Most house shares don't fall out over big things. They fall out over the bins, the bathroom and a sink full of someone else's pans. A cleaning rota fixes that, as long as it's fair, clear and easy to keep up. Here's how to set one up in an evening, with a sample rota you can copy.
Why most cleaning rotas fail
A rota on the fridge usually starts well and is forgotten within a month. The same few problems come up again and again:
- The jobs aren't equal. "Bathroom" and "wipe the table" are not the same amount of work, so whoever gets the bathroom every week feels hard done by.
- Nobody agreed what "done" means. One person's clean kitchen is another person's "you just moved the crumbs around".
- It doesn't cope with real life. Someone goes home for the weekend, works nights or is ill, and the rota quietly stops.
- Nobody knows whose turn it is. If you have to check a photo of a whiteboard to find out, you won't.
A good rota deals with each of these up front.
Step 1: List every job, and how often it needs doing
Sit down together for twenty minutes and write down every shared job. Split them by how often they need doing:
- Daily or as you go: washing up your own things, wiping the hob and worktops after cooking, clearing the table.
- Weekly: cleaning the bathroom (toilet, sink, shower or bath, mirror), hoovering and mopping shared floors, kitchen deep wipe (cupboard fronts, sink, microwave), taking out bins and recycling, wiping door handles and light switches.
- Monthly: clearing out the fridge, cleaning the oven, descaling the kettle, washing bath mats and tea towels, dusting skirting boards.
- Now and then: defrosting the freezer, cleaning windows, sorting the hallway cupboard.
Personal jobs, like your own room and your own washing, stay off the rota. The rota is only for the shared spaces.
Check your council's website for your bin and recycling collection days and put them on the list too. Missing a collection is one of the quickest ways to start an argument.
Step 2: Group the jobs into fair bundles
Instead of one job each, make bundles that take roughly the same time. For a four-person house, that might be:
- Kitchen: deep wipe of worktops, hob, sink and microwave, plus throwing away anything out of date in the shared shelves.
- Bathroom: toilet, sink, shower or bath, mirror and floor.
- Floors: hoovering and mopping the hallway, stairs, lounge and kitchen.
- Bins and odds: bins and recycling out on collection day, bins back in, wiping handles and switches, restocking loo roll and washing-up liquid from the shared kitty.
If one bundle is clearly worse (it's usually the bathroom), you can either make it lighter by moving a small job elsewhere, or simply accept that it rotates, so everyone has the bad week equally often.
Step 3: Rotate the bundles every week
Rotating is what makes a rota feel fair. Each person has every bundle once a month, so nobody is stuck with the bathroom forever. Here's a sample four-week rota for four housemates:
| Week | Kitchen | Bathroom | Floors | Bins and odds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | Sam | Priya | Jo | Tom |
| Week 2 | Tom | Sam | Priya | Jo |
| Week 3 | Jo | Tom | Sam | Priya |
| Week 4 | Priya | Jo | Tom | Sam |
After week 4 it starts again from the top. With three housemates, use three bundles; with five, add a fifth bundle (monthly jobs work well) or give one person a week off in turn.
Agree a deadline for the weekly jobs, such as "done by Sunday evening", so everyone knows when a job counts as late.
Step 4: Agree what "done" looks like
Write a short checklist for each bundle, so there's nothing to argue about. For example, "Bathroom: toilet inside and out, sink and taps, shower screen or bath, mirror, floor mopped, bin emptied." It feels formal, but it stops the "that's not clean" conversation before it starts, and it helps anyone who has never cleaned a bathroom before.
Step 5: Plan for holidays, swaps and busy weeks
People go away, have exams or work long shifts. Agree simple rules now:
- Swaps are fine if both people agree and the rota is updated, so everyone knows.
- If you're away for the whole week, either do your bundle before you go, swap with someone, or skip your turn and pick up an extra one when you're back.
- If someone is ill, the house covers for them and nobody keeps score.
The point is that the rota bends, rather than breaking the first time something unusual happens.
What to do when someone stops pulling their weight
It happens in most houses at some point. A few things help:
- Talk early, in person, rather than leaving notes or posting passive-aggressive messages in the group chat.
- Talk about the job, not the person. "The bathroom didn't get done last week, can we sort it?" goes down better than "you never clean".
- Check the rota still works. If someone keeps missing the same job, perhaps their shifts clash with it, and a different deadline or swap fixes it.
- Review it monthly. A quick ten-minute check-in once a month lets you rebalance bundles before resentment builds.
Paper, spreadsheet or app?
A printed rota on the fridge is free and easy, but it can't remind anyone and it's out of date as soon as someone swaps. A shared spreadsheet is better, but somebody has to update it every week. An app that rotates jobs automatically and sends reminders does the remembering for you, which is usually where paper rotas fall down.
Whichever you choose, the steps above matter more than the tool: list every job, bundle them fairly, rotate, agree what "done" means and plan for real life.