Gamifying the Chores – A Cozy Magic Home Experiment

For the next 30 days, The Cozy Magic HQ will be conducting an experiment.

My family and I have agreed to hold a housework competition.

Our goal is to see if gamifying chores will:

• Make housework more fun as a family?
• Result in a cleaner house?
• Make me feel less burned out?

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What makes me think it might?

Going on a slight tangent, but bear with me.

I call myself a homemaker, but I am primarily a stay-at-home parent. The main reason I don’t work out of the home is because I have young kids, and we are thankfully in a position where we can afford for one of us to stay at home (funnily enough, I only became a stay-at-home parent because we initially couldn’t afford childcare. That’s a talk for another day though).

I love being at home with them, and having the opportunity to make my home feel cozy and magical, but it is HARD.

I feel like I spend all day trying to keep to a cleaning schedule, as well as trying to put out mini domestic fires that only a toddler and a rambunctious 8 year old can start. And as I’m the primary adult and caregiver at home, it seems only right that I do the lion’s share of the housework.

But it’s leading to serious burn out and frustration, and the irrational thoughts that I’m ‘stuck’ doing all the domestic chores.

And I hate feeling like that. That is not the energy I want in my home.

I want to make things cozy and magical, and for me, that means a cleanish, clutter-free home. It feels like that’s when the magic circulates the best.

My eight year old will do everything to get out of cleaning, and my husband says he just isn’t domestically inclined.

But you know what all three of us have in common (and I suspect the toddler does too)?

We are all competitive as heck.

That’s where gamification comes in.

What is gamification?

In case you didn’t know, gamification…  is the process of integrating game design elements and principles (such as points,badges, and leaderboards) into non-game contexts in order to increase user engagement and motivation (Wiki). 

I have not been diagnosed with anything, but a lot of neurodivergent/ADHD/executive functioning resources I’ve come across seem helpful, and it was while trying to find a neurodivergent friendly chore chart on Etsy that I came across gamified chore charts.

This discovery led me to carry out more research (honestly, I just Googled it a lot), and I started coming across apps, cards, and games, all with the goal of helping you complete chores. There are group/family based ones, as well as ones for individuals. 

I tried an app, but I’m already trying hard to spend less time on my phone, and so I don’t need a new reason to constantly be on it. 

And I found that getting the chores done isn’t an issue for me. I just can’t physically get everything done. 

Sure, I could pay someone to come in and do some cleaning (and it’s something I’m still considering for seasonal cleans), but I also think this would be a great opportunity to learn about the stewardship of our home as a family.

So I decided to tap into my family’s competitive nature and decided to have a crack at making one suited for us.

Gamifying Chores – How I created The Hearth Cleaning Game

Things I knew I wanted this game to be:

• Easy to understand
• Easy to action
• Appealing to both instant and delayed gratification.

I think I managed to achieve that.

The Map of the Realm: Our Chore Manifesto 

I started by listing all the chores I do daily, as well as things that need to get done in each room/area of our home. 

I also used Home Comforts by Cheryl Mendelson and Martha Stewart’s Homekeeping Handbook for extra ideas, especially for monthly upkeep.

This is the what my list ended up looking like:

For the room/zone deep clean, I wrote out what needs to be done in each room, but it’s very specific for my home. I might have missed a couple of things, but this is what I have for the kitchen and TV room for example:

The Coin of the Realm: Sparkles System 

Once I had all the daily, weekly, and monthly chores decided, I assigned them Sparkles (what we are calling ‘points’), and they are given as the following:

3 Sparkles per daily chores 

5 Sparkles for weekly chores (per room)

7 Sparkles per monthly chore

To prevent any ‘cheating’, weekly and monthly chores cannot be completed until all daily chores (with the exception of the evening turn down) are completed.

My husband and I agreed that partial points can be awarded, but we all have to be in agreement about it (myself, husband, and daughter).

Rewards

The winner is the person who has accumulated the most points by Saturday morning.

The winner gets to:

• Have the winner’s trophy and bragging rights for the week
• Gets to choose the family movie (which we typically watch on the weekend)
• Can choose to not do housework/skip certain chores for the day (which would put them behind with Sparkles)
• Gets 7 Sparkles head start for the following week

To make things slightly easier for my daughter, she can be awarded full points for a chore even if she is being taught how to do something (e.g. if we show/teach her how to wash the dishwasher filters).

How will I know if this experiment is a success?

I’ve decided I will call this experiment a success if the following happens:

• The house is cleaner
• My family does the chores
• We actively engage with amending the game so it works better for us
• We have fun

As always, I’ll be keeping notes and blog about it in around four weeks.

A Gift for You

If this sounds like something you’d like to try to, here is a free printable for you to try it out!

Before you go

Now that I’ve share what I’m up to, I want to hear from you!

Have you ever felt the need to gamifying or add some novelty to your cleaning routine? How did you do this? Feel free to email me at hello@cozymagichome.com, or drop a comment below. I would genuinely love to hear and learn from you.

You can download a copy of the game right here on this page to start your own household competition this weekend. But if you want to dive even deeper into creating a peaceful, grounding home environment, I have a special gift for you.

Enter your email below to join my newsletter and instantly unlock my guide: The Cozy Magic Home Domestic Rituals PDF.

Inside, I share three daily anchors I use to help gently ritualize domesticity in my home.

By joining, you’ll also get my monthly scroll filled with low-waste kitchen alchemy, cozy book recommendations, and real-time updates on who is currently surviving our chaotic household game.

Until the next magical mess,

Amrita