How Tidywell turns your week into a plan you'll actually follow
Smart Schedule spreads your recurring chores across the week, respects the days you'd rather not clean, and keeps any single day from feeling impossible. Here's how it builds the plan, what it pins, and what it sets aside for later.
A weekly plan, not a daily firehose
Without Smart Schedule, your Today list is filled by priority alone, capped by your daily budget. Smart Schedule looks at the whole week instead. It knows which days you actually like to clean on, which days you want off, and which appointments are pinned to a specific date. Then it spreads what's due across the week so no single day feels like a wall.
Smart Schedule is a Premium feature
You'll see the toggle on the Today tab on every plan, but the schedule view itself is part of Premium. Free users get the priority-sorted Today list, which still respects your daily budget. Smart Schedule adds the week view, the preferred-days logic, and the spillover banner.
Preferred days get the full budget. Days off get half.
In Cleaning preferences you pick which days of the week you actually want to clean on. Smart Schedule treats those as your full-budget days. The days you've left out aren't ignored, they just get a lighter load. The budget is halved on those days, so a quick win is still possible without you feeling like the app is nagging on a Sunday.
Example: 60 min budget, weekends off
Halving the budget, not the chores
It's the minutes that halve, not the task count. So a 60-minute weekday becomes a 30-minute weekend. Smart Schedule then fits whatever combination of overdue tasks fits inside that smaller window. Quiet weekends can stay quiet, busier ones can still take a spillover task or two if you opt in.
Why fresh tasks don't appear right away
If you just hoovered yesterday and it's set to every 4 days, it won't show up early in tomorrow's plan. Smart Schedule waits for a task to be meaningfully overdue before pulling it into the week, so the schedule doesn't fill itself with things that genuinely don't need doing yet. The same task will surface a few days later, once it's actually due.
Recurring appointments bypass the budget
Some chores are date-anchored. Bin day. Sheet-change Sunday. Boiler service on the first of the month. If you set a task with a recurrence pattern that pins it to specific days, Smart Schedule treats it differently. It lands on every eligible day no matter what the budget says.
Bin day on Wednesday means bin day on Wednesday
If your daily budget is already full of other tasks, the bin task still appears on Wednesday. Pinned recurrences ignore the budget cap and the room balancing, because missing a date-locked chore has real-world consequences. They still respect your preferred days though, so if Wednesday isn't a preferred day for you, the pinned task lands on the same lighter half-budget day everything else does.
Pin sparingly
Because pinned tasks bypass the budget, lots of pins can rebuild the wall Smart Schedule was trying to break down. Reserve pinning for things that genuinely have to happen on a specific day. Everything else does better as a normal recurring task.
Anything that didn't fit lives in a banner you can open
Once Smart Schedule has filled the week up to your budget, anything left over goes into a separate "Got more time?" banner. Nothing is lost, it's just out of the way. If you have a quiet evening and feel like doing more, tap the banner and the leftovers appear, sorted by which would buy you the most progress.
Today's plan
Three quick chores, fits the budget.
Got more time?
3Tucked away. Tap when you've got the energy.
Opt in, never automatic
The banner doesn't add tasks to your day on its own. You decide when you've got the spare time, you tap, and they slot in. Completing a spillover task earns the same coins and streak credit as a budgeted one, and your Today list shrinks back to its calm shape afterwards.
Pick how long you've got. The plan resizes itself.
The budget is the single dial that controls how much Smart Schedule asks of you on a typical day. Set it low and the week feels light. Set it high and more chores fit per day, with less spillover. There's no right answer, just the one that matches the time you actually have.
Where to change it
Profile → Cleaning preferences → Daily budget. The slider runs from 5 minutes to 240 minutes (four hours). Changes apply to both today and the week ahead. Drop it on a busy week, raise it again when you're ready.
Start lower than you think
If you're new to the app, set the budget to something you'd genuinely finish on a tired evening. The point is to feel ahead, not behind. You can always nudge it up once you've got a few weeks of clean ticks under your belt.
More on the budget itself
The daily budget runs whether Smart Schedule is on or off. If you want the full breakdown of how it caps your Today list, see the daily budget guide.
PDF and calendar exports share their own projection
Tidywell has two export formats: a printable PDF and a calendar export that writes events into your iOS or Android calendar. Both read from the same week-builder, so they always agree with each other. They use a slightly different projection from the live Smart Schedule view, designed to be a clean snapshot you can share or pin to the fridge.
PDF export
Printable A4 of the week, one page, day-by-day. Good for the fridge or for handing to a partner who doesn't use the app.
Calendar export
Writes one all-day event per day to your iOS or Android calendar. Sits next to your real life, no app required to glance at it.
PDF and calendar always agree
Because PDF and calendar use the same projection, generating both on the same day will produce a matching plan. They are snapshots taken when you exported them, so re-export after changing your budget or preferred days to get the latest version.
Going away pauses the schedule
Turn Vacation mode on and Smart Schedule stops planning. Tasks freeze where they are, the cleaning cycle pauses, and nothing piles up while you're away. When you turn it off, the schedule picks back up where it left off, not somewhere weeks ahead.
Nothing spills into the post-vacation week
Tidywell doesn't try to make up for the missed days. Coming home to a wall of overdue chores is exactly what Smart Schedule exists to prevent, so it doesn't recreate one on day one back. If you want the deeper detail on how Vacation interacts with cleanliness, see the cleanliness and priority guide.