Family cabin rules: a template your whole family can agree on

At a shared family cabin, the questions that come up are often small ones: the dishwasher left full, the thermostat left at 78, or a guest nobody knew was coming. Written house rules settle those questions before they come up.

Below is a template you can copy, change, and share with your family. Each section has a few options. Pick the ones that fit your house and cross out the rest.

Why write the rules down

Unwritten rules can end up living in one person's head, such as whoever has been going to the cabin longest. New in-laws, grown grandchildren, and friends who visit do not know them. Writing them down does two things: everyone sees the same rules, and the rules can be changed by agreement instead of by whoever complains loudest.

Keep the list short. Rules nobody reads do not help. These rules cover how a stay works. Who gets which dates is a separate decision, covered in five ways to split the calendar.

Keep the rules alive

The rules need to change as the family does. A new baby, an allergy, or someone finding the stairs harder can change what makes a stay comfortable. Keep the current version somewhere everyone can see it any day, with the date of the last change and a short record of what changed.

Agree how each household confirms a small change and who updates the shared copy. Once everyone has agreed, updating it should take minutes; nobody should have to reconstruct the rule from a group text. Keep the copy at the cabin in step with it.

People will sometimes forget a checkout task, and trips will fall through. Start by asking what happened. The rules are there to help everyone enjoy the house, not to keep a score of mistakes.

The template

1. Staying at the house

• No more than ____ people stay at once.
• Everyone arrives after ____ on their first day and leaves by ____ on their last day.
• The group whose time it is decides who stays during that time, within the limit above.

2. Guests

Pick one:

• Guests are welcome when someone from the family is there.
• Friends can use the house without a family member there, if the other groups agree first.
• Only family uses the house.

3. Pets

Pick one:

• Pets are welcome. They stay off the beds, and whoever brings one vacuums before leaving.
• Pets can come if the other groups agree first, since some people have allergies.
• No pets at the house.

4. Smoking

Pick one:

• No smoking inside. Smoking outside is allowed.
• No smoking anywhere at the house.

5. Spending and changes

• Anyone can spend up to $____ on repairs and replacements without asking. Anything more is a group decision.
• Changes to how the house looks or feels (paint, furniture, the porch) are a group decision, whatever they cost.
• In an emergency, one person can pay for a repair first and tell everyone the same day.

6. When plans change

• A group that cannot use its time tells everyone at least ____ days ahead.
• If nobody has booked a night ____ days before it comes, anyone can book it.

7. Check-out list

Everyone, every time:

• Clean the kitchen and take your food home.
• Take the sheets off the beds.
• Take out the trash and recycling.
• Set the thermostat to ____.
• Lock the doors and windows.
• In winter, turn off the water and drain the pipes.
• Write down anything that broke or ran low.
• Leave a note for the next group.

8. Changing these rules

• Anyone can suggest a change.
• Changes are agreed at the yearly house meeting, or sooner if every group agrees.

How to get everyone to agree

Do not present the rules as finished. Send a draft to every group and ask each one to mark what they would change. Ask what is behind a disagreement before proposing a rule. People are more likely to follow rules they helped write. This matters most when the house has recently passed to a new generation, as in inheriting a vacation home with siblings.

Two things help:

• Start from what already happens. If everyone already strips the beds, write that down. The goal is to record the habits that work, not invent new ones.
• Decide the hard ones together. Guests without a family member there and pets are the two rules most likely to cause trouble later. Settle them while nobody has a specific visit in mind.

Try: "Could we write down the habits that already make a stay easy, and change anything that isn't working for you? I'd like everyone to arrive knowing what to expect."

Try to avoid: "Some people aren't doing their share, so we need stricter rules."

Where to keep them

Keep one copy at the house, taped inside a cupboard or in a binder by the door, and one copy everyone can see online. If the copy at the house and the copy online disagree, the family should know which one counts.

The free Shared House Playbook includes these rules as part of a written house plan, alongside how you divide the calendar and who looks after the place, so the rules and the schedule live in the same document.

Frequently asked questions

What should be in family cabin rules? How many people can stay, guests and pets, what anyone can spend without asking, the checkout list, and how the rules change. Most other questions fit under one of those.

How strict should the rules be? Strict enough that two groups reading them would do the same thing. "Leave it clean" means different things to different people. "Strip the beds and run the dishwasher" does not.

What about rules for cottages or lake houses? The same template works for any shared family place. Add anything specific to your house, like the boat, the hot tub, or the well pump.