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Guide · 30 September 2026 · 6 min read

How to organise household staff: a simple system for families

With one person helping at home, things run on memory and a few messages. With a nanny, a housekeeper, a driver and a gardener — or two homes — memory stops working. Instructions get lost in the group chat, the same question is asked every week, and only one person knows where the spare keys are.

You don't need a management course to fix it. You need a few simple habits that everyone follows. Here is the system we recommend, whether you use an app, a shared document or a notebook.

1. Write the house rules once

Most repeated questions have one answer that never changes: how the pool is cleaned, what the children may eat, which products go on the marble, when the alarm is set. Write each answer once and keep it where staff can find it.

• One note per topic, not one long document: “Kitchen”, “Children”, “Car”, “Closing the house”.
• Attach each note to the place it belongs to — this villa, that flat, the car.
• Photos beat words: where the stopcock is, how the towels are folded.
• When a rule changes, change the note, not a message in the chat.

2. One task list, with an owner and a date

A task that belongs to “someone” belongs to no one. Every task needs one person responsible, a date, and a place if you have more than one home.

• Recurring work (weekly deep clean, monthly filter change) is set up once and repeats on its own.
• For tasks where the result matters — a guest bedroom, a car before a trip — ask for a photo when it is done. It saves a call and a second visit.
• Keep the history: “when was the boiler last serviced?” should take ten seconds to answer.

3. A rota published a week ahead

People plan their lives around their shifts. Publish the week ahead, agree days off and swaps in writing, and note late arrivals as they happen rather than arguing about them at the end of the month. One household calendar with shifts, trips and family events avoids the classic “nobody told me you were away”.

4. Money: one record per expense

Staff often pay for groceries, fuel or repairs and get reimbursed later. Small amounts add up and memories differ.

• Give an advance for household expenses and record it.
• Every purchase gets a record and a photo of the receipt, the same day.
• Reconcile weekly, not at the end of the season.
• If you have homes in several countries, keep each expense in its own currency and look at the totals in yours.

5. Clean handovers

Keys, the car, the children: when something passes from one person to another, both should confirm it. A handover checklist — keys, fuel level, what happened today, what is still open — takes two minutes and prevents most “I thought you had it” moments.

6. Everyone reads in their own language

Many households employ people who are more comfortable in another language. Misunderstood instructions are not laziness — they are translation. Short, clear sentences help; so does letting each person read instructions in their own language.

7. A short review once a month

Look at what went wrong more than once. A repeated problem usually means a missing rule, an unclear owner or a task that should repeat on its own. Fix the system, not the person.

Where to start

Start with two things this week: write down the five questions you answer most often, and give every open task one owner and one date. The rest follows.

This guide is about organising daily work. Employment contracts, payroll and taxes for household staff depend on your country — check the local rules or ask an adviser.