s actually in progress.
- On hold: waiting on parts, weather, money or someone else.
- Done: finished, so you can see the progress.
On hold is the column most people skip, and the one that helps most. Without it, waiting projects clog Doing and the board stops telling the truth.
Keep Doing small
The core rule of Kanban is to limit work in progress. If Doing has eight cards, nothing is getting finished. Pick a limit, say two or three for a household, and don’t start something new until one moves to Done or On hold.
Give every card a next step
A card that just says “Garage” isn’t a project. A card that says “Garage shelves: buy brackets at the hardware store” is. Each card should have:
- A finish line. What does done look like?
- A next step. The very next physical action.
- An owner. One person, or both, but decided.
- A date, if it’s real. Use due dates for actual deadlines, not wishes.
Why we built our own
We used to pay for a board app. It worked, but we got tired of what came with it: subscriptions, locked features, and an upgrade prompt every time we clicked something. What we wanted was simple. A board we could both edit from anywhere that pushed to our calendar and reminders.
So we built one. That became Tagged. Once the board worked, it was easy to keep going, and the household finance workbook and the recipe app came next.
You don’t need to build an app to get away from a subscription. A whiteboard and sticky notes work. A free tool works. The point is to pick something you’ll actually look at every day.
How Tagged helps
Tagged is our app for running a household, and the project board is where it started.
- A real board. A Board view with Backlog, Up Next, Doing, On Hold and Done.
- Three ways to look. The same projects as a clean Lists view, the Board, or a priority Matrix.
- Projects that feel like projects. Each has an owner, due date, priority, next step and a checklist. Checklist items open into their own subtasks, so big jobs stay manageable.
- Areas and categories. Group projects into Areas like Home, Outdoors or Apps, and tag them with categories to filter fast.
- Attach anything. Photos, files, a Google Drive link or an Obsidian note right on the project.
- Costs on the project. Log what a project costs, or scan the receipt and let it fill in the store, total and date.
- Mine, yours or both. Assign to one person or both, and filter the board to just your stuff. A history shows what changed and who changed it.
- Live sync. Change something on one phone and it shows on the other right away.
- On your calendar. A private feed puts due dates in Apple Calendar, and an iPhone Shortcut pulls what’s due into Apple Reminders.
No subscription, no locked features, no upgrade prompts, no ads. The Windows desktop app is free. Sign-in is invite only for now.