Better Life Lab Experiments
A collection of the experiments and resources developed by the BLLx team and its partners.
Gender equality starts early: Research shows that girls are given more daily, indoor, and lesser-valued chores such as dishwashing and cleaning, while boys are rewarded with higher-paying and more occasional outdoor chores like lawn mowing. What does it look like to involve all members of the household in domestic labor?
Drawing on the work of experts in behavioral science, psychology, and family counseling—and the experience of families who successfully share the load fairly—the team at New America’s Better Life Lab has developed a series of experiments designed to help busy families get stuff done. These experiments are also intended to help all household members think a little longer and harder about the division of labor and nudge everyone toward more gender equality at home.
We invite you to explore the list of experiments below, designed to involve the whole family with age-appropriate chores and expectations. Because there’s one thing we know for certain: Before we can achieve equality at work, we need equality at home.
Mental Load
Experiments to more fairly share all the thinking, planning, and organizing work it takes to keep a family and household running.
Experiment No. 34: Making Hard Decisions
Experiment No. 33: Work-Life Boundariess
Experiment No. 30: Adult Homework—Make it a Group Project
- We’re Trying to Solve: The administrative burden of running a household falling on one person—usually Mom
- Target Audience: Adults, everyone
- Category: Mental load
- Estimated Time: 15-20 mins perweek
- Difficulty Level: Moderate with regular follow-up
Experiment No. 37: Food Director for a Week
Experiment No. 29: WAKE UP! Dads, How to Let Moms Know You See How Much They Do (and then do more yourself)
- We’re Trying to Solve: Making partners’ contributions at home better seen and appreciated.
- Target Audience: Dads
- Ages: Adults
- Category: Mental load, household chores
- Estimated Time: 10 minutes per day
- Difficulty Level: Easy
Experiment No. 28: Mental Load "Swear Jars"
- Target Audience: Partners, spouses, older children
- Ages: 13 and up
- Category: Mental load
- Estimated Time: 15-20 minutes per day
- Difficulty: Easy to Moderate
Experiment No. 25: Household Responsibility Meters
- Target Audience: Partners, housemates
- Ages: Adults
- Category: Mental load, helpful guides
- Estimated Time: 5 minutes per day
- Difficulty Level: Easy
Experiment No. 21: Support Network
- We’re Trying to Solve: More equally shared parenting/division of labor
- Target Audience: Individuals
- Ages: Adults
- Category: Mental load
- Estimated Time: Ongoing
- Difficulty Level: Easy
Experiment No. 17: The Ruth Bader Ginsburg
- We’re Trying to Solve: More fairly sharing the parenting mental load
- Target Audience: Parents and co-parents
- Ages: Adults
- Category: Mental load
- Estimated Time: 15 minutes
- Difficulty Level: Easy
Experiment No. 15: The Handoff
- We’re Trying to Solve: The unequal work of rebalancing the load
- Target Audience: The whole household
- Ages: 3 and up
- Category: Mental load
- Estimated Time: 15 minutes
- Difficulty Level: Easy
Experiment No. 7: Fairer Family Festivities
- We’re Trying to Solve: One person doing all the work to make holiday magic
- Target Audience: Everyone
- Ages: 3 and up
- Category: Mental load, holidays and celebrations
- Estimated Time: 1+ hour
- Difficulty Level: Difficult, but everyone involved will be happier
Experiment No. 6: Full Ownership
We’re Trying to Solve: Owning tasks
Target Audience: Housemates, couples
Ages: Adults
Category: Household chores, mental load
Estimated Time: Depends on the task
Difficulty Level: Easy – hard
Experiment No. 3: The Social Secretary
- We’re Trying to Solve: An unbalanced mental load
- Target Audience: Parents, couples, housemates, families
- Ages: 8 and up
- Category: Mental load
- Estimated Time: 30 minutes – 1 hour over a few weeks
- Difficulty Level: Moderate with some followup
Household Chores
Experiments to better share routine, daily chores like cooking, cleaning, and laundry, and help family members develop new skills and habits so no chores fall to just one person.
Experiment No. 39: Shared Batch Cooking
Experiment No. 37: Food Director for a Week
Experiment No. 31: Making Chore Charts Work For You
Experiment No. 29: WAKE UP! Dads, How to Let Moms Know You See How Much They Do (and then do more yourself)
- We’re Trying to Solve: Making partners’ contributions at home better seen and appreciated.
- Target Audience: Dads
- Ages: Adults
- Category: Mental load, Household chores
- Estimated Time: 10 minutes per day
- Difficulty Level: Easy
Experiment No. 23: Gratitude
- We’re Trying to Solve: Raise the awareness of unpaid labor for couples and families
- Target Audience: Couples, families, housemates, everyone
- Ages: All ages
- Category: Household chores
- Estimated Time: 1 – 10 minutes
- Difficulty Level: Easy
Experiment No. 22: Just Notice
- We’re Trying to Solve: Raise the awareness of unpaid labor for couples & families
- Target Audience: Families, housemates
- Ages: All ages
- Category: Household chores
- Estimated Time: 1 – 10 minutes
- Difficulty Level: Easy
Experiment No. 19: The Choreganizer
- Target Audience: Parents, couples, housemates, families
- Ages: 4 and up
- Category: Household chores
- Estimated Time: 1 hour
- Difficulty Level: Ninja (regular follow-up)
Experiment No. 16: Rise and Shine
- We’re Trying to Solve: The unequal work of navigating morning chaos
- Target Audience: The whole household
- Ages: 4 and up
- Category: Household chores
- Estimated Time: 20-30 minutes upfront, 5 minutes a day for a week
- Difficulty Level: Easy
Experiment No. 9: Kitchen Buddies
- We’re Trying to Solve: Sharing the dishwashing load
- Target Audience: Families, couples, housemates
- Ages: 6 and up
- Category: Household chores
- Estimated Time: 30 minutes
- Difficulty Level: Easy, one week
Experiment No. 8: The Big Pot
- We’re Trying to Solve: Reducing the daily 6 o’clock dinner scramble
- Target Audience: Families, housemates
- Ages: 3 and up
- Category: Household chores
- Estimated Time: 1 to 1 ½ hours
- Difficulty Level: Easy (some prep)
Experiment No. 6: Full Ownership
We’re Trying to Solve: Owning tasks
Target Audience: Housemates, couples
Ages: Adults
Category: Household chores, mental load
Estimated Time: Depends on the task
Difficulty Level: Easy – hard
Experiment No. 5: The Laundry Folding Party
- We’re Trying to Solve: The clean laundry is piling up
- Target Audience: Families, housemates
- Ages: 3 and up
- Category: Household chores
- Estimated Time: 1 hour or more
- Difficulty Level: Focused work for at least an hour, but fun too
Experiment No. 4: Freaky Friday
- We’re Trying to Solve: Getting stuck in a gendered chore rut
- Target Audience: Families, housemates
- Ages: 3 and up
- Category: Household chores
- Estimated Time: 10 minutes to 1 hour
- Difficulty Level: Fun. One time
Holidays and Celebrations
Experiments to share the extensive work of holiday and event planning, and even let go of some traditions altogether.
Experiment No. 13: SMART Resolutions
- We’re Trying to Solve: Unfair division of labor
- Target Audience: Partners, spouses, housemates, parents
- Ages: 3 and up
- Category: Household chores, holidays and celebrations
- Estimated Time: 3+ hours
- Difficulty Level: Moderate, some planning and follow-through
Experiment No. 11: Tradition Transition
- We’re Trying to Solve: Holiday pressure, stress, and the mental load
- Target Audience: Individuals, families
- Ages: 12 and up
- Category: Holidays and celebrations
- Estimated Time: 3+ hours
- Difficulty Level: Difficult, but fun and meaningful
Experiment No. 10: Gift Gathering
- We’re Trying to Solve: Holiday pressure, stress, and the mental load
- Target Audience: Families, children, partners, and spouses
- Ages: 3 and up
- Category: Holidays and celebrations
- Estimated Time: 3 hours+
- Difficulty Level: Difficult (but fun and meaningful)
Experiment No. 7: Fairer Family Festivities
- We’re Trying to Solve: One person doing all the work to make holiday magic
- Target Audience: Everyone
- Ages: 3 and up
- Category: Mental load, holidays and celebrations
- Estimated Time: 1+ hour
- Difficulty Level: Difficult, but everyone involved will be happier
Leisure
Experiments to ensure everyone gets time to relax, recharge, and have fun in the midst of their busy lives.
Experiment No. 27: Swapping Alone Time
- Target Audience: Partners, parents, housemates
- Ages: Adults
- Category: Leisure
- Estimated Time: 30 minutes – ½ day
- Difficulty Level: Easy (smaller time interval) – Medium (longer time interval)
Experiment No. 24: Ritual of Connection
Target Audience: Families, housemates
Ages: All ages
Category: Leisure
Estimated Time: 30 minutes – 1 hour
Difficulty Level: Easy
Experiment No. 1: The Leisure Co-Sponsor
- We’re Trying to Solve: Ensuring everyone has time for play
- Target Audience: Families, parents and kids, couples
- Ages: 8 and up
- Category: Leisure
- Estimated Time: One hour or more
- Difficulty Level: Fun! (With some planning and follow-through)
Assessment and Check-in Tools
Easy tools to assess how fair your current arrangement is, evaluate how BLLx is going in your home, and talk through how to make the experiments work best for your household.
Experiment No. 36: The Chore Check-In
We’re Trying to Solve: Giving partners common ground
Target Audience: Couples, parents, partners
Ages: Adults
Category: Household chores, mental load
Estimated Time: 1 minute
Difficulty Level: Piece of cake
Experiment No. 32: The Equal Partner Quiz
We’re Trying to Solve: Unfair chore and care distribution
Target Audience: Adults, Everyone
Category: Household Chores
Estimated Time: 20 minutes
Difficulty Level: Easy
Experiment No. 18: Experiment Redux
- We’re Trying to Solve: More fairly sharing the load
- Target Audience: Partners
- Ages: Adults
- Category: Assessment and check-in tools
- Estimated Time: Varies
- Difficulty Level: Varies
Experiment No. 14: Beta Tester Check-In
- We’re Trying to Solve: Unequal division of labor
- Target Audience: The whole household
- Ages: 3 and up
- Category: Assessment and check-in tools
- Estimated Time: 15 minutes
- Difficulty Level: Easy
Experiment No. 2: The Shared Parenting Assessment
- We’re Trying to Solve: Parenting that isn't shared fairly
- Target Audience: Parents
- Ages: Adults
- Category: Assessment and check-in tools
- Estimated Time: 30 minutes
- Difficulty Level: Easy, with some concentration and follow-up
Other Helpful Guides
A selection of non-experiment resources to help families and households try out BLLx experiments and cultivate equal sharing at home.
Are You an Equal Partner at Home? An Interview with Author Kate Mangino
It has never been more critical that men and others who have traditionally taken the back seat in domestic life step up into equal partnership with the women in their lives and deliberately work toward gender equality in all facets of life.
Haley Swenson spoke to author and researcher Kate Mangino about Equal Partners, her new book packed with research and practical advice on how couples, their families, and their communities, can do just that.
Combating Burnout as a Single Working Parent
Brigid Schulte and Stavroula Pabst wrote for the Harvard Business Review about what single-parents can do to avoid burnout.
How To Handle Child Care Disruptions Equally With Your Partner — Because We All Know They Happen
Haley Swenson and Emily Hallgren wrote for Romper, a site for millennial moms, about navigating child care disruptions without putting all the stress on moms.
Keeping the Fairness Mission on Track During a Pandemic.
How do we keep the mission for a fair division of household labor on track during a pandemic? Takeaways from BLLx's October 2020 happy hour event.
Getting Family Buy-In
What to do when your partner, kids, or roommates aren't motivated to share the load of maintaining the household.
How Much Can Your Kids Help With?
A short overview of what the research says about age appropriate chores for children between ages 2 – 17.
Gender and Household Labor
A short overview of what the research says about the gendered division of labor.
Could a Digital Tool Help Families Share the Load at Home? Fairshare's Rachel Drapper Thinks So
A Q&A with BLLx researchers Brigid Schulte and Haley Swenson
We know that no two households are the same, and not all of our experiments will be right for you. If you do try an experiment at home, please let us know what worked or what could have gone better via this form or at bllx@newamerica.org.