Loans and reminders
What left the house, what has a date on it, and when you hear about it.
Two features that look separate and share a mechanism: both attach a date to an item, and both exist so that a thought occurs to you at a useful moment rather than eleven months late.
Loans#
An item can carry one loan, in either direction.
- Out: you lent it to someone.
- In: you borrowed it from someone.
A loan records who, when it went, when it is due back, and an optional note. Mark it returned and the fields clear.
Recording the direction is not decoration. Returning something before it is missed is worth as much socially as getting your own things back, and borrowed items are exactly the category that goes unrecorded everywhere else.
What a due date is for
The app reminds you. It does not message the borrower, does not know how to contact them, and has no interest in automating the awkward part.
What a recorded due date actually buys you is a sentence you can send. "My inventory says the router is due back" is admin. "Do you still have my router?" is an accusation. They mean the same thing and land completely differently, and the difference is that one of them has a date attached.
Date reminders#
Separately from loans, an item can carry one typed date:
| Type | For |
|---|---|
expiry | Things that go off: batteries, chemicals, food |
warranty | Cover that runs out on a known day |
maintenance | Servicing, blade changes, the annual test |
cancel | Cancel-before-renewal dates |
The type changes the wording of the reminder, so an expiry notification reads like an expiry rather than a generic alert.
Reminders are scheduled locally on the device: they do not depend on a notification server, which is why they work identically on cloud and self-hosted setups. You get one a week ahead and one on the day.
One date per item, and it does not repeat. "Remind me every November" is not something the app does yet: you set the next date when you deal with the current one.
Where they show up#
Overdue loans and low-stock items collect on the Notifications screen. When there is nothing outstanding it says so plainly rather than inventing something to show you.
Active loans and reminders also appear on the item itself, so opening a thing tells you its situation without you having gone looking for it.
Using them without it becoming noise#
The failure mode here is the same as every reminder system: put dates on everything and you will start ignoring all of them.
A workable filter: attach a date only when missing it costs something. A warranty running out silently costs money. A blade you sharpen a fortnight late costs nothing. Put a date on the first and leave the second alone.