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Splitting Household Chores with Your Roommate
When you’re living by yourself, there’s no one to nag you to take out the trash or clean up the kitchen — and no one to do it for you, either. Having a roommate can make household chores easier or harder; it depends on how well you can divide chores, how well your cleaning styles mesh, and how much both of you are willing to change your own habits to accommodate the other person. Here are some tips on how to divide up chores with your roommate.
Divide chores early on
The sooner you can discuss chores with your new roommate, the better. You don’t want to wait until there’s not a single clean dish in the apartment and you’re both convinced the other person is the laziest creature on earth to divide up responsibilities. Before you start, though, think about which chores you yourself particularly hate, don’t mind, or even enjoy. An “even” split of chores may make you less happy than ensuring you don’t have to vacuum. Your roommate, meanwhile, may be just fine with vacuuming so long as you’re willing to take on scrubbing the bathtub.
Talk it out
Make sure to set aside some time to go through the list of common chores, both weekly chores and those that have to be done less frequently. Along the way you’ll probably learn about your roommate’s cleaning preferences — one of you may prefer more environmentally-friendly cleaning products, or have a special way of cleaning pots and pans. If you can give on a few of your roommate’s strong preferences, you should be able to get some of your own requests met. Be respectful of your roommate, but don’t be afraid to insist on things that are important to you. If you can’t resolve an argument, suggest trying one system and revisiting it in a month or two. Make sure to write everything down. It will not only add force to your agreement, but serve as a reference if you forget later who agreed to do what.
What if you have more than one roommate? It will probably help to write things down. One possible system is to take a dry-erase board and list the chores for that week, split up among all the roommates. Each roommate can initial a chore completed, so that anyone can see at a glance which chores have been done and which roommate needs to get to mopping right away.
Find what works
Of course, agreeing at the beginning may be easier than sustaining the agreement week after week. You and your roommate might agree that particular chores get done on particular days, or have a method of letting each other know what chores have been done and what need to be done. (For example, you might look into Chore Wars, which allow you to re-imagine household chores as a Dungeons & Dragons campaign, complete with monsters.) If your roommate is doing a chore, but not to your satisfaction, it may be easier to assume that chore and pass back a few chores you care about less.
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Readers Poll
What do you think is the ideal number of apartment roommates?
- 0 (47%, 33 Votes)
- 1 (29%, 20 Votes)
- 2 (19%, 13 Votes)
- More than 2 (5%, 4 Votes)
Total Voters: 70
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