The sitter is due at seven. It is 6.52, you are hunting for a pen, and the babysitter information sheet on the fridge still lists the paediatrician you left two years ago.

So you cross it out, write the new number in the margin, and add “no screens after 8” underneath in different ink. The sitter arrives to a page that looks like a ransom note.

Search for a babysitter information sheet and the first page is printables: Etsy templates, a council PDF, a free download behind an email box. The boxes on them are mostly right. What none of them say is that the sheet has two halves doing different jobs, and the half you filled in once is the one that goes wrong.

Why every printable sheet goes stale the same way

A template asks you to fill in everything at once, on one calm evening, and then it sits on the fridge. Part of it gets rewritten every time you go out, because “back by 11” is only true once. That part stays fine.

The other part never gets touched. The dentist changes, a child grows out of an allergy or into a new one, the neighbour who used to be the backup moves to Leeds. None of those events come with a reminder to update a sheet of paper.

The half of the sheet you fill in every time is always right. The half you filled in once is the half that matters in an emergency.

That is backwards from where the risk is. Nobody gets hurt because the sitter did not know the bedtime story. Somebody could if the allergy line is two years old.

Split it: what is always true, and what is true tonight

Treat the sheet as two documents that happen to be handed over together. The standing half is maintained, like a contacts list. The tonight half is written fresh, like a text message, and thrown away.

This is exactly the shape Chirpy is built for. Open Notes and post “Maya: no nuts. EpiPen in the blue bag on the hook by the door.” It is a sticky on both parents’ dashboards before you put the phone down, with your name on it, and your partner gets a notification that it went up. When the allergist changes the plan, either of you edits that one note, and the next sitter reads the new version.

The people go in Family instead. Add Granny and the neighbour at number 12, tick Emergency contact on each, and they carry the flag on the household’s people list. Notes are kept short on purpose (240 characters), which suits a sitter sheet: one fact per note, readable at a glance, nothing buried in a paragraph.

What goes on a babysitter information sheet

The standing half, in the order a sitter reaches for it when something goes wrong.

1. Your address, written out in full, with the nearest cross-street. The item most templates bury. Nobody in the family ever needs it written down, so it is the one a panicking seventeen-year-old cannot produce for a dispatcher.
2. Who to call, in order. Both parents’ mobiles, then one adult who lives close enough to come round in ten minutes. A grandparent two hours away is a phone call, not a plan.
3. Poison Control. In the US it is 1-800-222-1222, which poison.org describes as free, expert and confidential. Checked on 27 September 2026. Outside the US, write your own country’s number here.
4. Allergies and medicines, per child, with where they are kept. “Inhaler” is half an instruction. “Inhaler, kitchen drawer left of the sink” is the whole one.
5. The doctor and the nearest urgent care. Name, number, and roughly how far.
6. The house. Guest Wi-Fi, which doors lock how, the first-aid kit, a torch, the fuse board.
7. The rules that do not change. Screens, snacks, visitors, whether the dog is allowed upstairs.

Most of that list is a subset of what every household should have written down anyway, and important household information in one place covers the bigger version: the boiler, the policies, and why the record that gets opened on a Tuesday is the one that stays true.

Tonight’s half: five lines, written on the way out

This half is short, and it should be. If it takes more than a minute to write, something that belongs in the standing half has leaked into it.

In Chirpy that is one note, posted from the hallway: “Rosa’s, back 10.45. Pasta in fridge. Leo 7.30, Maya 8. Leo coughing, Calpol last at 5.” When you are home, tick it off. It goes struck through and faded, so tomorrow nobody mistakes last Friday’s plan for a live one, which is the exact failure that kills most shared notes.

Getting the sheet into the sitter’s hands

For the sitter, a printed sheet on the fridge is still the best format going: no login, no phone battery, and there is no sitter-only view in Chirpy, so do not add a babysitter to the household, because members see everything. Where Chirpy earns its place is upstream of the paper, as the master copy both parents keep right, so whatever you print or send is current the moment you hand it over.

Two ways to hand it over that work:

• For a regular sitter, send the standing notes by message once, and again only when one changes. They keep it on their own phone, which is where they will look.
• For a new sitter, print it, walk them round the house, and point at each thing on the list. The walk takes four minutes and is worth more than the paper.

Chirpy’s assistant helps with the gathering. Ask, which comes with the free plan, reads your household’s live notes and the people in Family, so “what does the sitter need to know tonight?” comes back as one answer built from them, ready to copy into a message. The phone numbers themselves stay on the Family page, where you copy them across.

One rule about what goes on paper: guest Wi-Fi, yes. The alarm master code, no. If a sitter needs a door code, give it on the day and change it afterwards if they are not a regular.

Keeping it right between sitters

The fix for the rotting half is timing. Update it the day a fact changes, from wherever you are, instead of the night you next need a sitter, when you have eight minutes and no pen.

That only happens if updating is a ten-second job on the phone already in your hand. Edit the note in the waiting room when the doctor changes the dose. Your partner gets the notification, so the fact is not living in one person’s head, which is most of what a shared notes app for couples is for in the first place.

The booking belongs on the calendar, too. Put “sitter Friday 7 to 11” on the shared calendar so the other parent does not book football pickup across it. On Chirpy Pro you can type that sentence and the event appears; on Basic you pick the day and time yourself. If the week already has three children’s clubs in it, how to manage kids activities schedule sets out how to see the clash before it happens.

Once a season, read the standing notes out loud to each other. Anything that makes either of you say “is that still true?” gets fixed on the spot. Five minutes, and the sheet stays trustworthy.

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