Coming soon

The inbox that runs your household

Forward the school email, the activity newsletter, the appointment confirmation. Events, todos and reminders sort themselves out — and everyone in the house sees the same plan.

Free early access. No spam, ever.

Every household gets a shared family email address of its own. Forward anything to it, or connect Gmail, iCloud, Outlook or most other email accounts and it picks the household mail out of the inbox you already use.

Every home has an invisible manager

The person who remembers the dentist appointment, notices the soap is running low, and tracks whose turn it is to take out the trash. That job shouldn't fall on one person.

Most of it arrives by email. Excursion notices and uniform reminders from school. Term dates from the swimming club. Appointment confirmations, invoices, the newsletter with the one date that matters buried in paragraph six. It all lands in one parent's inbox, and that parent becomes the only person who knows what's happening this week.

Reading it, decoding it, and copying the important bits into a calendar is hours of admin every week — and if that person misses one, the whole household misses it.

Primary caregivers say they carry 75% of the mental load, and parents put 30.4 hours a week into scheduling and planning for the family.
The Harris Poll, commissioned by Skylight — an online survey of 2,005 US parents of children under 18, 15–22 May 2024. Read the report.

Forward it once. It handles the rest.

Forward one email and we read it for you, then suggest the calendar event, the todo with its deadline, and the reminder. Email to calendar and todo list in one step — shared with the whole household, not stuck in one person's inbox.

The email you forward

Year 4 excursion — Maritime Museum

From: office@brookvale-primary.edu

To: smiths@household.email

Dear families,

Year 4 will visit the Maritime Museum on Thursday 14 May, departing school at 8:45am and returning by 3:00pm.

Students need a packed lunch, a water bottle and their school hat. Please return the signed permission slip by Friday 8 May.

Kind regards,
The school office

What you see before anything is created

The household.email review screen: a calendar event and a todo suggested from the excursion email, both marked Pending with an Add to Calendar or Add to Todos button — nothing is created until someone approves it.

Nothing is filed without you seeing it first — review what was picked up, then keep it or change it.

Two ways the mail gets in

Give out the family address, or leave your own inbox exactly as it is and let us read the household mail out of it. Most families end up doing both.

Way one

Your family email address

Every household gets a real mailbox of its own, at your family's name:

smiths@household.email

  • Give it to the school, the swim club and the dentist, and their mail is shared from the first message.
  • Or forward anything to it, from any inbox, on any provider. Nothing to install and nothing to change.
  • It is a mailbox, not a drop box: everyone in the house can read it, search it and answer it, and replies go out as the household rather than as you.

Way two

Your own email address, connected

The school already has your personal address, and re-registering with twelve organisations is nobody's idea of a Saturday. So don't. Connect the inbox you already read — Gmail, iCloud, Outlook, Yahoo or most other email accounts — and we take the household mail out of it for you.

Each adult connects their own mailbox, and we only ever fetch mail from the senders you have asked for. The rest of your inbox is never copied into the household.

  • Up to a hundred of that sender's recent messages are pulled in straight away, so the inbox starts with the history, not an empty screen.
  • Everything they send afterwards arrives on its own. You never forward that sender by hand again.
  • The original is never deleted. We can tag it "Synced to household.email" so you can see what was taken, and once the household has its own copy we archive it out of your inbox — turn that off if you'd rather it stayed put.

How a sender gets picked up: forward one email, once

  1. Step 1

    Forward one of their emails

    Send a single message from the school office to your family address, the way you would forward anything.

  2. Step 2

    We read who it was really from

    Not you, the forwarder — the school. From then on, we look out for that address in the inbox you connected.

  3. Step 3

    Their mail keeps arriving

    Past and future messages from that sender land in the household inbox, with the dates and deadlines pulled out.

One forward per organisation, and only for the ones you want shared. Everything else in your personal inbox stays private — and you can stop watching a sender whenever you like.

A shared family inbox, built around your household email address

One address for the whole household, one place the mail lands, and everyone can see what has arrived and who is dealing with it.

Email in, plan out

Your household gets its own email address. Forward a school notice, a newsletter or a booking confirmation and AI reads it for you, pulling out the dates, deadlines and what to bring — as events on your shared family calendar, todos and reminders you can check before they stick.

Connect the inbox you already have

Keep the address the school already has. Link Gmail, iCloud, Outlook or most other email accounts, forward one message from a sender, and their mail is pulled into the household from then on without you forwarding it again. Read it, reply to it and send from your household address — all in one place.

A family chore chart that rotates itself

No more nagging, and no chart to update on the fridge. Chores rotate automatically across adults and children, so everyone does their share without anyone having to remember whose turn it is.

One app, not five

Inbox, calendar, chores, todos and shopping lists — all in one place. Replace the scattered group texts, shared docs, and sticky notes.

Built for real families

Works for the 10-year-old and the 40-year-old. Children take their turn on the chore chart and show up on the calendar without needing a login, while the adults handle the mail.

Shared shopping lists

One shared shopping list the whole household can add to, on web or mobile. Everyone sees the same list in real time, and items check off as you shop.

From the inbox to everyone's week

In the order the household meets it: the mail comes in, a plan comes out of it, the everyday jobs sit alongside, and everyone works from the same week.

  1. 1 The mail comes in

    One inbox the whole household can see

    Mail sent to the family address, and mail from the senders you've picked out of your own inbox, lands in one shared place. Each message gets a one-line summary and stays flagged until somebody deals with it.

    The household inbox: a queue of school, bank and sports club emails, each with a one-line summary and a not-yet-actioned badge, and the selected message open beside it.
    The shared queue: who is dealing with what, and what nobody has picked up yet.

  2. 2 A plan comes out of it

    Dates and deadlines, pulled out of the mail

    Open an email and the events, todos and deadlines in it are waiting as suggestions. Keep them or change them first — nothing goes onto the shared calendar or todo list until someone does.

    A school excursion email open in the household inbox, with a Suggestions panel below it offering the excursion as a calendar event, and the permission note and the packed lunch as todos, all three marked Pending.
    The suggestions sit under the email they came from, marked Pending until someone keeps them.
    The household calendar in month view, with a dentist appointment, a swim lesson, a school excursion and a working bee spread across the month.
    The shared calendar, which Apple Calendar, Google Calendar or Outlook can subscribe to.

  3. 3 The jobs that never arrive by email

    Chores and shopping, shared the same way

    Not everything comes in the mail. Chores rotate through the household, adults and children alike, without anyone keeping track, and the shopping list is the same list for everyone.

    The chores screen listing weekly, fortnightly, monthly and daily chores, each with the household member whose turn is next, and a completed-this-week list below.
    Set the rotation once, and it keeps track of whose turn is next.
    A shared grocery list with seven items left to buy, grouped into Cleaning, Dairy, Fruit & veg and Pantry, over a bought section holding what is already in the trolley.
    Grouped by aisle, and ticked off by whoever is at the shops.

  4. 4 Everyone sees it

    The whole week on one screen

    The dashboard brings it together: the mail nobody has dealt with, what is on this week, and a count on everything else — todos, chores, shopping. Nobody has to ask the person who knows.

    The household dashboard: two rows of tiles — inbox, senders, calendar, todos, chores, transport, the meal plan, shopping and recipes — each with a line on what is waiting there, above panels of not-yet-actioned email and this week's events.
    A tile for every part of the household, over the mail nobody has dealt with and the week ahead.

We're asking to read your household's mail

That's a lot to ask. Here's what we will and won't do with it.

No ads

There are no ads in household.email and no plans to add them. It's free while we're in early access and paid for by subscriptions after that — never by selling your attention.

We never sell your data

Not to advertisers, not to data brokers, not to anyone. Your household's email, calendar and lists are yours — we're a subscription, not a data business.

Your email never trains an AI model

We use AI to pull dates and tasks out of your mail. The AI companies we use are bound by their terms not to train their models on what we send them. We don't train models on it either.

You can leave whenever you want

Disconnect Gmail or any other email account you've connected, at any time, and we stop reading. When you want to go entirely, there's a delete button on your account page that removes your household and everything stored in it — email, attachments, calendars, todos, chores and lists — for good. No email to write, no waiting on us.

The details are in our privacy policy, written in plain English.

Why not just use what's out there?

Because all of them start with an empty box you have to type into. household.email starts with the email that caused the job in the first place, and turns it into a shared plan, fair chore rotation and a family calendar.

Shutting down December 2026

Maple

The only other product built on a household email address. Maple was acquired by Wander and sunsets on 31 December 2026, after which accounts become inaccessible. Here's where its families go.

Coming from Maple

FamilyWall

Its Magic Import now reads forwarded email with AI and adds the events to the shared calendar — on Premium. That only brings the event in: the email itself lands nowhere you can read, search or answer. Here it stays in a shared inbox you can read, reply to and send from.

Compare with FamilyWall

Cozi

Twenty years of shared calendar and lists, and email still only goes out — as an agenda digest. Nothing reads the mail coming in. The free tier is ad-supported and lets you enter events 30 days ahead; the rest is Cozi Gold at $39 a year.

Compare with Cozi

Skylight

A $299.99–$599.99 wall screen, plus $79 a year for Plus. Its Sidekick AI turns forwarded emails, PDFs and photos into events, meal plans and to-dos — but it only pulls the details out, with no inbox to go back to. Same shared plan here, on the tablet you already own.

Compare with Skylight

Coming from something else? We've written it up for Ohai, Hearth, OurHome and Todoist too.

Why we built this

household.email started with a parent drowning in school excursion notices, swim club term dates and calendar invites — all landing in one inbox, all needing to be re-typed into a calendar before anyone else in the house knew about them.

We're a small team building the thing we needed: somewhere the household mail can land and come out the other side as a plan everyone can see. It's early, and we'd rather build it with the people using it than guess.

The questions people ask first

Handing over the household's mail is a big ask. Here's what actually happens.

What happens to the original email?
It stays exactly where it was, and it also lands in your household inbox in full — sender, subject, body and attachments — where anyone in the house can read it, search it and reply to it. Forwarding is a copy, so your own inbox is untouched. If you connect Gmail or another email account instead, the original is never deleted, but once the household has its own copy we archive it out of your inbox — on Gmail we tag it "Synced to household.email" first. Both are settings you can change when you connect the account. The dates and deadlines we pull out arrive as suggestions on the email, and nothing becomes an event, todo or reminder until someone confirms it.
What do the kids see?
Nothing they shouldn't. Children are household members, not accounts — they have a name and a birthday, they take their turn in the chore rotation, they show up on the calendar and on transport runs. They don't get a login, and they never see the household inbox. The mail stays with the adults; what reaches the kids is the plan that came out of it.
Is it Gmail only?
No. Your household gets its own real email address, so the simplest version needs no connection at all: forward anything to it from any provider, or give the address to the school and the swim club so they email it directly. If you'd rather not forward by hand, you can connect Gmail, iCloud, Outlook or most other email accounts and household mail is picked up on its own. Replies and forwards go out from the household address, not your personal one.
Can I export my data?
Yes, and you don't have to ask us for it. Your household calendar comes with a link you can subscribe to from Apple Calendar, Google Calendar or Outlook, so it shows up there too. Pro also lets you connect other apps — including AI assistants like Claude — to your calendar events, todos, chores, shopping lists, recipes and meal plan, and you decide for each one whether it can only read, or also make changes — recipes and the meal plan are read-only. The developer docs cover the technical side. Your mail was never locked in to begin with: the originals are still sitting in the mailbox you forwarded or synced them from. And you can delete your account, your household and everything in it yourself, from your account settings.

Forward the email. Forget the admin.

Join the waitlist for free early access.