Blue Jobs, Pink Jobs: How To Fairly Divide Housework

IT’S never fair to ask one person to handle all the chores around a home, but how can you divvy all the jobs up in a manner that is fair? Here’s a couple of systems that may work for your house:

1) Force your children to do everything

Got kids in your house? Then it’s time for them to do some unpaid manual labour under the guise of ‘learning what it is to work’ or something like that. Kids won’t be able to do anything too laborious, but they can do a lot of the crappy little jobs like empty the dishwasher and set the table, which is a start. Maybe hoover, who knows. Clean the oven? Fuck it, they’re small enough to get all the way in, see how they get on.

2) Pink jobs, blue jobs

Another method of dividing up labour is the ‘girls jobs, boys jobs’ method. To do this, you must sit down and state, with full conviction, that women are only fit to do certain tasks around the house, while also stating that there’s jobs that only men can do. And vice versa. Do you really want to have that conversation, in 2023? Really? Or would you just rather do some ironing instead? That’s what we thought.

3) Houseshare free for all

If making up a fair roster is beyond you and the people you live with, then just employ the Royal Rumble every-man-for-himself approach, where if you use it, you clean it. Hoover your own room, everyone else is on their own. Wash, dry, iron and fold your own clothes while someone else’s crusty socks lie in the hamper for a week. Never have more than one or two clean items of cutlery at any given time. Chaos, unliveable chaos. But to each their own.