Showcasing the Hearth Has Changed the Way I Manage My Family.

Earlier this year, I experienced a dramatic change in my lifestyle: I went from being a childless adult to being a father of two. I decided to become a foster parent and was placed with two 14 year old twin girls who, as you can imagine, inevitably became the center of my life. But while many of the challenges of becoming a new parent were difficult, one of the most unexpected was how much I had to remember . Even though I’m the type of person who manages a Google calendar, a to-do list app, a mood tracker, an activity tracker, and aspires to Inbox Zero, becoming a parent was a lesson limited to the confines of my own system. I forgot volleyball practices and test dates. I lost track of the chores and whether they were completed. I relied on the girls to communicate their needs (permits, school activities, what they wanted from the grocery store) and simply integrated these tasks into their personal habits.

But using my own calendars, apps, and personal management systems failed for two reasons. First, they bet on a losing combination: children’s communication and adult memory. Second, they failed to teach the organizational skills I wanted my children to learn so they could become more independent, organized, and capable people themselves.

I was testing out a new system—two calendars on the refrigerator, more desperate than smart—when I read an article on the overalls called “Couples Who Run Their Families Like a Corporation.” That same morning, I shared the link with my friends in a group chat. “I wanted to laugh at this,” I said, “but after reading this, I think the word corporation is an exaggeration, and I can see the appeal. Honestly, this Hearth product seems particularly helpful.” Shortly after this conversation, I decided to test out the Hearth Display to see if learning about the tablet was worth the price I feared. Three months later, I can see how Hart has changed the way I manage my family.

What is a focal display?

Hearth is a touchscreen family organization tool—essentially a tablet that functions as a calendar, to-do list, and to-do planner. For my family, its centralized location was the most important benefit of owning it. My Hearth Display is in the living room next to our TV and I love having a center that displays everyone’s needs and responsibilities in a visible place. Having a fireplace means there is one place for family logistics like schedules and chores, and that I can answer most family management questions with, “Have you added this to the calendar?” or “Have you crossed that off your list?”

This is what came with my Hearth display

Hearth is a 27-inch vertical display with 1080p resolution and a frame that comes in three color options: light wood, matte white and matte black. I have matte black. My Hearth took about three weeks to arrive and came packaged in a no-frills box with a wall mount, installation guide, and power cord. Installation requires a drill, but other than that it’s pretty straightforward. The power cord is eight feet long, and the mount has a holder that can be used to wrap excess cord length. However, the display doesn’t have a cable cover, so while most promotional images of the Hearth Display feature a sleek cable cover that blends into the wall and makes it look like the tablet is floating, the default reality is an ugly white dangling cord. under the device to the nearest outlet, unless you take care of this yourself. Hearth also has a camera at the top of the screen, but it’s useless for now, so I leave it closed.

Setting Up Hearth Family Profiles

An unexpectedly interesting aspect of setting up our fireplace was the choice of last name, which is displayed at the top of the screen. If you want to keep it simple, you can obviously go with tradition and write “The Smith Family” or whatever and never think about it again. But for my family of four with three last names between us, choosing a last name for our account was a minor, culture-defining issue. We came up with stupid names and made fun of each other’s suggestions until we agreed on a Spider-Man theme, and Spider-Family was born. Our splash screen (known as “Privacy Mode” on Hearth) features an image of Peter Parker, Miles Morales, and Spider-Gwen from Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse .

In addition to their last name, each family member has a profile and a specific color for calendar events, tasks, and individual morning and evening routines. Profile pictures can be customized, but by default they are baby dinosaur avatars. Given that there are four options – baby T-Rex, brontosaurus, stegosaurus and triceratops – we liked our avatars so much that we left them as default rather than changing them to our favorite spider characters. Over time we will change them. This can be done in the app under Hamburger > Family Management .

What I like about the hearth display

I use Hearth Display for a family of four: myself, two kids and a partner. There are four tabs that take you to the three core features of Hearth: the calendar, to-do lists, and routines. (The fourth tab is for Hearth Helper, which I find to be a useless and space-consuming tab, but more on that later.) The calendar and to-do lists are the most used features in my house, replacing whiteboard calendars on the refrigerator and daily to-do lists, which I wrote it down in a notebook by hand. Using the calendar took some practice as my kids were never in the habit of keeping track of their schedule beyond just going to school. It took about two weeks of reminders to add tutoring sessions and volleyball practices to the calendar, and I turned the event saying into a mantra: “If it’s not in the Hearth, it doesn’t exist.” For adults, the calendar is simple and straightforward, I just synced my personal calendar with Google (it also syncs with iCal and Outlook). Hearth’s calendar tab has day, week, and month views, and the week view has become standard in our home.

To-do lists are organized by family member so tasks can be assigned to each person, and they were the easiest for my kids to use regularly. Naturally, I assign the most tasks, and my kids mostly focus their energy on checking off items on their list. However, I also use our lists to reverse roles to help them get into the habit of communicating their needs. If they need new shoes, a permit, or anything else, they learn that the surefire way to get what they want is to add it to my to-do list. They also use it to send messages, add excessive emojis and other nonsense.

I initially ruled out using the “routine” feature altogether, figuring we were too old to need to systematize habits like washing our faces and brushing our teeth, and get a celebratory animation after completing each task. However, about a month into using our hearth, my daughter and I decided to give it a try, creating an evening routine that we would do together every evening: floss, brush our teeth, wash our face, and lay out our clothes for the next day. day. I’m sure this routine would never work if left alone to do, but it has turned into a late-night bonding moment where I complain about how slow she is with flossing and she tells me off if I can’t keep my skin moisturized. However, I still believe that a full-screen holiday animation after each mission should be an optional setting. This may be a reinforcer for younger children, but it adds unnecessary lag and can create a sense of patronizing for those who are not so young.

Obviously, Hearth Display also has a beautiful design. It looks like a big picture frame and gets compliments and questions when guests come over.

My Biggest Disappointment with the Hearth Display

I can attribute most of my disappointment with Hearth to the newness of their product. Its app was just released this year, a feature that early adopters have been waiting for since the tablet’s initial launch. I experienced a few glitches in my short time of use, but the most frustrating thing was the calendar synchronization errors. For example, one glitch occurred: I can schedule an event from the application for, say, 13:00, and the event syncs to the calendar at the wrong time – say, 21:00. I often delete the event and reload it. adding it directly from Hearth itself, since trying to fix a problem from within the application can sometimes cause it to crash.

Calendar also doesn’t automatically assign colors to specific profiles. For example, although my daughter’s avatar is an orange triceratops, and we want to use that color so we can see her schedule at a glance, her assigned events are not orange by default. She has to create her event and remember to manually change her event color from blue to orange (or, more likely, I’ll do it for her when I notice a confusing-looking calendar event using the wrong color). Manually choosing a calendar color for every event you create can seem tedious, especially since our family uses default avatars and color options.

Other technical issues include not being able to simply tap a day on the calendar to add an event (you have to click the plus sign in the bottom right corner and then “add event”), not being able to view the calendar in isolation (for example, I can’t filter the calendar view to immediately see only your schedule or the schedule of one of your children), as well as an intermittent but noticeable delay after pressing buttons.

And while the page layout is simple and intuitive even for kids, I find that one of the four tabs that organize Hearth’s layout is surprisingly unhelpful, out of place, and a waste of space. Users can go to the Assistant tab if they want to text or email customer service to download a list of events on their behalf—think bulk download of school calendar events. This sounds good in theory, but if you’ve ever looked at a school calendar, you probably never want it to completely clutter up your family calendar.

I also thought it was fair to assume that “Hearth Helper” was synonymous with “customer support” when I was dealing with a sync issue, but you can’t actually contact customer support from the Helper tab. In my opinion, Helper isn’t useful enough to be a prominent tab next to Calendar, Lists, and Procedures, and it feels like it’s just filling up space to appear more feature-rich. Anyway, a simple question mark in the corner of the screen will do just fine.

How much does a Hearth subscription cost?

The hearth display costs $699. Ahead of Black Friday, Hearth is currently $499 during its “Best Sale of the Year.” However, to use all of its functionality, you’ll also need a subscription: a Hearth Display subscription costs $9 per month or $86 per year. Without a subscription, Hearth Display is limited to basic calendar functionality, so I recommend being prepared to pay for a membership if you’re willing to order one.

Pros and Cons of Using a Hearth Display to Manage Your Family

Pros:

• It helps organize and maintain multiple schedules.

• This creates a centralized center for managing the family.

• It allows anyone to create, assign and check off chores, groceries and to-do list items.

• It looks great; The Hearth Display has a beautiful design that looks like a digital photo frame.

Cons

• It’s expensive.

• Its app is new, may experience glitches, and features are still limited.

Should you use a focal display?

Hearth Display has replaced whiteboard calendars, work schedules, shopping lists, and to-do lists for me, and I will never go back to it. Of course, how much you’re willing to spend on an organization tool is a personal decision, and if you wanted to avoid the cost and were hardworking enough, you could create a comparable product out of an Android tablet and various apps. But given that I don’t have the time or inclination to create a temporary version of what Hearth offers, I’m excited about my Hearth and what it brings to my family: better communication, organization, and accountability than ever before.

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