Chore Rotation Calculator

Enter your chores, the people sharing them, and a week number.

How it is calculated

Both lists are split on commas and trimmed; empty entries are ignored. The chore in position i (counting from 0) goes to the person in position (i + w) mod P, where w is the week number (a decimal is cut to a whole number, a blank means 1) and P is the number of people. Each week the whole assignment slides by one person, so the pattern repeats every P weeks.

Week 0 gives the first chore to the first person. Negative weeks also work and rotate backwards. The tool prints one line per chore as “chore — person”, plus the counts of chores and people. If there are more chores than people, some people get more than one chore, and the same person can appear twice in a week; if there are more people than chores, some people get nothing that week.

Worked example

There are 4 chores (Dishes, Trash, Vacuum, Bathroom) and P = 3 people (Ayşe, Mehmet, Can), and we want week 2. Dishes is position 0: (0 + 2) mod 3 = 2, which is Can. Trash is position 1: (1 + 2) mod 3 = 0, which is Ayşe. Vacuum is position 2: (2 + 2) mod 3 = 1, which is Mehmet. Bathroom is position 3: (3 + 2) mod 3 = 2, which is Can again. So the schedule is Dishes — Can, Trash — Ayşe, Vacuum — Mehmet, Bathroom — Can.

Try this example →

Common mistakes

  • Separating names with semicolons or line breaks. Only commas split the lists, so “A; B” is treated as one single person called “A; B”.
  • Listing more chores than people and expecting an even split. With 4 chores and 3 people one person always gets two chores per week, because the first and fourth chore share a position in the cycle.
  • Expecting the schedule to repeat after the number of chores. It repeats after the number of people, so week 4 equals week 1 with 3 people.
  • Starting the count at week 1 and being surprised that week 0 looks different. Week 0 gives the first chore to the first person, and every week after shifts it by one.
  • Typing a person's name twice by accident. That person is then counted as two people and gets more turns than the others.

About this calculator

A fair chore schedule rotates every task through every person over time rather than assigning the same job permanently to one member of a household — this calculator generates that rotation using modular arithmetic, shifting the chore-to-person assignment by one position each week so that in any run of P consecutive weeks (P = the number of people) every person gets every chore exactly once.

The method is popular with families, shared houses, and college roommates setting up a recurring cleaning or task schedule, since it removes the need to manually reassign duties and avoids the perception that any one person is stuck with the least pleasant job. Entering a week number instantly shows who's assigned to what, making it easy to print a schedule months in advance or settle a dispute over whose turn it is.

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