Why it exists

How my mom uses this app. 🏡 And you can too.

Hi, I’m Priya 👋

I built Home Slate.

At the end of every month, my mother and the milkman arrived at two different numbers. Neither of them was wrong.

He kept his count in a notebook. She kept hers in her head. There was no third record — so every month, somebody had to take somebody’s word for it.

The budget apps did not help. The ones she tried organised money into categories, while she wanted a daily record of what had come to the door.

And milk would not sit still: two packets of toned one day, one of full cream the next, never the same price twice. What she asked for was small — one app for the running of a house.

The dairy tools I tried did not fit the way she wanted to keep her household record. So I built Home Slate for her side of the door — and if your house runs on the same small deliveries, it is yours too.

— Priya

Behind the scenesI am building these apps in the open, as it happens.MyPolymathDiaries on YouTube →

Priya's mother, the household this was built for

My mother

Still logging, every morning.

Every morning
The gate opens, the packets come in, and she taps once on the way back to the kitchen. That is the whole of most days.
Some time mid-month
She looks at the six bars and knows whether this month is running like the last five — before anybody asks her for money.
When the bill is due
The milkman gets the milk month. The laundry gets the laundry month. Nobody gets the household sheet, and nobody has to take her word for it.

Craft & Principles

Three decisions behind the product.

Small deliberate choices, and the reasons are the point.

The same marks as your ledger

Milk, laundry, newspaper, water, tiffin and house help each have a familiar outline mark. The website now uses the same service icons as the current app, so setup, logging and the preview screens are easy to recognise.

A slate has no theme

The monthly statement is rendered as a dark board in a terracotta frame. These colours never invert in dark mode because a physical slate has no theme — and the delivery person reading it on WhatsApp has no theme either.

Local ledger · no ads

Quiet, local & no ads

Start a local ledger without an account or cellular data. Optional account backup, purchases and account recovery need a connection. Home Slate does not connect to your bank, scrape SMS or sell household records; diagnostics and optional analytics are explained in the Privacy Policy.

👀 btw, I'm documenting my journey building Home Slate if you're interested 👇