A household chores list, with how long each job actually takes

Most household chore lists are just lists of names, which is why they never settle anything. This one carries two numbers for every job: how many minutes it honestly takes, and how much it takes out of the person doing it — which are not the same thing, and the gap between them is where most arguments about housework actually live. Added up across a week, the list below comes to roughly 24 hours. That is the number worth sitting with before you divide anything.

The number nobody adds up

Run a normal family week and the jobs below total around 24 hours. Not 24 hours of dramatic effort — 24 hours of five minutes here and thirty minutes there, mostly invisible, mostly unremarked.

That figure is the reason “just tell me what needs doing” is not a fair offer. Someone has to hold all 53 of these, know which are due, and notice when one is slipping. Holding the list is itself a job, and it is the one that never appears on a list.

It is also why a 50/50 split by count is not a split at all. Emptying the dishwasher is five minutes; the food shop is an hour. Do half the jobs each and one of you can still be doing three times the work.

Time and effort are different things, and both matter

Every job below has a difficulty from 1 to 5 — how much it costs you, not how long it lasts. Sorting these two apart is what makes a split feel fair rather than merely look fair.

• Quick but grim. Cleaning the downstairs loo is ten minutes and rated 2, with the highest unpleasantness score in the list. Nobody volunteers for it and everybody notices when it stops happening.
• Long but easy. Taking a load to the tip is forty-five minutes and rated 2. It eats an afternoon and costs almost nothing emotionally — some people genuinely like it.
• Long and hard. The food shop is an hour and rated 3. Deep-cleaning the oven is an hour and rated 3. These are the jobs worth trading something real for.
• Short and constant. Wiping the kitchen sides is ten minutes a day. Trivial once, seventy minutes a week, and the person doing it has thought about the kitchen every single day.

If you take one thing from the table, take this: swap by effort, not by count. Two people can hold wildly different loads while ticking the same number of boxes.

Where the hours actually go

Grouped up, the weekly totals are lopsided in ways most households would not guess:

• The school run is the biggest single block — around 400 minutes a week once you count the morning run, the afternoon pick-up, packed lunches, reading records and kit. Nearly seven hours, almost all of it in term time, almost all of it landing on whoever does the mornings.
• Pets come second, at roughly 266 minutes. Walking the dog alone is 210 minutes a week — three and a half hours that rarely appears in anyone’s mental tally of the housework.
• The kitchen is third, and it is entirely made of small daily jobs. No single one is worth arguing about; together they are nearly three hours.

The pattern is consistent: the heavy loads are not the big dramatic jobs. They are the small ones that repeat.

Which jobs children can genuinely do

Twenty-nine of the 53 are marked as suitable for children — more than half. That is not a claim that a six-year-old should be doing them; it is a note that the job is safe and achievable with the right age and a bit of supervision.

The useful move is not handing a child a chore chart. It is giving them a job that is genuinely theirs — one that visibly fails if they do not do it, like feeding the cat or bringing the bins in. A job nobody notices is a job nobody learns from. There is more on this in age-appropriate chores for kids and on getting kids to do chores without nagging.

How to actually use this list

1. Read it together, once, without dividing anything. The point of the first pass is agreeing what exists. Most couples discover two or three jobs one of them did not know were happening.
2. Cross off what does not apply. No dog, no lawn, no school run — the list gets shorter fast, and the honest total for your house is the one that matters.
3. Add what is missing. This is a starting list, not a complete one. Anything specific to your house — a relative you check on, a car that needs a particular thing — belongs on it.
4. Then split by the numbers, not the names. Aim for roughly equal minutes and roughly equal difficulty. If one of you is carrying all the 3s, that is not fair however even the count looks.
5. Give whole domains, not individual tasks. “You own the school run” beats a list of nine school jobs, because it hands over the remembering as well as the doing — which is the part that actually weighs.

An honest hour with this list and a pen will do most of the work. Equal House scores exactly these numbers automatically — every job in the app carries the same effort weighting used here, and the Fairness Engine turns them into a running split — but the conversation is the thing that changes how a house runs, not the app.

The full list

Timings are for one average go at the job. Difficulty is 1–5: how much it takes out of you, not how long it lasts. “Per week” spreads the job across a normal week, so a monthly job shows a small number rather than nothing.

Kitchen

6 jobs · about 165 minutes a week

Chore	Time	How often	Per week	Effort	Kids?
Wipe down the kitchen sides	10 min	Every day	70 min	1/5	Yes
Empty the dishwasher	5 min	Every day	35 min	1/5	Yes
Clean out the fridge	20 min	Once a week	20 min	2/5	Yes
Put the shopping away	15 min	Once a week	15 min	1/5	Yes
Mop the kitchen floor	15 min	Once a week	15 min	2/5	Yes
Empty the kitchen bin	5 min	Twice a week	10 min	1/5	Yes

Meals & shopping

3 jobs · about 80 minutes a week

Chore	Time	How often	Per week	Effort	Kids?
Do the food shop	60 min	Once a week	60 min	3/5	Adults only
Plan next week’s meals	20 min	Once a week	20 min	2/5	Adults only
Batch cook for the freezer	60 min	Now and then	—	3/5	Adults only

Cleaning

7 jobs · about 102 minutes a week

Chore	Time	How often	Per week	Effort	Kids?
Clean the bathroom	30 min	Once a week	30 min	3/5	Adults only
Hoover downstairs	25 min	Once a week	25 min	2/5	Yes
Hoover upstairs	20 min	Once a week	20 min	2/5	Yes
Put the bins and recycling out	10 min	Once a week	10 min	1/5	Yes
Clean the downstairs loo	10 min	Once a week	10 min	2/5	Adults only
Clean the windows inside	30 min	Once a month	6.9 min	2/5	Yes
Dust the living room	15 min	Now and then	—	1/5	Yes

Laundry

4 jobs · about 135 minutes a week

Chore	Time	How often	Per week	Effort	Kids?
Put a wash on	10 min	Every day	70 min	1/5	Yes
Fold and put the washing away	20 min	Twice a week	40 min	2/5	Yes
Iron the school uniforms	25 min	Once a week	25 min	2/5	Adults only
Change the bed sheets	20 min	Now and then	—	2/5	Yes

Life admin

6 jobs · about 62 minutes a week

Chore	Time	How often	Per week	Effort	Kids?
Deal with the school emails and forms	20 min	Once a week	20 min	2/5	Adults only
Sort the post and the filing	15 min	Once a week	15 min	1/5	Adults only
Look at the week ahead together	10 min	Once a week	10 min	1/5	Adults only
Sort out the weekend plans	10 min	Once a week	10 min	1/5	Adults only
Book the appointments that are due	20 min	Once a month	4.6 min	2/5	Adults only
Check the car — fuel, tyres, screenwash	10 min	Once a month	2.3 min	1/5	Adults only

School

4 jobs · about 400 minutes a week

Chore	Time	How often	Per week	Effort	Kids?
Morning school run	30 min	Every weekday	150 min	2/5	Adults only
Afternoon school pick-up	30 min	Every weekday	150 min	2/5	Adults only
Make the packed lunches	15 min	Every weekday	75 min	2/5	Yes
Sign the reading record	5 min	Every weekday	25 min	1/5	Adults only

Kids’ own tasks

6 jobs · about 155 minutes a week

Chore	Time	How often	Per week	Effort	Kids?
Do your reading	15 min	Every weekday	75 min	1/5	Yes
Lay the table for dinner	5 min	Every day	35 min	1/5	Yes
Put your clean clothes away	10 min	Twice a week	20 min	1/5	Yes
Tidy your bedroom	15 min	Once a week	15 min	1/5	Yes
Sort out your school bag	10 min	Once a week	10 min	1/5	Yes
Practise your instrument	20 min	Now and then	—	1/5	Yes

Pets

4 jobs · about 266 minutes a week

Chore	Time	How often	Per week	Effort	Kids?
Walk the dog	30 min	Every day	210 min	2/5	Yes
Feed the pets	5 min	Every day	35 min	1/5	Yes
Clean out the litter tray	10 min	Twice a week	20 min	1/5	Yes
Book the vet or the worming	15 min	Every 3 months	1.2 min	1/5	Adults only

Outdoors

5 jobs · about 30 minutes a week

Chore	Time	How often	Per week	Effort	Kids?
Water the plants	10 min	Twice a week	20 min	1/5	Yes
Wash the car	30 min	Once a month	6.9 min	2/5	Yes
Take a load to the tip	45 min	Every 3 months	3.5 min	2/5	Adults only
Mow the lawn	45 min	Now and then	—	3/5	Yes
Sweep the path and the front step	15 min	Now and then	—	1/5	Yes

Money

3 jobs · about 15 minutes a week

Chore	Time	How often	Per week	Effort	Kids?
Go through the budget together	30 min	Once a month	6.9 min	2/5	Adults only
Hand out the pocket money	5 min	Once a week	5.0 min	1/5	Adults only
Check the direct debits and bills	15 min	Once a month	3.5 min	2/5	Adults only

Now and then

5 jobs · about 10 minutes a week

Chore	Time	How often	Per week	Effort	Kids?
Deep clean the oven	60 min	Every 3 months	4.6 min	3/5	Adults only
Descale the kettle and shower head	15 min	Every 2 months	1.7 min	1/5	Yes
Sort out the outgrown clothes	45 min	Every 6 months	1.7 min	2/5	Adults only
Test the smoke alarms	5 min	Once a month	1.2 min	1/5	Adults only
Clear the gutters	60 min	Once a year	1.2 min	3/5	Adults only

These are the same 53 jobs Equal House offers a new household as a starting set, with the same numbers behind them. If a timing looks wrong for your house, it probably is — change it. The point is not our number, it is that you have one.