Chore Wheel

Assign household chores at random so nobody can claim the split is rigged.

About this tool

About the Chore Wheel

Arguments about housework are rarely about the work itself; they are about who decides. The Chore Wheel takes the deciding away from everyone. Housemates or family members take turns spinning, and each person owns whatever chore comes up. Because assignments are random and public, the outcome is hard to argue with.

The wheel removes each chore after it is assigned, so eight chores distribute cleanly across however many people are spinning, with no task handed out twice. Rename the entries to match your actual home: swap Dusting for Water Plants, or split Kitchen into counters and floors if it is a big job. Reset the wheel each week and spin again.

Four quick steps

How to use it

  1. Edit the eight chores to match the tasks your home actually needs.
  2. Gather everyone and agree on the order of spinners.
  3. Take turns spinning; each person keeps the chore they land on.
  4. Continue until the wheel is empty, then reset for next week.

Starting options

What is on the wheel

Eight standard household jobs, sized so that one spin hands somebody a task they can finish in a single sitting.

Dishes
The job that reappears daily, which is why it is the one most often argued over. Drawing it usually means the shortest task on the wheel and the least credit.
Vacuum
Noisy and whole-flat, so it is worth doing before everyone settles down for the evening. Twenty minutes if the floors are clear, considerably longer if clearing them is part of it.
Laundry
Not one task but a sequence spread across a day: load, transfer, fold. Whoever draws it needs to be home, so trade it if they are heading out.
Trash
Fast and unloved. Agree that it includes the recycling sort and a fresh liner, otherwise the person who drew it will hand back half a job.
Bathroom
The chore most people would pay to avoid, and the main reason a random split beats volunteering. Set the scope in advance: toilet, sink, shower, floor.
Kitchen
Surfaces, hob and floor, as distinct from the washing up. Split it into two entries if your kitchen is big enough that one person doing all of it is a bad trade.
Dusting
The lightest draw here, and the easy one to hand to whoever has least time this week. Shelves, sills and screens, working from the top down.
Tidy Room
Putting things back rather than cleaning anything. It fits shared spaces where the mess belongs to everyone, and it is the chore most improved by a fifteen-minute timer.

Useful moments

Good for

  • Weekly chore assignments in shared flats and student housing
  • Getting kids to accept chores because the wheel decided, not a parent
  • Splitting one-off tasks after a party or before guests arrive
  • Office kitchens and shared spaces that need a cleaning rota

Questions

Frequently asked questions

Do people take turns spinning, or do we spin once for everything?

Taking turns is what makes it stick. Each person spins their own chore and owns the result, which is much harder to dispute than one person spinning on everyone's behalf. Agree the spin order first, since going last means the smallest pool of chores left to land on.

What happens when there are more chores than people?

Each chore drops off the wheel as it is assigned, so go round a second time once everyone has had one. Alternatively, delete the jobs that genuinely do not need doing this week before you start, so the wheel empties exactly as the last person spins.

Someone drew the bathroom two weeks running. Is the wheel broken?

No. Results come from your browser's cryptographic random number generator and are decided before the animation plays, so each week is independent of the last and short runs of bad luck are normal. If it is causing friction, the simplest fix is to remove that chore from the second week and assign it directly.

Can we keep a record of who had what?

The spin history lists the results from the current session, and saving locally keeps your edited chore list in that browser for next week. Nothing is uploaded and there is no account, so if you want a record that survives across weeks and devices, copy the results into a shared note.

Keep deciding

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