Who is doing the housework? There is an app for that — to make “invisible work visible. Swedish engineering students have developed an app for families to organize and track chores that often fall heavily on women.
Among the early adopters are Marko, 40, and Neha Sarcevic, 37, a married couple of business owners living in the wealthy Stockholm suburb of Taby with two small children, aged three and four.
“We thought, okay, let’s try this out, maybe it can solve many of our issues that we have at home,” Neha said.
Photo: Reuters
Her husband agreed, saying the app — which has about 2,000 users so far — “brought up the conversation at home, like, ‘okay, so if things aren’t being done, who’s responsible for them?’”
Neha scrolled through the tasks specific to their family on her mobile screen: hanging up the children’s coats when they get home, emptying their gym bags, washing up, taking out the compost bin.
The setup is simple: Users insert chores of their choice into the app.
Other family members can then follow their progress and send a “reminder” if a task is not done in time.
Neha said she loved the feature, “but I don’t use it very often,” prompting a burst of laughter from her husband.
The idea for the app was born a year ago when engineering student Victor Fredrikson’s father got tired of reminding him to tidy up his room and wash his clothes.
“So, finally one day he basically had enough and said like, ‘why don’t you just program an app so I don’t have to nag you all the time about getting your laundry,’” the 23-year-old CEO said.
“And I took that pretty literally and talked to my classmate” — 23-year-old cocreator Marcus Pahlman — and Accord was born.
The idea is to turn household chores into a rewarding experience, Fredrikson said.
“Accord was our sort of answer to achieving family harmony and tackling these problems that like almost every family face on a daily basis,” Fredrikson said.
The app — which officially launched in early September — allows family members to show their appreciation when someone completes a task.
By revealing who does what around the house, the platform can also help address the gender gap that remains for domestic chores.
“We want people to talk about it more and be more involved in the family discussion about household chores and making invisible work visible, and see actually who does what and help start that discussion,” Fredrikson said.
According to a study by UN Women published in October last year, women worldwide spend on average 2.8 hours more on unpaid domestic work than men per day.
Once they are old enough, Neha and Marko are also hoping to get their children on the app.
“Clean the room, you get some points. Let’s cook dinner together, get some points,” Marko said, adding that it could serve as a basis for their allowance.
The couple employs an au pair to help look after their children.
Neha said using the app allows her to keep tabs on developments at home without needing to ask if the children have been fed or had their bath.
“That makes my ‘mum brain’ also a bit more relaxed,” she said.
CAUTIOUS RECOVERY: While the manufacturing sector returned to growth amid the US-China trade truce, firms remain wary as uncertainty clouds the outlook, the CIER said The local manufacturing sector returned to expansion last month, as the official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose 2.1 points to 51.0, driven by a temporary easing in US-China trade tensions, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The PMI gauges the health of the manufacturing industry, with readings above 50 indicating expansion and those below 50 signaling contraction. “Firms are not as pessimistic as they were in April, but they remain far from optimistic,” CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said at a news conference. The full impact of US tariff decisions is unlikely to become clear until later this month
With an approval rating of just two percent, Peruvian President Dina Boluarte might be the world’s most unpopular leader, according to pollsters. Protests greeted her rise to power 29 months ago, and have marked her entire term — joined by assorted scandals, investigations, controversies and a surge in gang violence. The 63-year-old is the target of a dozen probes, including for her alleged failure to declare gifts of luxury jewels and watches, a scandal inevitably dubbed “Rolexgate.” She is also under the microscope for a two-week undeclared absence for nose surgery — which she insists was medical, not cosmetic — and is
GROWING CONCERN: Some senior Trump administration officials opposed the UAE expansion over fears that another TSMC project could jeopardize its US investment Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is evaluating building an advanced production facility in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and has discussed the possibility with officials in US President Donald Trump’s administration, people familiar with the matter said, in a potentially major bet on the Middle East that would only come to fruition with Washington’s approval. The company has had multiple meetings in the past few months with US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and officials from MGX, an influential investment vehicle overseen by the UAE president’s brother, the people said. The conversations are a continuation of talks that
Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯), an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designer specializing in artificial-intelligence (AI) chips, yesterday said that small-volume production of 3-nanometer (nm) chips for a key customer is on track to start by the end of this year, dismissing speculation about delays in producing advanced chips. As Alchip is transitioning from 7-nanometer and 5-nanometer process technology to 3 nanometers, investors and shareholders have been closely monitoring whether the company is navigating through such transition smoothly. “We are proceeding well in [building] this generation [of chips]. It appears to me that no revision will be required. We have achieved success in designing
RSS