Chore wheels and regular cleaning schedules can be a renter and roommate’s best friend when it comes to keeping your apartment clean. When paired with a cleaning schedule, renters can help ensure that their home is calm and welcoming. Regular cleaning can prevent issues like pests and buildup that will result in damage to the property. Ready to divide up the chores? Creating a roommate chore wheel can be an ideal option.
Why Create a Chore Wheel?
If you live with a roommate (or a few roommates), it can be hard to get on the same page when it comes to cleaning and maintaining your space. Sit down to come up with a roommate agreement, a regular cleaning schedule, and a roommate chore wheel. It may seem like an unnecessary formality but can prevent a lot of strife and avoidable tension down the road. Creating a chore wheel guarantees that everyone knows exactly what tasks need to be accomplished. It also provides a way to fairly distribute cleaning jobs, since chore wheels allow the tasks to be swapped out at the end of a predetermined set of time.
How Does It Work?
Chore wheels allow everyone in the household to list the important tasks that need to be done each week. Each household member is allotted a section of the chore wheel. Any tasks that land under their name must be completed by that person. At the end of a predetermined amount of time, the wheel is rotated so another person can do those tasks. This ensures that chores are divided evenly among everyone, and no one person is stuck with a particular job long-term.
You and your roommate or significant other can decide how often the chores are rotated. Once per week or once every other week can be a good system that allows everyone to get a break from any particular task they may not enjoy. Chore wheels can be rotated as infrequently as you like. However, monthly or quarterly rotations can allow everyone to work their chore’s timing into their schedule more efficiently long-term. Chore wheels are effective for roommates and significant others, but can even be helpful visual reminders for children and family members. Regardless of your particular living situation, chore wheels can encourage you and everyone living in your home to participate equitably.
Example Chores for Roommates:
In this chore wheel example, each roommate is accounted for and assigned their own task. If you only have one roommate, simply assign two sections to each person on the 4 person chart. For those with 3 roommates per house or apartment, some of the tasks are combined.
For instance, instead of listing “clean kitchen” and “take out trash” as two separate tasks, these are combined as one job. To make your own chore wheel, it is important to decide on a reasonable combination of tasks when you need to list them as one job. Otherwise, one person will be stuck with a very time-consuming chore each rotation. The wheel’s rotation of responsibilities ensures that it will be equitable in the end, but it’s better to attempt to balance the load of difficult chores to make it more manageable for everyone.
How to Make Your Own Chore Wheel (Downloadable PDF):
Look at an example cleaning schedule before diving in and making your own chore wheel. This guarantees that vital chores are completed and nothing is missed. Add in any tasks that are unique to your household or rental agreement. For instance, walking the jointly-owned pet, or tackling all the simple monthly tasks (like changing the HVAC filter) could be added to the list.
Once you have made a list of all the tasks that need to be done, then you can place the tasks on your chore wheel. Simply download the PDF, cut the circles out and attach them together with a brad paper fastener to allow the circles to rotate. Keep in mind that you may have to combine or break down steps of some chores to fit the number of sections on each circle. Be sure to also consider which cleaning jobs that need to be addressed daily vs weekly. If you have a few daily chores, these can all stay in one circle within the wheel so that everyone is given a daily task.
Finally, be sure to remind each individual what personal tasks they are responsible for completing that are not part of the chore wheel. Tasks like laundry, doing personal dishes, and tidying personal items all still need to be completed but won’t be listed on the roommate chore wheel.