Everything nobody wrote down.
Swimming kit on Wednesday. The consent form by Friday. Who’s collecting Otto when both clubs run late. urbo° Living keeps the half of family life that lives in your head — and puts it on a screen the whole house can see.
The kitchen wall on a Friday morning — running on a tablet you already own.
No box to buy, nothing to mount, no proprietary screen. An old iPad, a spare Android tablet, a laptop, the telly. Whatever is already in the drawer becomes the family display.
THE PROBLEM
The calendar was never the hard part.
Every family already has a shared calendar. What goes wrong is the stuff that never reaches one — the kit, the forms, the money, the day the club moved.
“He went in without his swimming kit.”
Swimming kit isn’t an event. Nothing happens at a time, so it never gets written down — it just lives in one parent’s head until the morning it doesn’t.
“We missed the meet-the-teacher.”
It was in the school calendar the whole time. Nobody looked on the right day, and nothing told anyone.
“We got the club day wrong.”
The change came by email, in a newsletter nobody read to the bottom of. He waited at the gate while his friends went home.
“Nobody ordered the school meals.”
A deadline, not an appointment. No calendar models a thing that has to be done by Friday and then ticked off.
THE WEEK
Everybody, side by side.
Children and parents on one grid. It is the view that catches the Wednesday where both clubs run late, the schools are ten minutes apart, and neither of you is free.
Two pickups at 16:30. Two different schools. Nobody free to go.
Wednesday is the day that goes wrong, and it only looks obvious once everyone is on the same grid. Urbo spots it on Tuesday evening — and the same week is in your pocket when you are not at home.
HOW IT WORKS
It reads the post, so you don’t have to.
Connect the calendars you already use and the inbox the school writes to. Urbo does the rest and asks you almost nothing.
School email, read properly
Newsletters, letters and PDFs come in. Out come the dates, the deadlines and the kit — attached to the right child, at the right school, in the right year group.
Every calendar in one place
Google, Outlook, iCloud and school feeds, merged and colour-coded per person. Say it to Alexa or Siri and it lands on the wall.
Two briefings a day
Morning: what today holds. Evening: what tomorrow needs, before the bags get packed. Nothing else interrupts you unless it genuinely can’t wait.
BUILT HERE, FOR HERE
It understands British schools.
Two children at two schools with different INSET days, different half terms and different words for the same bag of clothes. Urbo was built by a parent in exactly that situation.
Year groups, not guesswork
Tell it Ivy’s in Year 3 and the Year 6 residential stops appearing on your wall. Section codes and class names too.
Two schools, two terms
One breaks up a week before the other. The wall shows whose school is actually open.
Mufti, PE, games, sports kit
Every school has its own vocabulary. Urbo normalises them so both children read the same way.
Term dates and INSET days
Pulled straight from the school’s own calendar feed, or read out of the letter that announced them.
CHORES & REWARDS
Stars are earned, never taken away.
Children tick their own and the star lands straight away — no waiting for a grown-up to approve it. A bad day just means fewer earned, and nothing here can show a child a number going down.
Tick your own job and the star lands straight away.
No waiting for a grown-up to approve it, because a reward that arrives on Sunday for a bed made on Tuesday stops meaning anything. Two minutes to undo a mis-tap, and what the stars are actually for is on the same screen.
MEALS
Seven thousand recipes, and Granny’s.
Say what is in the fridge and it finds something you can actually cook tonight. Scan a handwritten card and keep it forever. Then cook from the wall, hands free, with timers you can hear over the extractor fan.
Plan the week once, and the shopping sorts itself out.
Whatever is missing goes onto the list everyone can see. Then cook straight from the wall — one step at a time, hands free, with timers loud enough to hear over the extractor fan.
A dedicated family display costs £269 and needs its own screen.
Urbo runs on the tablet in your kitchen drawer.
AND THE REST OF IT
The whole house, not just the diary.
Deadlines, not just appointments
Things that must be done by a day, with a nudge three days out and one on the morning — then silence the moment it is ticked.
Any screen, any pocket
An old iPad on the wall, both parents’ phones, a laptop, the telly — and, when they are old enough, a child’s own phone. Same household, same picture.
Lists that everyone has
Add milk at the wall with wet hands. It’s on the phone before you’ve dried them.
Who’s got this?
Claim a form and the rest of the house is told. No more both of you ringing the school office.
PRIVACY
A screen in your kitchen, not a window into it.
This product is about children. That comes with obligations we take seriously, and some things we’ve simply chosen not to build.
- Children have no accounts. A name and a colour. No email, no logins, no birthdays.
- We read only the senders you choose. Your school, your clubs. Nothing else in your inbox.
- No message is ever stored. We read it, take the dates, and let it go.
- No photographs of children on the wall, by design.
- No profiling, no adverts, no selling data. Not now, not later.
Get the swimming kit in the bag.
Urbo is in private testing with a handful of families. Leave your address and we’ll be in touch when there’s room.