There are three certainties in life: death, taxes, and endless household chores. If you’re anything like me, the third is the most depressing. From dying my white laundry pink to never keeping the instruction manuals for devices in my flat, I’m far from a domestic goddess.
Luckily, I’ve found a handful of iPhone apps that make day-to-day household tasks way easier. From a simple tag scanner that makes wash days a breeze to an cupboard inventory that means no more out-of-date tins, here are five apps that’ll make your daily chores quicker and easier.
Laundry Lens
Laundy Lens is a fast way to decode unintelligible care tags
Let’s be honest: nobody really knows what all those symbols on clothes tags mean. Sure, the tumble dryer with the cross through makes sense – but the random ‘A’ in a circle? The two underwater dots? The iron with a cross not through, but underneath? We’d need an enigma machine.
Enter Laundry Lens: an iPhone app that acts as your wash day assistant. Simply point the camera at your garment’s care label, and you’ll instantly get the full, correct instructions as to how your item should be washed, dried and ironed. You can even store them in the app, so you don’t need to rescan the next time you wash.
Download for free on the App Store
Manualslib
When I get a new device, I follow a simple pattern: put it together and then immediately bin all the packaging and manuals that came with it. Which means in a years’ time when something inevitably goes wrong, I have absolutely no idea how to go about fixing my TV/microwave/kitchen chairs.
The best app for remedying this? Manualslib. Search for your device and you can find the owner’s manual, and add it to the ‘My Manuals’ library so you always have it to hand. My advice would be to scan and store the guide for a new device as soon as you get it – then you can chuck away all the packaging safe in the knowledge you’ve got the info you need stored on your phone.
Download for free on the App Store
KitchenPal
KitchenPal makes a virtual inventory of all your cupboard items
Plenty of us have items that have long expired at the back of our cupboards (when my mum recently moved, she found a tin of beans aged around 15 years). But KitchenPal is an app that prevents that, acting as a pantry manager, meal planner and grocery list all in one.
Scan your shopping with the app, and it’ll store it in your inventory and send a reminder when items are nearing their best before date. You can also get recipes that use up the products in your pantry, and get automated recommendations for your shopping list based on the items you already have.
Subscribe from £2.79 per month on the App Store
Indyx
Fed up of trying to throw together an outfit at the last minute? Try Indyx. The app gets you to take a snap of all the items in your wardrobe, then indexes everything that you have.
It’ll then remove the background and improve the quality, so you can mix and match items to see how they’d look together (a bit like those paper dolls you’d dress up as a kid). Even better, you can get a professional to help style your outfits, and even give some personalised shopping recommendations to complement what you already have.
Subscribe from £7 per month on the App Store
Sweepy
By creating a leaderboard, Sweepy is great for getting competitive kids to help with chores
It’s tricky to get kids to help with chores, but Sweepy works on the basis that competitiveness is key. It creates a personalised list of all the jobs that need doing in your household, and allows you to distribute and prioritise tasks between all residents.
Then the real games begin. People get points based on how many chores they do (and how well they do them), so you can fight for top spot on the household leaderboard. The reviews say it’s a game changer for getting little ones to help out.
Subscribe from £3 per month on the App Store
