The first time you share an apartment you learn a lot. For example, you’re standard of acceptable cleanliness in your off-campus student apartments University of Alabama might not the same as your roommates’ standards. Never mind who’s a slob or neat freak; you and your roommates need a solution that keeps everyone fairly happy.
Who Wants to Do What? Who Has the Time?
The first thing to discuss is whether anyone wants to take on a particular task permanently. One roommate might love cooking while another might find dusting and vacuuming relaxing.
The other thing to discuss is time. Who does what might change every semester based on class and work commitments?
A Fair System for Dividing Chores
It’s more likely that nobody will want to take on any particular chore, and that nobody is particularly good at any particular task. In that case, here’s a fair way to divide housework:
- Write down each task on a separate piece of paper and decide how often each one needs to be done each week.
- Assign each task a number from one (easy, quick or not repulsive) to five (very difficult, time consuming or repulsive) based on how time-consuming, difficult or repulsive it is.
- Multiply how often each task needs to be done each week by its score on time consumption, ease of completion and repulsiveness. Turn the name of the task face down and write its total score on the back of its sheet of paper.
- Add up the scores to determine the total number of household task points available.
- Based on his or her commitments for that semester, each person agrees to accept a certain fair and reasonable number of household task points.
- Before drawing tasks, decide if trading will be allowed once you all learn which tasks you have drawn.
- Keeping the names of the tasks face down, mix up the pieces of paper. Each person draws tasks until he or she reaches or comes close to his or her household task points total.
You could also use one of these alternate methods for selecting tasks:
- Anyone who agrees to take on a particular task for the entire semester chooses the other tasks he or she wants to do with the task names revealed. The person taking on the task with the highest weekly total chooses first.
- The roommate with the highest number of housework task points chooses the tasks he or she wants with the task names revealed. The person with the next highest number of housework task points would choose next, and so on.
When trading or selecting tasks, each roommate should remain close to his or her total housework task points.
We here at Lark Tuscaloosa hope that with this system for deciding who does what housework each semester you and your roommates become and remain friends and that you enjoy your off-campus student apartments University of Alabama.
