Chores are necessary for an apartment with multiple college students on different schedules to remain clean. It definitely can seem tedious to complete chores, especially if you grew up in a household where your parents did everything for you.
If you are a clean freak, you may be overwhelmed living with many new people and sharing a small space. However, it is crucial to set a schedule and discuss the most efficient way for chores to be completed based on how many roommates you have and your personal habits.
My roommates and I designed a rotating schedule with the following important chores: garbage/recycling, dishwasher, vacuuming, and countertops. We have a dry erase calendar where we write our names next to each chore and switch them every Sunday night. There are 5 of us, so one of us will always have a week off after we load and unload the dishwasher for a week.
Since everyone has only one very simple task a week, everyone does their chores and it doesn’t take much time out of our busy days. This also establishes a collective trust between all of us, and is a small motivator to keep the apartment as clean as possible to avoid doing more work than we have to.
In addition, we all put $5 in a jar each month to buy cleaning supplies, paper towels, and garbage bags. This way everyone contributes the same amount and we always have the necessary supplies to make sure our apartment stays clean and we stay healthy! These small tips can help you create a similar system for your apartment to ensure that arguments regarding cleanliness are avoided.