Every home runs on a hundred small facts — which day the trash goes out, where the water shutoff is, who to call when the furnace quits, when the gutters were last cleaned, where the insurance policy lives. In most households, all of it sits in one person’s head. The Household Operations Manual gets it out of your head and into one calm, findable file — so the home can run whether or not you’re standing over it.
It’s a spreadsheet workbook (Excel, Google Sheets, and LibreOffice) plus four PDF guides — an owned home reference, not a rented app holding your home’s details on someone else’s server.
What is a household operations manual?
A household operations manual is a single, organized reference for how your home works: the utilities and accounts (where they live, not the logins), where the systems and shutoffs are, the maintenance schedule, the emergency contacts, and the “if I’m away” instructions a house-sitter or family member needs. This one is an 11-tab workbook you fill in once and keep — evergreen, with no dates baked into the structure.
Run the whole home from eleven tabs
- Home Summary — the single most useful page: the address, how to get in, the shutoff and breaker locations at a glance, trash day, and who to call first. The page to keep at the front.
- Home Systems & Shutoffs — where the water, gas, and electrical shutoffs are, plus the water heater, furnace, thermostat, and sump pump — and plain steps anyone could follow. The page that lets anyone find and reach the shutoff fast.
- Utilities & Services — electric, gas, water, trash, internet, and the rest: the provider, an account reference, where the login lives, and the number to call.
- Maintenance Schedule — the recurring tasks that keep a home from breaking, each with how often it’s due and when it was last done, so nothing quietly falls behind.
- Emergency Contacts — the gas-leak line, the power-outage number, a trusted neighbor, the non-emergency police number, poison control, and the insurance claims line, with a note on when to call each.
- If I’m Away — the handoff page: the daily must-dos, the pets and plants, trash day, the mail, the alarm, and what to do if something goes wrong.
- Home Inventory — the appliances and big-ticket items, with make, model, and where the manual and warranty live — so a repair call or a claim isn’t a scavenger hunt.
- Trusted Vendors — the plumber, electrician, HVAC tech, and handyman you’d actually call, already in one place.
- Important Documents — where the deed, the insurance policy, the tax records, and the warranties are kept — recorded as locations, not copied in.
- Plus a Read Me and a finishable Start Here Checklist that counts what’s done for you.
The one rule that keeps it safe to share
A home reference gets left on a counter, photographed for a partner, and handed to a sitter — so this binder is built on a single rule: record where things are and how the home runs, never the passwords, the alarm or gate codes, or the full account numbers. Keep real logins in a password manager, keep originals in a locked box, and record only their location. That’s what makes it safe to hand to whoever is holding down the house.
Also a native Google Sheet — one click, no import
Prefer Google Sheets? You don’t import anything. The bundle includes a clickable “Make a copy” link — click it and the whole binder lands in your Google Drive, every dropdown and the done-count already set up and tested. It also opens natively in Excel and LibreOffice.
Own it, don’t rent it
This is the quiet advantage of a workbook over a subscription “home management” app: the file is yours. How your home runs doesn’t live on a company’s server, can’t be locked behind a lapsed payment, and won’t vanish if the app shuts down. You decide where it’s stored and who in the household can see it. Pair it with the Estate / Life-Admin Binder for the whole household picture.
Try it first, free: the free “If I’m Away” house-sitter sheet is a one-page printable with the daily must-dos, where the shutoffs are, and who to call — a taste of the full binder.
A home reference you keep — not professional advice
This workbook helps you organize how your home runs and where everything is kept. It is not security, legal, financial, or insurance advice, and not a substitute for a licensed plumber, electrician, or your insurer. The shutoff steps and maintenance tasks are common-sense starting points; for gas, electrical, or structural work, call a professional, and in a real emergency call 911. The example data (the fictional Marsh household) is clearly illustrative — you overwrite it with your own.
Instant digital download. Nothing ships. The moment you buy, you get a zip with the 11-tab workbook, the one-click Google Sheets copy, four PDF guides, and printable binder pages — yours to keep.
