What is a Fairness Score? How to measure who does the housework

A Fairness Score is a single number, from 0 to 100, that says how evenly the household work is shared between the grown-ups in a home. 100 means you carried the same load. The further apart you are, the lower it goes. It exists because housework is easy to undercount: most of it is five minutes here and twenty there, and the only person keeping the tally is the one doing it.

This guide explains how the score in Equal House is worked out, why it measures effort rather than hours, and what it is careful never to do. If you would rather move the numbers yourself, the Fairness Score page has a dial you can drag.

The question it answers

The score answers one question: is the work being shared evenly? It is not a measure of how hard anyone is trying, how good a parent they are, or who is “winning”. It describes the household, not a person.

That framing matters. A number that hands out blame starts arguments. A number that describes the week gives you something to look at together, and something to argue with if you think it is wrong. In the app you can tap How is this worked out? under the dial and see the sum with your own names and points.

Effort, not a count of jobs

The obvious way to split housework is to count jobs, and it is the least fair. Emptying the dishwasher takes five minutes; the food shop takes an hour. Do half the jobs each and one of you can still be doing three times the work.

So every job in Equal House carries effort points, made from four things:

• Difficulty, from 1 to 5: how much the job takes out of you, not how long it lasts.
• Time: 1 + minutes ÷ 30, so an hour-long job weighs three times a quick one.
• Unpleasantness: 1 for a neutral job, up to 2 for the ones nobody volunteers for.
• Skill: a little extra for jobs that need know-how.

Multiply them together and you have the job’s points. Emptying the dishwasher comes out at about 1.3. Cleaning the downstairs loo is only ten minutes, but it is rated 2 for difficulty and 2 for unpleasantness, so it comes out at 5.3. The food shop is 12.6, and deep-cleaning the oven is 18.

Our household chores list has 53 everyday jobs rated this way, the same ratings the app uses. Done for a normal week, they come to about 26 hours and about 300 effort points.

Why not just count hours?

Hours are better than a count, but they still treat ten minutes cleaning the loo the same as ten minutes watering the plants. Nobody who has done both believes that.

Here is a real week for two grown-ups, Sam and Alex, using jobs from that list:

• Sam: the morning school run five times, packed lunches five times, the food shop, the bathroom, the school emails, and planning next week’s meals. That is 14 jobs, 355 minutes and 83.5 effort points.
• Alex: the dishwasher every day, the dog walked three times, the kitchen sides three times, the plants watered twice, two washes on, and the bins. That is 18 jobs, 205 minutes and 33.8 effort points.

Measured three ways, the same week tells three different stories:

• By jobs ticked, Alex did more: 56% of them.
• By minutes, Sam did 63%. As a score that would be 87, which is green.
• By effort, Sam did 71%. The score is 79: amber, “A bit lopsided”.

Alex ticked more boxes. Sam did the heavier jobs. Only the effort measure says so.

How the number is worked out

The app adds up each grown-up’s effort points and measures how far the split is from even. With two of you, it comes down to a simple sum: 100 minus half the gap.

For Sam and Alex, the shares are 71% and 29%. The gap is 42, half the gap is 21, and 100 − 21 is 79. A 60/40 week is a gap of 20, so it scores 90. An even 50/50 is no gap at all, and scores 100.

With three or more grown-ups, the score measures how far the whole household is from an even split rather than the distance between any two people. A 50/30/20 week between three adults scores 80.

What the colours mean

The bands are set high on purpose, because a 70/30 week is not well shared:

• 90 to 100, green: Beautifully balanced. About as even as real life gets.
• 86 to 89, green: Well shared. Roughly 64/36 or better.
• 75 to 85, amber: A bit lopsided. One of you is doing noticeably more, from 65/35 to 75/25.
• Under 75, red: One person is carrying it. Worse than 75/25, and worth a conversation.

In the first week, the number is drawn in grey and labelled Settling in, because until there are seven days of data and a handful of jobs ticked off, a couple of tasks can swing it either way. With only one grown-up, or nothing logged, there is no number at all. A household of one would otherwise score a perfect 100 at exactly the moment someone is doing everything.

Being at work is not doing too little

A fair split is not always 50/50. If one of you works full time and the other is at home, the person at home doing more of the housework may be entirely fair.

So Equal House lets each grown-up set a work schedule, as weekly hours or as real shifts on dates, and the score expects less of whoever is at work. Only work between 7am and 10pm counts, since that is when household jobs happen, and a night shift counts the seven hours of sleep after it. A working day reduces what is expected of someone, but never takes it to nothing.

Take Sam and Alex again. If Alex works five eight-hour days while Sam is at home, the same 71/29 week scores 90: Beautifully balanced. If it is Sam who works those days and still does the heavier jobs, it scores 70, and goes red. The bars under the dial still show who did what. The score judges whether that was fair given the week each of you had.

Time away works a little differently. When someone is marked away, Auto-Balance and A fairer week ahead won’t give them jobs due while they are gone, and Bric’s page shows where a fair split falls for the days each of you was home. The dial itself reports the work that was done.

What it leaves out on purpose

• The children. A Fairness Score is about the grown-ups. Children’s jobs are kept separate: they earn stars and, if you choose, pocket money in Kid Zone, and never count for or against either parent. There is more on that in age-appropriate chores for kids.
• Blame. The score never names a winner or a loser. Auto-Balance doesn’t name anyone either, and the week in review counts what you got done between you.
• Finished work. When Auto-Balance shares out the week’s jobs, it only moves the ones still to do, and leaves alone anything pinned to one person.

Doing something about a low score

A score is only useful if it leads somewhere. In Equal House, Auto-Balance the week shares out the jobs still to do between the grown-ups, heaviest first, giving each to whoever leaves the score highest while allowing for who is at work, who is away and anyone’s quiet hours. It then tells you how many tasks it shared out and the score the week is on track for, without naming anyone. If you would rather choose, A fairer week ahead suggests which jobs could move and to whom, and nothing moves until you accept.

But the most useful thing a low score does is start a calm conversation. In Sam and Alex’s week, handing Alex the bathroom and the food shop would take the score from 79 to 100. That is a five-minute chat, not a row. There is more on having it in how to divide household chores fairly between partners and resentment over housework.