Coming Up with a New Chores Sheet

I’m starting to think that most problems in life can be solved with a simple Excel sheet. Well, maybe not *too* simple. I mean, I’m sure world hunger would require at least a few good pivot tables. But when it comes to keeping the house clean and making sure the workload is spread out? You don’t even need to make any charts with Excel.

Here’s the problem: Denisa was thinking the other day that we have two able-bodied children who are capable of doing a whole lot more around the house than they currently are. They’re not lazy, but they’re also very good at making messes. (As, I imagine, most children are.) The theory is that if they were in charge of certain rooms of the house, then perhaps they’d be a little less eager to mess those rooms up at the drop of a hat.

A guy can dream, folks.

So I’ve been spending a fair bit of time in the depths of Excel, charting out a plan that will repeat every week, making sure that it at least looks fair on the surface. Everybody gets chores they do each day of the week. These range from helping with dinner to vacuuming to sweeping to folding laundry. Some chores are shared–like emptying the dishwasher. DC can’t do the whole thing on her own, and TRC can fill in for what she can’t do.

Will this work? I have no idea. It’s a first draft. We’ll tweak as necessary. What does it look like? Something like this: