Stop fighting over the cabin calendar.
Whoever built the family spreadsheet retired years ago. AllDibs is a shared family cabin calendar that gives every co-owner a fair, automatic share of midweek and weekend time, so the group chat can go back to sharing photos.
No credit card. Invite unlimited co-owners.
“The Lake House”
4 families · you have 3 weekend credits left
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Three steps to a family cabin calendar nobody argues about
Set the credits once and the who-gets-which-weekend question answers itself.
Add the cabin
One page for the place: photos, house notes, and how many midweek and weekend nights each family gets a year.
Invite every co-owner
Send one link to everyone on the deed. They all see the same calendar, so nobody's texting screenshots around anymore.
Book with credits
Claim your dates and the credit is spent. Once the stay is over it comes back on its own, which means nobody can lock up every summer weekend for good.
Why families use AllDibs instead of a shared spreadsheet
No more “Cabin Hog”
Every co-owner gets their own budget of midweek and weekend nights, set once by whoever manages the place. Nobody can quietly claim every long weekend.
One calendar, no double-booking
The calendar won't accept overlapping stays, so two families can't show up the same weekend because somebody missed a text.
Free for the whole family
The cabin is one item, and one account gets 5 for free, which is plenty for a single shared property. Invite as many co-owners as you have.
Rules for sharing a vacation home
Most families run a shared place on habit, and it works until two habits land on the same weekend. These eight rules cover the arguments that actually come up. Put them on one page, have every owner sign it, and tape a copy inside a kitchen cupboard.
- 1
Split the fixed bills evenly, then charge by the night
Tax, insurance and the repair fund exist whether anyone visits, so every owner pays an equal share. What a stay actually burns through (propane, power, firewood) is covered by a flat nightly charge paid into the shared account. About $20 a night is close enough for most places.
- 2
If it is not on the calendar, it is not booked
One calendar every owner can see, and no other way to claim dates. That rules out holds by text message, and it rules out “we always take that week.”
- 3
Cap how many prime weekends one family can hold
Three summer weekends at a time is a sensible limit. It covers the trip you are planning and the two after it, and it stops anyone fencing off July in February.
- 4
Rotate the holiday weeks by year, in writing
The Fourth of July and Labor Day are the weeks everybody wants. Take them out of the normal booking, rotate them between families, and write the order down at least five years ahead.
- 5
Decide the guest rule before anyone needs it
An owner can bring whoever they like. Lending the place to friends while no owner is there counts as that owner’s stay and comes out of their time.
- 6
Leave it the way you would want to find it
Sheets washed, fridge emptied, trash gone, propane above a quarter tank, and a line in the shared log about anything that broke while you were there.
- 7
Set a spending threshold for repairs
Under $500, whoever is there gets it fixed out of the fund. Above that, a majority agrees first. Above $5,000, every owner does.
- 8
Agree how an owner leaves while nobody wants to
The remaining owners get the first chance to buy the share, the price comes from an appraisal both sides accept, and there is a set number of months to pay.
Ready to put it on paper? The sharing agreement checklist has 47 questions to settle before anyone signs, and the week number calendar gives every summer week a number, so a rotation can say week 27 and mean the same dates to everyone.
This is a list of house rules, not a legal agreement and not legal advice. How the property is held, and what happens to a share when an owner dies or divorces, is a question for a lawyer in the state where the house is. The numbers behind rules one and seven are worked through in three siblings, one lake house.
Questions co-owners ask
What are good rules for sharing a vacation home?+
Eight cover most of the arguments. Split the fixed bills evenly and charge a small nightly fee for use. Book on one shared calendar and nowhere else. Cap how many summer weekends one family can hold at once, three is a good number. Rotate the holiday weeks by year and write the order down. Settle the guest rule early. Agree what a clean handover looks like. Set a dollar threshold for repairs, such as $500 without asking and a majority vote above it. And decide how an owner sells their share before anybody wants out.
Should every co-owner pay the same if one family uses the cabin more?+
For the fixed costs, yes. Property tax, insurance and the repair fund come with owning a share, not with sleeping there, so they are split evenly. Use is handled separately with a flat charge per night booked, around $20, which pays for the propane, electricity and wear a stay adds. The family that visits 30 nights then pays about $400 a year more than the one that visits 10, and nobody feels they are funding someone else’s summer.
Does a shared Google Calendar work as a family cabin calendar?+
It works until the first summer. A plain shared calendar lets anyone put anything on it, so whoever plans earliest takes the best weekends and the rest of the family finds out in May. A family cabin calendar needs three things an ordinary one lacks: a limit on how much prime time each family can hold at once, a rule that two stays cannot overlap, and a running count of who used how many nights so the year-end bills add up. AllDibs is built as exactly that. The host sets each family's weekend and midweek nights once, a booking spends them, they come back when the stay ends, and the calendar refuses a stay that lands on another. There are about 14 weekends between Memorial Day and Labor Day, so with four families, one that holds three at a time already has its share of the summer.
How do you split time at a shared cabin fairly?+
Give every family the same budget of weekend nights and a separate, larger budget of midweek nights. Booking spends from the budget, and the nights come back once the stay is over. That way nobody can hold the whole summer at once, and everyone can still plan months ahead. AllDibs does this part for you: the host sets the two budgets once and the calendar enforces them.
Retire the cabin spreadsheet.
Setting up takes a few minutes. Send the link to everyone on the deed and let the credits keep things fair.
Set up your cabin, freeComing from SharedKey? Here is how the two compare. AllDibs also works for shared boats and neighborhood tools, and a camp shared for deer season has its own hunting camp rules.