For a long time, the chores to be done each day were assigned based on the time of day (morning chores before evening ones), so that when the schedule was displayed the chores would be roughly in the order they should be done in.
ChoreBuster shares chores out based on how much work each person has done so far. If Tom does a difficult chore then Harry might need to do two easy chores. However what can happen is if a large chore is in the evening it will be the last to be allocated, after several chores have already been allocated to everyone. Someone ends up with the big chore and ends the day with many more ‘points’ than everyone else. On the next day they have less chores to do while everyone else has more, in order to restore fairness.
Visually, it would look like this:
Sally has a big overhang on Monday simply because the big chore was allocated to her last.
But if big chores were allocated before others then there would be less empty days as there would be more opportunity for others to catch up in the same day, more like this:
Notice how Tom and Harry have three chores on Monday, instead of two. On Tuesday there is no imbalance to correct Monday’s imbalance.
As this change will fundamentally alter everyone’s schedules, there could be problems or unexpected behaviour. People use ChoreBuster in ways we can’t predict so there may be people who were relying on the old way of doing things, who will be disappointed with the results. If you are one of those people, please tell us and we’ll look into it. If there are many like you it will be possible to provide a setting for you to opt for the old way.
This change will be deployed this weekend, so people notice less discrepancy between their daily and weekly emails.
Buckle up. If things go off the rails, let us know.