Household Slack

I’m beginning to ramp back into work as Juniper starts his fifth week of life. Nettie and I are starting to establish a bit of a rhythm. Central to this rhythm is the use of some popular business tools to help us manage our relationship with the new kiddo.

Nettie and I both use(d) Slack at our respective startups and enjoyed how it streamlined communication and segmented it among appropriate topics and audiences. With the need to build more structure and accountability around our shared duties as parents, we thought it’d be good to try it out at home.

Here’s a peek at our channels:

Our list of slack channels for our household.

• Activities: for events we’re looking forward to, parties we’ve been invited to, community gatherings.
• Around The House: chores to be done, lightbulbs to be changed, screws to be screwed.
• Budget: discussion around how much we’re spending, what we’re spending it on, and how much we have left in our budget. We have a new budget for everything we spend money on (groceries, going out, gifts, etc.) This keeps me from going back to my old ways of frivolous spending. So sad. Nettie is our household CFO.
• Juniper: things related to our little guy. Cute pics. Questions for the doctor.
• Shopping List: For our next trip to the grocery store or things to grab on the way home. We use reactions to indicate if they’ve been purchased.
• Trippin’: We’re planning a cross-country road trip in November. I’ll be working from the road as we visit various cities. It’s nice to have something like this to look forward to and practice for.
• Weekend Hikes: We try to hit a different trail every Sunday. Throughout the week we’ll post links to good spots and use reactions to evaluate how the trail was.
• Weekly Meeting: Every Sunday we sit down for our husband and wife one on one. Throughout the week we throw meeting topics in here and take notes during the meeting to look back on.
• Wishlist: Bicycle trailer for the kiddo, that sweet double sleeping bag — this is for those bigger ticket items we’ll need to do some saving for and research on.

Just wanted to share a quick overview. Next time I’ll talk through the purpose and importance of our weekly 1:1 meetings.