Think about fair as proportional to bandwidth, not perfectly equal. On weeks your partner is at 50–55 hours, you own most of the daily resets because you have more predictable energy, and they take low-friction jobs and a focused weekend block. A workable split is you do a 15 minute kitchen reset after dinner, run the dishwasher nightly, and start two laundry loads on Tuesday and Friday mornings. They unload the dishwasher before work, take out trash and recycling, do pet care or mail, and fold and put away the laundry in the evening while watching a show. Then you both do a 60 to 90 minute power clean together on Saturday morning to hit bathrooms, floors, and a quick fridge check, which keeps resentment down because you are both in it at the same time.
Make it easy to follow without keeping score by assigning ownership, not micro tasks. Put a simple chart on the fridge or a shared note with who owns kitchen reset, bathrooms, floors, laundry start, laundry finish, and groceries, and agree on a minimum standard so you are not redoing each other's work. Anchor chores to routines so they actually happen, like unload while coffee brews, wipe counters during the last five minutes of cooking, and change sheets right before starting a load. Batch meal prep on Sunday for two dinners and use a slow cooker or sheet pan meals on class nights to keep dishes and effort down. Do a 10 minute nightly tidy with a timer, and have a short Sunday check in to swap jobs if one of you had a brutal week and to pick one bigger task to ignore guilt free. The rule that helps most is default to your plan, communicate if you need a swap, and assume good intent, which cuts off scorekeeping before it starts.
