Keep the list short
Four or five shared chores, no more. Kitchen surfaces and floor, bathroom, bins and recycling, common-room tidy. Personal rooms are nobody's business.
Rotate weekly, not daily
Everyone owns one chore for a week, then the list shifts by one. A week is long enough to fit around work and classes, and short enough that nobody is stuck with the bathroom for a month.
Four people, four chores
- Week 1
- You: kitchen · Sam: bathroom · Priya: bins · Jordan: living room
- Week 2
- You: living room · Sam: kitchen · Priya: bathroom · Jordan: bins
- Week 3
- Shift again. Everyone does everything once a month.
Agree a missed-week rule
Life happens. Decide in advance what a missed week costs: you do it the following week as well, or you buy the house's cleaning supplies that month. Pick one, write it down, and nobody has to negotiate in the moment.
Make it visible
The rotation lives somewhere everyone sees it without asking. A note on the fridge, a pinned message, or an app that says whose week it is. If people have to ask, it is already failing.
- List four or five shared chores.
- Put names in an order and rotate weekly.
- Agree the missed-week rule.
- Put it where everyone can see it.
- Check it off. Done is visible too.