Chore Spinner
Can't decide who does what? Spin the wheel and let luck assign the next chore. Nobody argues with the wheel.
Want a designed sheet for the fridge? The free sample chore chart prints on one page. (The Print Shop sets are still in preparation — nothing there is on sale yet.)
What is a chore wheel?
A chore wheel is the fairest referee a household can have. Instead of negotiating, trading, or "forgetting", each person spins and does whatever the wheel says. This digital version replaces the paper-plate spinner with an animated wheel of twelve chores drawn from a database of real household tasks.
It differs from a paper spinner in one way that matters: the wheel remembers. A drawn chore is taken out of contention until every other chore on the wheel has come up, and only then does the pool reset. A paper plate cannot do that, and neither can a plain random picker — spin one twelve times and you will typically see about eight distinct chores, with something drawn three times and half the plate never touched at all. The counter under the wheel shows how many are left before the cycle resets.
That is what makes the fairness real rather than theoretical. A purely random wheel evens out eventually, but "eventually" is a statistical promise measured in hundreds of spins, and a household does a dozen. Exhausting the pool before repeating means the workload is level within a single cycle — the timescale people actually live on.
What the wheel removes is the two things that poison chore negotiations: recall ("I did dishes last time") and strategy ("I'll volunteer for the easy one first"). Neither survives a wheel that has already decided. And the spinning is honestly kind of fun — especially for kids, who will often do a chore they'd refuse if a parent assigned it, simply because the wheel said so.
Two honest limits. Changing kid mode or quick mode rebuilds the wheel and starts a new cycle, because the pool itself has changed. And the memory lives in the page, not in your household — reload the page, or spin on a second phone, and the cycle starts over. It is a fair referee for one sitting, not a ledger across the week; for that, the rotation generator is the tool that actually tracks who owes what.
How to use it
- Choose your modes — kid mode limits the wheel to child-appropriate tasks; quick mode caps everything at ten minutes.
- Take turns spinning. Each result shows the chore, the room it belongs to, and a time estimate.
- Do the chore. That's the deal. The wheel has spoken.
Three ways families use the wheel
- The nightly reset: everyone spins once after dinner in quick mode — ten focused minutes each, and the house resets daily.
- The Saturday draft: spin in rounds until the weekend list is fully assigned, worst-luck-wins bragging rights included.
- The tiebreaker: when two people both claim they took the trash out last, the wheel settles it in four seconds.
Frequently asked questions
How does the chore wheel pick a chore?
Each spin selects one chore from a pool of twelve daily and weekly household tasks, drawn from the same database that powers our schedule generator. The selection is random but not repeating: a chore that has already come up is held back until the other eleven have been drawn, then the pool resets. The wheel animation lands on the winning segment, and the result shows the chore, its room category, and roughly how long it takes.
Can kids use the chore wheel?
Yes — turn on kid mode and the pool is limited to child-appropriate tasks with simpler wording, like matching socks or watering the plants. Many families take turns spinning: whatever the wheel says, that's your chore, no arguing with the wheel.
What is quick-chore mode?
Quick mode restricts the wheel to chores of ten minutes or less. It's perfect for a nightly reset ritual — everyone spins once after dinner, does their ten minutes, and the house stays under control without a big weekend clean.
Does spinning again change my chore?
Yes, and the wheel makes respinning less rewarding on purpose: a respin draws from the chores that have not come up yet, so you cannot spin your way back to an easy one you already used. The honor system still matters. House rule suggestion: one respin allowed per day, and if the second result is worse, you keep it.