Roommate chore chart for 2 roommates

With two roommates there are nearly always more chores than people, so a fair chart is less about who does what and more about which chores travel together. Split the chores into two bundles of about the same effort and swap bundles every week.

Worked example: 2 roommates, 4 chores, 4 weeks

Alex and Jamie list their chores in this order: kitchen, bathroom, trash, vacuum. Each chore moves to the other person every week.

In week 1 Alex has the kitchen and the trash while Jamie has the bathroom and the vacuuming. In week 2 they swap. After four weeks each of them has done every chore twice.

The order of the list decides the bundles

The rotation hands the chores out in list order, one person after the other. With two people that means the first and third chores always go to the same person, and so do the second and fourth. In the example the bundles are kitchen plus trash and bathroom plus vacuum: one heavy job and one light job each.

• Put the two heaviest chores next to each other in the list. They then land in different bundles. If the list read kitchen, trash, bathroom, vacuum, one person would get the kitchen and the bathroom in the same week.
• An odd number of chores still works. With three chores, one roommate has two this week and one next week, and the other has the reverse.
• Leave daily jobs off the chart. Dishes and wiping the counter work better as a house rule than as a weekly turn.

A link and a calendar file each

The generator builds this chart from the two names and the chore list. Each roommate gets a personal link that shows their own weeks, written as "Kitchen + Trash", with the full chart below. A button on that page downloads a calendar (.ics) file with an all-day event for each chore on the first day of each week, so both chores for the week appear in the phone calendar.

Free at this size

Two people fit inside the free version, which covers up to 4 people and up to 4 weeks. Because the pattern repeats every two weeks, making a fresh four-week chart when the old one runs out gives exactly the same split with new dates.

Open the chore rota generator

More guides

• Chore rota for 4 housemates
• Weekly cleaning rota for a student house of 5
• Roommate chore rotation you can add to Google Calendar
• Fair bin and bathroom rota for 3 flatmates
• Shared house cleaning rota for 6 housemates
• Chore rota .ics file for iPhone and Outlook calendars
• Weekly chore rotation schedule with more chores than people