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Templates for Homeowners.

Everything a house runs on tends to live in one person's head — which way the water valve turns, what the dog eats, which noises the furnace makes on purpose. These are the pages and workbooks that get it out of there and somewhere the rest of the household can read it.

The house should run without you

Not because you plan to go anywhere — but because a hospital stay, a work trip, or a burst pipe on a Sunday shouldn't depend on one person being reachable. A home-reference record answers the questions someone else would have to ask: where the shutoffs are and which way they turn, which day the bins go out, who you'd actually call for a plumber, and what "normal" sounds like in this house.

There is one rule running through all of it, and it's what makes these pages safe to post on a fridge and hand to a sitter: record where things are and how the home runs — never the passwords, the alarm code, or a full account number.

Start free, no signup: the home shutoff & breaker location map and the "if I'm away" house-sitter sheet. Both come shown filled in.

New to this? Read what a utility shutoff is and where each one hides, or what a household operations manual is. Deciding between paper and an app? Weigh a household binder vs a home-management app.

Recommended tools

4 templates

Print-and-post emergency pages, the workbook that records how the whole home runs, a maintenance and warranty log, and a readiness binder for the days that go badly.

Where we fit

Most tools force a choice between a blank spreadsheet you build from scratch and a monthly app that's overkill. Ardent Workshop is the rung in between — structure you own.

  1. Blank spreadsheet

    Free, but you build and maintain every formula, tab and layout yourself.

    • Free
    • Infinite setup
    • No structure
  2. You are here

    Ardent Workshop

    Owned, structured, connected workbooks — a one-time price, yours to keep.

    • One-time price
    • Structured & connected
    • Yours to own
  3. Generic SaaS app

    Powerful, but overkill, rented and locked-in — built for someone bigger than you.

    • Monthly rent
    • Overkill
    • Lock-in

Reading list

A first-year maintenance calendar, building a family emergency binder, why a home inventory matters, and getting a household's routines out of one person's head.