I created Habitudes in 2008 to help families prepare for the unexpected as well as expected bends in the road called "life."

It all started in 1976 when, after a ten year advertising career in New York and San Francisco, I "retired" to raise a family. Some "retirement!" I wanted life at home to be as organized as at the office, but nothing prepared me for the complications that arose once we became a "family." Three children and more than thirty years later, I'm proud of my accomplishments. But I've always thought it was a lot harder than it needed to be.

Most tasks we faced for the first time as a young family didn't come with instructions.

We bought a little home record keeping book called What My Family Should Know and updated it faithfully for years until we had crossed things out so many times there was no more space in which to write.

We clipped articles and bought books on house buying, decorating, child care, moving, car maintenance, gardening, hiring a contractor, cooking, entertaining, household repairs, investing, and hiring household help, to name a few. We had little time to read them, but when we did, we often had to slog through pages of "fluff" to get help. Sometimes the information was out of date.

We learned by trial and error.

Like the time I called the furnace repairman when all I needed was to clean the filters. (The installers hadn't left the manual.) If there was a job I knew I would be doing again, I made a list or chart. Packing lists. Grocery lists. Gift lists. Party planning lists. Emergency contact lists. Weekly schedules. Carpool information. The "list of lists" grew year after year.

Eventually, complicated tasks became simpler, chaos was replaced by order, mountains turned into molehills, over-stuffed file cabinets were replaced by a computer. Everything was in order and running smoothly...by the time the kids moved out!

I marvel at today's young couples.

How do they manage, especially when both partners work outside the home? It occurred to me that they could use some home management software - the checklists and charts I had created over the years. I found nothing like them online or off. Market research revealed overwhelming enthusiasm. So, in 2007, I set out in earnest to create Habitudes...and I haven't looked back.

I like to think of Habitudes as a foundation on which to build a family life. A life over which you have control, rather than one that gets more discombobulated with every year. (Like an attic where you pile things you don't know what to do with; then, when you need something, it's under ten years worth of "stuff.")

I'm committed to providing the best online family organizers and home record keeping tools to our Members including:

• Using only top of the line, state of the art server and encryption technology to safeguard your home records.
• Welcoming your requests and suggestions for improvements and new online family organizer tools.
• Featuring a helpful HabiTool every month.
• Making it easy to customize and update your family organizers to meet your household's unique needs.
• Enabling you to print all of your home records for convenience and back up.
• Keeping HabiTool applications and the Habitudes website up-to-date with the latest information and technology.
• Providing compatibility with all major computer operating systems and browsers, with 24/7 access to your records wherever you have internet access.

Thank you for coming to see what we're all about. We look forward to helping you through many years of life...nicely done.


Jackie Edenholm Pettus
Founder, Habitudes LLC
San Francisco, California