How Beurt splits a week

No magic and no secret formula: the same trade-offs your house makes at the kitchen table — except the planner remembers them, every week. Here is one week, written out.

The house

Four housemates, and the first thing to notice: everyone gives their own number for what a chore costs. That is not sloppiness — it is the whole system. A bathroom that takes Anouk an hour takes Tim 25 minutes, both answers are right, and the planner works with both.

Those numbers are not private: the Balance tab shows the whole house what everyone entered. Pricing the dishes at an hour while the rest said fifteen minutes is not a hack — it is a conversation at dinner.

Decision 1 — who gets the bathroom?

The cheapest answer is obvious: always Tim. He is done in 25 minutes. But “always Tim” is exactly how rotas die — three weeks in, Tim is the bathroom person, and nobody ever agreed to that.

So the job nobody wants rotates, and it counts in each person’s own minutes. This week it is Anouk’s turn. For her that is 60 minutes — a third of her whole week — so the planner gives her only small things next to it. Tim gets the kitchen and the dishes twice: more jobs, fewer minutes. Both end up contributing a comparable share of their own time.

That answers the question every rota breaks on: fair in what, exactly? Not in job count, not in someone else’s pace — in your own minutes.

Decision 2 — Daan has exams

Daan’s week has almost no open slots: he gave that week its own grid (or connected his calendar — the planner checks it a few times a day). The planner does not try to squeeze him in anyway. He gets the bins, five minutes on Tuesday, and the rest shifts to the others.

Important: that is not a write-off. The weeks after the exams even it out again — Daan runs a little heavier until the balance is straight. Nobody had to say anything or keep track.

Decision 3 — Fenna skipped the kitchen last week

Last week the kitchen never got done. Someone marked it “not done” — two taps, and the second tap shows exactly what it costs: the job moved to whoever was freest, and Fenna’s twenty minutes moved into her coming weeks.

So this week her schedule is a bit fuller. No message to the group, no red screen, no broken streak. The only thing that happens is the only thing needed: the score is straight again, and nobody had to bring it up at dinner.

What the week looks like

The minutes are not equal — and that is the point. They are equal across the weeks, at each person’s own pace, exams and missed turns included. A rota that splits every week exactly evenly is precisely the rota that stops being true after three weeks.

What the planner deliberately does not do

• No fines and no shaming. “Not done” moves minutes; it does not message the group.
• No notifications about anyone else’s jobs. You only hear about your own day.
• No promises twelve weeks out. It plans twelve weeks ahead, but the far weeks are a forecast — they shift when someone changes their availability, joins or leaves. Only the current week is fixed.

Rather see it than read it? The front page has this exact house as a clickable demo — Anouk, Tim, Daan and Fenna, this week included.

Read on

• A chore schedule that sticks
• Schoonmaakrooster maken (Nederlands)