Chore Wheel

Two ways to run a chore wheel

Pick a job for yourself. Spin, do the thing, spin again. This works when the problem is not who does it but that you cannot face deciding where to start. Turn on Remove the winner after each spin and the wheel becomes a randomized cleaning list that shrinks as you go.

Assign jobs to people. Put the names on the wheel instead of the chores. Read out a chore, spin for who does it, repeat. This is the version that settles arguments in a shared house, because everybody watches every assignment happen.

The second version is the one worth doing properly. Do it once a week at a fixed time, with everyone in the room, and it stops being a negotiation.

What's on the Chore Wheel wheel

Sixteen everyday household jobs, ready to edit for your own home.

• Dishes
• Vacuum
• Take out trash
• Clean the bathroom
• Laundry
• Change the sheets
• Wipe the counters
• Mop the floors
• Tidy the living room
• Clean the fridge
• Water the plants
• Sweep the entryway
• Load the dishwasher
• Fold laundry
• Clean the microwave
• Dust

Weighting the horrible ones

Chores are not equal, and pretending they are is how the bathroom ends up with the same person every week.

Turn on Weighted choices and give the easy jobs more weight, so the bad ones come up less often:

• Clean the bathroom
• Dishes *3
• Wipe the counters *3
• Vacuum *2

Now the bathroom comes up less often than wiping the counters, which is a reasonable model of how much work each one is.

For the assign-to-people version, the fairest setup is not a weight: turn on Remove the winner after each spin. Each name leaves the wheel once it has a job, so nobody gets a second turn until everyone has had one, and Reset starts the next round. If you would rather keep every name on the wheel, weight in the other direction: whoever did the bathroom last week gets *1 while everyone else gets *2, so it is less likely to land on them twice.