A house produces a constant low volume of small jobs: a bulb, a form, a thing to return, a cupboard that sticks. Individually trivial, and collectively the source of most domestic friction, because nobody can see the whole list and so the same two people carry it.
Putting that list on a wall, physically, solves more of it than any app does. Not because paper is superior, but because a wall is seen by everyone who lives there without anyone choosing to look.
Three columns is the whole system
Waiting, doing, done. Each job on its own card or sticky note, moving left to right. The only rule worth enforcing is a cap on the middle column: no more than two or three jobs in progress per person at once, because a house with eleven half-finished jobs is in a worse state than one with three finished and eight untouched.
That cap is the mechanism. Everything else about the board is presentation.
Height and position matter more than tidiness
It belongs at eye height on a wall people pass through, not in the study and not on the back of a door. A hallway, the side of a kitchen unit, the wall beside the kettle. If it is somewhere you have to go deliberately, it is read for a fortnight and then ignored.
Vertical rather than horizontal is the practical choice in most homes, because the available wall is usually a narrow strip between a door frame and a corner. A column of three stacked sections works in a 30cm width; three columns side by side needs a metre you probably do not have.
Why the fridge door does not work
The fridge accumulates: invitations, drawings, takeaway menus, a photograph from 2019. A job list buried in that becomes part of the texture and stops being read within days. The board needs its own surface with nothing else on it, which is precisely why it works.
Why an app usually loses
Shared task apps fail domestically for one reason: they require every household member to open them. One person checks it hourly, another has notifications off, and within a month it is a private list with an audience of one. The wall has no such requirement. For a household of one it genuinely does not matter which you use, and an app is probably easier.
Keep the cards blunt
"Fix shelf" is useless in three weeks. "Shelf in hall, needs two brackets, Wickes" can be picked up and done by whoever walks past with a free half hour, which is the entire point of making the list visible rather than personal.
Clear the done column
Empty it weekly. A done column left to grow becomes wallpaper, and the board starts reading as something that was tried once. Taking them down is also the only moment the thing feels rewarding, so do not skip it.