Weekly cleaning rota for a student house of 5
Five housemates and four cleaning jobs is a good set-up for a student house: every week four people clean and one person has the week off. As long as the week off rotates too, nobody can say they got the worse deal.
Worked example: 5 people, 4 jobs, 5 weeks
Maya, Tom, Priya, Luca and Erin split the kitchen, the bathroom, the bins and the hoovering. Each job moves on by one person every week.
| Week | Kitchen | Bathroom | Bins | Hoover | Week off |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Maya | Tom | Priya | Luca | Erin |
| 2 | Tom | Priya | Luca | Erin | Maya |
| 3 | Priya | Luca | Erin | Maya | Tom |
| 4 | Luca | Erin | Maya | Tom | Priya |
| 5 | Erin | Maya | Tom | Priya | Luca |
After five weeks each person has done every job once and had one week off. Over a ten-week term the cycle runs exactly twice. If your term is eleven or twelve weeks, the extra weeks restart the cycle, so no one's count for a job is ever more than one ahead of anyone else's.
Making it stick in a student house
- Start the rota week on the day the bins go out, so the bin person cannot miss it.
- Write the standard down once: "bathroom" means toilet, sink, shower and floor, not a quick wipe.
- Plan around the calendar. Reading weeks and holidays empty the house; agree that an absent person swaps weeks instead of skipping.
- Put the rota where people look. A sheet on the fridge is easy to walk past; an event in each person's phone calendar is harder to miss.
Build it with the generator
The generator makes this table from the names and the jobs, and gives each housemate a personal link plus a calendar (.ics) file with their own weeks. One honest note on size: the free version covers up to 4 people and 4 weeks. A house of five, or a rota for a whole term, needs the paid Chore Rota Pro licence (up to 12 people and up to 26 weeks, and no more than that; USD 3.50, one-time). A house of four can run the same idea for free.
More guides
- Chore rota for 4 housemates
- 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
- Roommate chore chart for 2 roommates
- Weekly chore rotation schedule with more chores than people