A few weeks ago my wife had surgery. We have five kids under seven years old and since Allison couldn't lift anything, parenting was going to be hard solo. The first few weeks Allison was in bed most of the day and I don't work from home anymore. So we needed help! I made a quick "app" on my personal site that was a simple list of days cut into hour chunks that people could claim. I didn't do any auth - it just ties to a cookie on your device. Now I can text the link to anyone and it just works.
In these situations, software is my hammer. I built a tiny scheduling page for our family. Friends used it. Friends of friends asked if they could use it. So this week I made the real thing.
What it is
Scheduled Help is a single-link scheduling page for the weeks when your villiage is trying to help you and you don't have the bandwidth to coordinate.
You build a schedule. You share one link. Friends and family tap a slot, and it's claimed. No accounts. No app to download. I can subscribe the schedule so it shows up on my Fantastical or iCal, and my dad even has it on his Google Calendar to catch any slots that might be missed.
That's the whole thing.
The opinion I built into it
There are no automated nudges.
No "your slot is tomorrow!" texts. No reminder emails.
I made that call deliberately. In the world we live in right now so many poeple are trying to automate away humanity. I've enjoyed texting people to check to make sure that they're on. Sure - I've forgotten a few times and had to scramble when someone thought that they'd sighed up for a different day. ...but oddly that feels better to me than automated emails or texts.
It's a real opinion and I'm sure it'll lose me some people. That's okay. I'd rather the tool feel like a clipboard on the fridge than a SaaS product nagging your aunt about a casserole.
Where to find it
scheduled.help. Free to use. No accounts for the helpers, passwordless login for you.
It takes a village. Start saying yes to the help.