Household chores sharing

[yvi]

A question to the community:

If you live in a 2-people-or-more household, how do you share the chores? Do you have any tips on chore-sharing (lists, alternating weeks, etc.)?

Comments

[yvi]

I live with my boyfriend, we are both students and not the most keen people when it comes to cleaning and such. We never formally discussed chore sharing, but this is how it has worked out over the past year:

My responsibilities:
* laundry
* washing dishes

His responsibilities:
* cooking
* drying dishes, if needed (we use a drying rack, so they only need to be manually dried when there is more than one load)
* most of the gardening on our balcony in spring/summer - I'll help wit setting it up, but he waters and so on

Together:
* grocery shopping
* pet care (we have a gecko and... assorted food species for it. the type with 6 legs that eats vegetable garbage)
* tidying and cleaning

Cleaning is further divided, as I won't touch his side of the office and bedroom and he won't touch mine. These are done whenever someone gets frustrated with the way their side looks :)

Before cooking, we usually clean the kitchen together and when bigger cleaning needs to take place, we divide the rooms between us: a common division is me doing the kitchen while he does the bathroom, and then doing the living room together until it's done. This means we both spend the same amount of time cleaning.

[sapote]

I am reading back through the comm archives and felt moved to comment far after the fact: we changed subleasers recently (now I live with my boyfriend and my sister instead of the Nice Married Couple who, I am realizing now, were picking up after me) and we've got a sign-off sheet with a list of things that need doing and then spaces for dates and initials. There are a couple of reasons: first, I was terrified that living with a boyfriend would mean cleaning up after him, but the reality is I'm a slob and my boyfriend will end up quietly sweeping every day without me noticing, so this balances my perceived division of labor with actual data and saves my relationship. Second, I need a list or I forget to do things - I'm one of those roommates who Just Doesn't Notice, so a list that says things like "dishes: none left in the sink, none left on the counter, none left on the table" is the only way that I don't wash ten spoons and ignore the pot that's been soaking for two days because I've gotten used to it and we're friends now. Third, I think part of the reason why some of us prefer tasks more than others is that we know how to do those things (I'm excellent at meal planning and crap at windows) and I want to occasionally do windows so that I don't spend my entire life completely perplexed by them, which - again, would happen.

What I think this illustrates is 1) wow, there's a lid for every pot, housemate-wise, and 2) the arrangements are so dependent on personality that I imagine every household has to figure it out anew. I will say that I think slobby roommates who "don't see dirt" often need to take some time to break down what constitutes "clean" and make reminders for themselves. Seriously, my entry on the list for "sweep the floor" is "Are all the corners swept? Is the middle of the floor swept? Are there any crumbs? Did you sweep up the dust pile?." My housemates think this is hilarious, but they don't realize how many years I forgot that you had to sweep up the dust pile immediately and it got all over everything because I had wandered off and left it. So there is hope - the messy roommate just has to be willing to learn the skills involved.

[zing_och]

When I had flatmates, we did the alternating weeks thing, which worked pretty much not at all. There was always someone claiming they just "didn't see the dirt" and stuff like that.

My sister and her husband just "formalised" the way they're sharing chores: While he's responsible for more since he's the stay-at-home-parent, the kitchen, for example, is her responsibility.

They decided that everyone would "get" the areas where the mess got to them more than to the other. So since he doesn't mind dishes sitting on top of the dishwasher and she does, she puts them away without nagging. He can't stand stuff lying around in the living room, so he tidies up there. This seems to be working pretty well, they've pretty much stopped arguing about chores.

[dreamingpixels]

When I lived with my boyfriend, we had certain jobs that one of us wanted to do while the other hated. So, he did dishes and I did laundry. We'd take turns with everything else, like vacuuming and taking out the trash, and some things we'd do together, like general neatening up of the whole apartment and cleaning the bathroom.

In the situation I'm in now, I'm living with an older lady, and we pretty much keep our own rooms clean, and we try to do our own dishes (sometimes I forget and she does mine for me), and we both work on keeping the kitchen and living room clean. (She's also got a cleaning lady that comes in once a month to clean things up, too.)

[ar]

One of the things my roommates and I had to do in undergrad was write out a list of our names, in order, repeated several times. We put it on the fridge, and whoever's name was up next had to take out the trash when it got full. Then they crossed off their name and so on. That was the main chore, since everyone had their own room and all, and it worked reasonably well.

In my current living situation, we are kind of lax about tidiness. >> We grocery shop together, because walking to the grocery store means you want four hands, not two. Depending on the day, I cook or we cook together. I clean the bathroom and sweep and general tidying-up things, and the roommate helps when asked--and he'll take the trash out late at night or before work in the morning, which is quite nice. I don't mind the set-up, because I'm the one who's bothered by mess; it might change once I'm gainfully employed in addition to going to grad school, though, lol.

So I suppose my suggestion would definitely be lists over alternating weeks, if you want to divide up the work on a rotating basis--but I'd vote for always having specific chores on the whole. I would always forget when it was my week and look like the douchebag roommate when I lived in a "let's clean the bathroom alternate weeks" situation, when it simply didn't occur to me.

[marymac]

I share with two other people, and while it is informally do your own dishes, pick up your own mess, do the rest collectively as needed...we're a wee bit useless. Clean, but bombsite would characterise our shared space.

On the other hand, we have tried rotas and such and they always fell by the wayside. So now we've figured out the things each of cannot live with, and try not to do them:
I hate things being left in the sink. These days, this is generally respected.
K hates preparation leftovers being left sitting. This is universally respected.
E can't cope with thigns being put away wrong. Everything has a place and lives there.

None of this is written down though, we've just lived together for eight (me and E) and five (K) years respectively.