One day, I started looking around my house and noticed all the little things that needed cleaning more regularly. Change the air filter, clean the oven, and run a cleaning cycle on the washing machine. It’s not that I forgot to do any of those things — I just kept putting more important things in front of them.
I didn’t have a system for this, so I built one. I used Apple Reminders as the task database and Apple Shortcuts to text my household every Sunday with whatever is due that week.
It’s made a real difference — I actually know when I last changed the air filter or cleaned the vacuum. If you want to apply the same idea to your family's weekly schedule, I've got a similar setup for that, too.
What You'll Need
iPhone with iOS 16 or later
Apple Shortcuts app (built-in — no download needed)
Apple Reminders app (built-in)
A household group chat in iMessage
Setting Up Your Cleaning Reminders List
The Reminders app will serve as your task database. Each cleaning task lives there with its own repeat schedule — weekly, monthly, every 3 months, whatever makes sense. Reminders handles all of that natively, which means you don't need a spreadsheet or a third-party app. Managing the List later is as simple as opening Reminders and editing a task.
Step 1 — Create a Cleaning list
Open the Reminders app, tap Add List, and name it Cleaning. This keeps your cleaning tasks separate from everything else and helps the Shortcut find them later.
Step 2 — Add your tasks
For each cleaning task, add a new Reminder to the Cleaning list and set:
Name: Be specific. "Clean the bathroom" beats "bathroom."
Date: Set it to the next scheduled time for the task.
Repeat: Choose the right cadence. Examples:
Building the Shortcut
This Shortcut runs every Sunday morning. It grabs what's due from your Cleaning list, filters out anything already done, and sends a single text to the household. If nothing is due, it stays quiet.
Step 1 — Calculate your date boundaries
Before getting the List of Reminders, you need two dates as variables:
DueCeiling — 7 days from now (the upper bound for tasks due this week)
DoneFloor — 7 days ago (how far back to look for recently completed tasks)
Add a Date action set to Current Date. Then add two Adjust Date actions:
First: Add 7 Days → set variable DueCeiling
Second: Subtract 7 Days → set variable DoneFloor
Step 2 — Find upcoming tasks
Add a Find Reminders action and configure it:
List: Cleaning
Filter: Is Not Completed
Filter: Due Date is before DueCeiling
Sort by: Due Date, Oldest First
Limit: Off