Make Home Life Easier – Divide Household Chores Fairly
- By Alexandra Iacob
- October 22, 2021
- Chores, Daily Planner, Family Organizer, Living Rules, Organize Tasks
How to Divide Household Chores Fairly with your partner without Drama & Fighting!
One of the biggest sources of friction, whether you’re living with your partner or with roommates, are chores. Some feel like they’re doing too much, others resent always being micromanaged, and unfortunately, these sorts of tensions often spill into day to day interactions. So it’s really crucial to divide household chores fairly.
Set A House Meeting
The first thing you will need to do is communicate with your housemates or your partner. A common mistake is coming home from work and finding them in the kitchen and broaching the subject then and there. This is likely to fail, result in an argument or just get a few non-committal nods that will lead nowhere.
When broaching this subject, it’s important to have everyone on the same page. Give people the opportunity to prepare for the topic and to even, perhaps, have something to contribute. Set a meeting with everyone involved and let them know in advance what you want to discuss. When the time for the discussion comes, have clear points you want to make and clear targets. Have a plan, but don’t be too rigid.
Remember that this isn’t just about your wants. The more you can agree on, the more chances for success your initiative will have.
Divide Household Chores
The best place to start all listing and dividing household chores. Make sure to be prepared when it comes to this process. Try to make as comprehensive of a list as possible. Don’t just list the chores that you’re interested in seeing done.
Try to be thorough but also leave room for input. Once you’ve collectively covered this aspect, you can start categorizing and dividing everything that you’ve listed.
Be Fair
When it comes to dividing household chores, it’s easy to fall into the trap of only selecting the ones we like. Or perhaps we feel we’ve been picking up more than our fair share of the load and we let this color our way of thinking. It’s important to try to be as fair and balanced as possible when you’re discussing task division.
There are many ways to split up chores. From choosing your favorite to giving everyone a turn, there are advantages and disadvantages to the different approaches. If you’re going through this process with your partner or spouse, the best way to look at things is by considering schedules, workloads and preferences.
Maybe your partner has a physically demanding job and comes home exhausted. In that case you might want to consider picking up more of the day to day chores and leaving some of the weekly heavy lifting up to them.
Alternatively, if you’re navigating chore division with your roommates, agree on trying out a particular system or chore rotation and get everyone’s feedback after a trial period. This way no one gets stuck with a system they have and there are plenty of occasions for providing input.
Create A Chore Chart
A great way to keep track of who needs to do what is by creating a chore chart. Detailing all activities – as well as how often they should be done and by whom – will create clarity and transparency for everyone and will make accountability a whole lot easier. Dividing Household Chores will be lot easier if you have a detailed Chore Chart.
Enzo has a great task management feature that could simplify the process further by allowing notifications to go directly to your phone when it’s your turn to do the dishes or take out the trash.
Implement A Chore Rotation
A chore rotation can be the simplest way of being correct with chore division but it often works better in roommate situations than with partners or spouses. When enough familiarity is achieved in a household, it becomes easier to pick and choose tasks based on preference. Communication is easier and it’s far more likely that everyone involved will be satisfied if they can pick the tasks they prefer.
However, in a roommate situation, sometimes it’s best to start with a chore rotation. When managing multiple people who might not all be too close or entirely comfortable with each other, the best way to please everyone is to make sure that everyone does a bit of everything when their turn rolls around.
Consider Barter
This might not work for all situations, but if you find yourself getting into the groove of things, you might want to consider bartering. Maybe you need to work late and can’t clean the bathroom that night, or maybe you hate dusting but don’t mind doing the dishes.
Once everyone has started doing their fair share, there’s much more room for flexibility. Bartering on specific tasks and timing might work when there’s sufficient trust and follow through between participants. As homekeeping becomes more harmonious, chore division slowly falls into a more natural pattern.
Review And Reassess
Don’t forget to routinely check in with your housemates about how they’re feeling about your current system. Do they feel that tasks are adequately divided? Do they feel everyone is pulling their own weight? Is the accountability system that you set up actually working? Would they like to try to implement something new?
Although there’s no reason to fix something that’s not broken, make sure to check in with everyone in the household, just to ensure that there aren’t hidden resentments that may result in problems and breakdowns later.
And there you have it. These are our top tips for creating a harmonious living situation, one where the dishes are always clean and no one is being passive aggressive about replacing the toilet paper. We hope you found it helpful and that you’re already thinking of implementing a few for yourself.
And if you’d like even more help managing cohabitation, check out the Enzo app for cool features that can make everything from bill payment to chore division a breeze.
