# The rules a household actually runs on

> Every home runs on rules nobody would think to list — specific, faintly absurd and completely binding. Printing them like a public notice makes the joke land, because they're real.

August 19, 2026 · https://justog.club/stories/house-rules-shirt

Six numbered rules in plain capitals, ruled off inside a heavy enamel border. Take your shoes off.
Feed the cat first. Nobody eats alone. Answer the phone. The big light stays off. If it is broken,
say so. One corner of the enamel has chipped down to bare metal, the way real notices do after years
on a wall.

Nobody would list these if you asked what the house rules were. They're the ones that actually run
the place.

## Why print household rules like an official notice?

Because the mismatch between the register and the content is the whole joke, and it only lands if
the register is played straight.

A municipal notice board doesn't explain itself or soften its language — it states the rule, numbers
it, and expects compliance, because the authority behind it is assumed rather than argued for. Apply
that exact register to "the big light stays off" and the seriousness the format usually reserves for
traffic and public safety lands on a household argument about lamps instead. The joke isn't that the
rules are silly; it's that they're being treated with the full weight of civic law, and in the house
they actually carry that weight.

## What makes a good rule to put on the list?

A verb and an object, with no explanation attached.

"Feed the cat first" works because it's an instruction anyone in the house could carry out without
being told why — the reasoning is understood, not stated, which is what makes it read as a real rule
rather than a joke about one. The strongest lists mix a couple of rules any household would recognise
with at least one that means nothing to an outsider — a name, an object, a specific habit only this
house would bother writing down. That's the same principle behind
[a shirt built around a joke only one group of people gets](/stories/inside-joke-gift-shirt):
the shared reference is what makes it belong to somebody in particular.

## Why six rules and not ten?

Because a notice with too many rules stops reading as a notice and starts reading as a list.

Six sits in the range where each line still gets read individually — a glance takes in the whole
board and the eye can still land on each rule in turn. Push past ten and the format collapses into a
wall of text nobody actually reads, which defeats the point of borrowing a register built for speed
and legibility in the first place.

## What about rights?

Nothing here is borrowed — the rules, the household and the reasons behind them are yours to invent
or record as you like.

The only thing doing the work of a source here is the format itself, and the enamel-notice register
belongs to municipal authorities in the general sense a filing-cabinet aesthetic belongs to
bureaucracy — nobody owns the idea of a numbered notice with a border rule. What you're printing is
your own list, in a public register that happens to suit it.

## Does this work for a shared house rather than a family?

Yes, and arguably it fits better — a flatshare invents its rules from scratch instead of inheriting
them.

A family's rules tend to have drifted into place over years without anyone deciding them on purpose.
A shared house negotiates its rules directly, usually after something goes wrong once, which means
the six that make the final list were each argued for by somebody — a different kind of shared
ownership from [what a family gathering print is usually
doing](/stories/family-reunion-shirts), where the rules were already agreed before anyone
thought to write them down.

## Isn't it strange to put something this trivial into a material built to last decades?

That's the joke, and it's the whole reason the format works.

Enamel notices were built for things institutions expected to matter for a long time — a factory
floor, a level crossing, a public building. Casting a rule about the big light into that same
material doesn't pretend the rule is important; it treats a small, real, everyday agreement with the
seriousness usually reserved for things that get people hurt, and the gap between the two is where
the humour lives. A softer material would just be a sign. This one is a proclamation.

## Does it print well?

Very well — enamel signage was designed for maximum legibility from a distance, and a chest print
wants exactly the same thing.

Flat colour, a heavy border rule and high-contrast capitals reproduce cleanly with no soft edges to
lose. The numbering reads best plain rather than decorative, and the chipped corner works better
confined to one small area than scattered across the whole design — a little damage reads as history;
a lot reads as a texture filter.

Cream, off-white and pale grey grounds all suit the notice register, with the type and border in a
single dark ink and the chip rendered as a second, lighter tone showing the metal underneath.

## How do I get one made?

Describe the household and the rules at [JustOG](/) — how many, what they cover, and which one only
your house would understand.

Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made to
order and shipped.

Designs other people have published are in the [shop](/shop).

The big light is still off. Somebody checked, on the way out, and left it that way on purpose.