Free calculator
Chore Split Calculator
Count chores in minutes, not in jobs. Type the minutes of chores each person does in a normal week, and a share if you agreed on something other than an even split. The calculator gives each person's fair target and how many minutes a week to move. Free, no sign-up.
- Person 1, now0 a week
- Fair target0 min
- Over (+) or under (-) target0 min
- Person 2, now0 a week
- Fair target0 min
- Over (+) or under (-) target0 min
- Person 3, now0 a week
- Fair target0 min
- Over (+) or under (-) target0 min
How it works
For each chore, minutes a week is the minutes it takes each time times how often it happens in a week. Cooking dinner for 40 minutes, 5 times a week, is 200 minutes; taking the bins out once is 5. Add up each person's chores to get their weekly minutes.
The whole home's minutes are everyone's minutes added together. Each person's fair target is the whole home's minutes times their share: half each for two people on an even split, a third each for three. If you type shares, type one for everyone; they are scaled to 100%.
Over or under is each person's minutes less their target. The minutes to move is the smaller of the biggest overage and the biggest shortfall: moving that much evens out the two people furthest apart. This page uses clock minutes; the Fair Share Chore Chart also lets you weight the jobs nobody wants.
A worked example
The Fair Share Chore Chart's example home has 35 chores that take 947 minutes a week, about 15.8 hours. Cook dinner alone is 200 minutes a week, and taking the bins to the curb is 5, so two people with the same number of jobs can be far apart in time. The chart's week 1 gives Alex 469 minutes and Jordan 478. On an even split each person's target is 473.5 minutes, so Alex is 4.5 under and Jordan 4.5 over: close to fair. If Jordan were doing 600 of 900 minutes and Alex 300, about 150 minutes a week, roughly two and a half hours, should move to Alex.
Let the sheet hand out the chores for you
The Fair Share Chore Chart for Excel and Google Sheets splits your own chore list between 1 to 4 adults by minutes, on an even split or the shares you set, and rotates the jobs nobody wants each week. A printable weekly chart and a Fair Split tab show who does what and how close each person is to fair. It comes with a filled-in example home of 35 chores. $2.99, instant download.
Questions
How do you split chores fairly?
Count time, not jobs. Give each chore a rough number of minutes and how often it happens, add up each person's weekly minutes, and compare them with a fair target. An even split gives each person the same share of the total.
What if one of us works longer hours?
Agree on a share, for example 60 and 40, and type it for both people. The fair target then follows that split instead of an even one.
How do I count the minutes for a chore?
Use a rough average for one time, then multiply by how often it happens in a week. Daily is 7 times, weekly is once, every two weeks is half. Guesses are fine; the point is to compare.
What about the chores nobody wants?
This page counts clock minutes only. The Fair Share Chore Chart can give those jobs extra weight and rotate them, so the person who takes them does fewer minutes of everything else.
Does this work for roommates?
Yes. Type up to three people here. Leave Person 3 blank for a couple.