Fair Play Cards Date Night: A Fun Way to Pick a Chore Schedule for Adults

Need a fun way to pick a chore schedule for adults and rebalance household responsibilities? The Fair Play Cards date night to the rescue!

Chores – they’re not really fun for any couple to talk about or do.

BUT, it’s so important that they get done, and that one person isn’t doing the lion’s share of them (talk about a recipe for resentment!).

I realized that our relationship needed a chores check-up…and I chose a fun way to do it (because, why not?).

Check out how the Fair Play Cards date night came together, and the chore schedule for adults we came up with over the next week.

Hint: even my husband had fun – a little competition in a relationship is good, right?

The Fair Play Cards Date Night

Earlier this year, my husband and I moved cross-country. Anyone who has done this knows how much the transition and waiting and everything else that comes with moving disrupts the normal routine of things.

In many good ways, and in some, well, ways that need rebalancing.

That was the inspiration for this date night.

Goals:

• Discuss the mental load in our relationship
• Dole out specific chore tasks on a chore schedule for the next week
• Connect with each other (doing something besides streaming a show)

We’ve added a child, a new kitten (WOW – super cute and lots of work there!), a new home, new jobs, and so much more into the mix between now and the last time we sat to discuss household tasks, family responsibilities, and life responsibilities.

In other words, we were lonnnngggggg overdue for this.

Maybe you and your partner are long overdue as well?

Eve Rodsky’s Fair Play deck of cards delivered a meaningful rundown of who does what, what no one has really taken responsibility for, and where we might need to rebalance.

Topics include things we don’t normally talk about, like:

• Home Cards
• Out Cards
• Caregiving Cards
• Magic Cards
• Wild Cards
• Unicorn Space Cards (love this one, because it acknowledges that when things get a bit more balanced for everyone, they can take the time to “play” at a passion hobby)

I wanted the date night to be in two parts: one part of each of us going through the cards and choosing who currently does the work, and discussing our feelings and such around everything.

And the second part with us choosing specific tasks for a chore schedule moving forward (while having some fun doing so).

Talking About the Mental Load in Relationships

It was really good for both of us to see these cards out in front of us and talk about the specific mental loads we were both taking on in the relationship.

Very eye-opening!

For example, we acknowledged that Paul does more of the bedtime routines now with our little guy. However, we discussed that this was because he goes on work trips semi-consistently, and during those times, I’m all-on-deck the whole time. So, him picking up many of the bedtimes in between trips really helps rebalance things there.

We have a natural flow of me cooking during the week, and him cooking during the weekend, and we both acknowledged that this works really well for us. We both love to cook, but when there are nice breaks, then no one person gets overwhelmed/burned out from it.

He also thanked me for taking the lead with teacher communication, saying that he was much more comfortable with me doing it (and I feel fine doing it!). I thanked him for his role of addressing Hard Questions with our little guy (see – so many cool cards that we wouldn’t have come up with on our own!).

And with that goodwill and communication, we moved ahead in choosing our chores.

Picking a Chore Schedule for Adults with Our Chore List

Next up, we wanted to address specific chore tasks that needed to be done, and choose from them for our next week’s chore schedule.

This was the perfect follow-up after discussing our mental loads and understanding better what each of us was carrying.

I paired the tasks with some really fun/competitive ways to dole them out over the next few weeks.

Date Night Games for Couples: How We Picked Our Chores

I created these magical chore boxes first.

• I found these really fun scratch-off stickers and put them on the back of index cards for some get-out-of-chore-type cards (I used 3” ones and they were large enough to write chores under them).
• Then I put them into one of two Dollar Tree boxes.
• I used a silly, analog Dollar Tree water game to compete and see who won their pick of one of the boxes. We timed each other for 15 seconds to see who could get the most rings into the square (the winner got to choose from the magical boxes!).

Then, I wrote down several specific chore tasks that need to be done around our home and in our lives, as well as some specific Fair Play cards that we needed to choose the responsible person for.

Our household chores list this round included: scrubbing the toilets, scrubbing the showers, laundry, and cleaning the sap spots on the side of my car (ugh!).

I got this giant dice from Five Below (here’s a similar one), and put one of each chore task (and a few of the Fair Play cards) into each of 6 bags (also from Dollar Tree).

We took turns rolling the dice and choosing our chores, which I wrote out on a giant, laminated chore chart for couples I made. Very simple, but effective.

Paul got a Free No-Chores Day card (lucky duck!), as well as scrubbing the toilets and laundry. I got scrubbing the side of my car (it’s got sap on it from our tree), and scrubbing the showers.

And we gave ourselves a deadline for getting these specific tasks done (one week from the date night).

Done, and DONE!

The cool thing is we still have cards to go through, which will definitely open up even more discussions (in a good way!) for us. Hmmm…perhaps during a future at-home date night with the rest of the cards? I dig it. And if you’re looking for more date night ideas for married couples, here are 37 at-home date night ideas (no TV required).