What is Who Owns What?
Running a home is hundreds of small jobs, and most of them live in one person's head. Who Owns What puts them on the table as a deck of cards, one for each job: cooking dinner, school forms, trash night, the big holidays, time to yourself. Your family keeps the cards that apply, skips the ones that don't, and gives every kept card a holder. From then on, everyone can see who owns what, and nobody has to carry the whole list alone.
You’ll find it under Who Owns What in the Treehouse section of the sidebar, right after the Meal Planner (on a phone, it’s in the Planning tab). The page has three views: Overview (where you land), Deal and Deck.
Who Owns What is new and still in beta, so you may see it change and improve over the coming weeks. Tell us what works and what doesn’t: your feedback shapes it.
Grown-ups deal, re-deal, skip, split and edit cards. Kids can hold cards and see the whole deck, but they can’t change it.
Deal the deck for the first time
The first time you open the page, the Overview shows Let’s deal the deck. The deal takes one pass through the cards, category by category.
Tap Start Dealing. (Want a look first? Tap Browse the Deck First.)
The top card asks Keep this card, or skip it? Tap Keep if the job exists in your home, or Skip if it doesn’t.
When you keep a card, beanies asks Who owns it? Tap a family member’s face. The card flies to them, so you can see who got what.
Not sure yet? Tap Decide Later. The card stays in your deck, waiting for a holder.
For cards that come in groups (like everything about the car or the yard), beanies offers a shortcut such as No car? with Skip for the whole group.
Made a mistake? Every keep, deal and skip shows a toast with Undo for a few seconds.
Under the pile, Kept lists the cards you kept and who has each one, and Skipped lists the ones you skipped, newest first. Use the arrows on either side of the card, or swipe on a phone, to step back and forward through the cards, including ones you already decided. Tap a card in either list to bring it back onto the pile: from there you can Give It to Someone Else, Skip Instead, Split It, or Bring Back a skipped card. Back to takes you to the next card still to decide.
When every kept card has a holder, beanies celebrates: Every card has a holder! You don’t have to finish in one sitting. Come back any time and the deal picks up where you left off.
Split a card by child or by place
Some jobs are really several. Bedtime for two kids, or cleaning two floors of a house, can each have their own holder.
Open the Deck view and tap the card to open Card Details.
Tap Edit.
Under Split It?, choose By Child for one part per child, or Custom to name the parts yourself (for example, "upstairs" and "downstairs").
Under Who Holds Each Part?, pick a holder for each part. With Custom, use Add a Part to add more.
Save the card.
On a card split by child, a new child gets their own part with nobody yet, and a child who leaves the family drops off the card. If anyone who held a card is removed from the family, that card simply goes back to waiting for a holder.
Re-deal a card when life changes
Jobs move around: a new work schedule, a new baby, a kid old enough to take on laundry. Re-dealing is quick, and beanies keeps each card’s full history (see Look at a card up close), so you can always see who holds it, since when, and who held it before.
- From the card: open it in the Deck view, tap Edit, choose someone else under Who Holds This Card? and save.
- In the Deal view: the cards come one at a time, just like the first deal. Tap a card in the Kept list below the pile and choose Give It to Someone Else.
- On a computer or tablet: prefer to see everything at once? Use the Card by Card | Board View switch at the top right of the Deal view (it shows a little drawing of each layout). The board fills the screen: the cards still to deal are in the rail on the left, and everyone who holds a card has a lane showing their cards. Drag a card onto someone’s lane to deal it, or tap a card in the rail and pick a name (this works on touch screens and with a keyboard). Family members who don’t hold any cards yet sit together in a row at the bottom, Not Holding Any Cards Yet: drop a card on their face to deal it and they get a lane of their own. Skipped sits folded at the very bottom; drop a card on it to skip it, or tap Show to see the skipped cards. beanies remembers which layout you like.
When a card changes hands, both the person who held it and the person who now holds it get a short note in their daily briefing for a week. While any kept card is still waiting for a holder (or a split card has a part nobody holds yet), grown-ups see an orange number next to Who Owns What in the menu: it counts the cards under Waiting for a Holder on the Overview.
Look at a card up close
Tap any card, in the Deck view, a lane on the board, By Person, or the Overview, to open Card Details. It opens on the card itself, just as it looks when it’s dealt: its picture, the job, what done looks like, its category and who holds it.
- Flip through the cards: use the arrows either side of the card, the ← and → keys on a keyboard, or swipe left and right on a phone or tablet. You move through the list you opened it from (for example, that category’s shelf in the Deck, or one person’s lane), and the line above the card shows where you are, such as Home & Household · 3 of 15.
- Split cards: a card split by child or into custom parts lists each part and who holds it below the card, including any part nobody holds yet.
- History: below the card, History lists everything that happened to it, newest first: when it was first sorted, every deal and hand-over, and every time it was talked about at a family check-in.
- beanies Uses This Card For shows where the card fills things in for you (see below).
- Grown-ups can tap Edit to change the holder, split the card or change what done looks like.
Skip, bring back, add and delete cards
- Skip keeps a card out of your deck and out of every number. Find skipped cards with the Skipped pill in the Deck view (or See Skipped Cards in the ⋯ menu) and tap Bring Back whenever a job starts to apply, say when you get a dog or move to a house with a yard.
- Add your own: tap Add a Card, fill in What’s the Job?, an emoji, a category and optionally a holder, then tap Add to Our Deck.
- What done looks like: every card has a short line describing the minimum that counts as done. Edit it on any card under What Done Looks Like (at a Minimum), or leave it blank to use the default.
- Delete: only cards your family made can be deleted, from the delete button in Card Details. Built-in cards can’t be deleted, but you can always skip them.
Read the Overview
The Overview shows how much of your deck has a holder, how many cards are still waiting and how many you skipped. Below that you’ll see coverage By Category with the faces of the people holding cards there, a list of cards Waiting for a Holder (each with a Deal button), Recent Moves from the last month, and your family check-in.
The Good to Know panel adds a few gentle signals about how balanced your deck is: whether every grown-up holds a Just for Me card (time that’s only yours counts as a job too), how many cards are split between people, and whether the kids hold cards of their own.
The Overview never shows how many cards each person holds. The goal is that every job has an owner, not that everyone holds the same number. A big job and a small job are both one card, so counting them would tell you very little.
The family check-in
Every few weeks (every 4 weeks unless you change it), beanies suggests ten minutes together to look at the deck. The check-in brings up cards you saved from last time, a few that haven’t changed hands in a long while, cards that moved since last time, and anything still to deal. For each card you answer No Issues, We’ve Talked (recorded in the card’s history) or Save for Next Time (it comes back at the next check-in), or re-deal it on the spot. There are no scores, only a nudge to talk.
While check-ins are on, start one any time from the Family Check-in panel on the Overview with Start a Check-in. For the full walkthrough, including exactly which cards come up and where to see your answers afterwards, read The Family Check-in: How It Works.
Print the deck for the fridge
The fridge sheet puts your dealt deck on paper: every kept card by category, with each holder’s initial beside it. Cards still waiting for a holder get a dashed line so you can write a name in, and skipped cards are left off. Share the Deck and Export as PDF sit at the top of every Who Owns What view on a computer or tablet. In a browser on a computer or tablet, Export as PDF saves a PDF you can print; in the tablet app it opens your share sheet. On a phone, use the round share icon. A big deck spills onto more pages, and a long category continues on the next one under “(continued)”. Share the Deck sends a picture of it, for example to a family chat.
How beanies uses your cards
Once a card has a single holder, beanies uses it to fill things in for you when you create something new. You can always change the result, and changing it never changes the card.
- Meals: a new dinner in the Meal Planner starts with the holder of Cooking Dinner as the cook, and a new breakfast starts with the holder of Breakfast. The meal shows a small note such as "Sofia holds Cooking Dinner in Who Owns What." Eating out, leftovers and skipped meals never get a cook.
- Lists: a new list from the grocery template is owned by the holder of Grocery Shopping, and a vacation packing list by the holder of Trip Packing. The template shows who it will go to before you pick it.
- Helpful hints: gift reminders go to the holder of Gifts for Others, anniversary plans to the holder of Date Nights, and trip reminders to the holders of Trip Packing and Passports and Documents. The hint says Assigned from Who Owns What. A birthday-present hint still never goes to the person whose birthday it is.
Defaults apply only when something is created. Re-dealing a card never moves meals, lists or hints you already have, and a split card isn’t used as a default. Open any card and look under beanies Uses This Card For to see where it is used.
Start over with the default cards
Open the ⋯ menu and choose Restore Default Cards to bring every built-in card back (including skipped ones) and deal the deck again from the start. Choose Keep our own cards to keep the cards your family made (they come back waiting for a holder) or Clear our own cards too, then tap Restore and start over. Your check-in history is kept, but cards saved for the next check-in don’t carry into the new deal.
Restoring clears every holder, split and card history in your deck. If you only want to change a few cards, re-deal or skip them instead.
Reminders on cards
A grown-up can attach a repeating reminder to a card, such as a Tuesday night nudge on Trash Night. It follows whoever holds the card and shows up in their to-dos and daily briefing. Open the card, tap Edit and turn on Remind the Holder. The full steps are in Repeating to-dos and card reminders.
What’s next?
Learn exactly how the family check-in works, see how card changes show up each morning in Your Daily Briefing, and learn more about helpful hints.