A REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK “A hands-on, real talk guide for navigating the hot-button issues that so many families struggle with.”–Reese Witherspoon Tired, stressed, and in need of more help from your partner? Imagine running your household (and life!) in a new way…It started with the Sh*t I Do List. Tired of being the “shefault” parent responsible for all aspects of her busy household, Eve … aspects of her busy household, Eve Rodsky counted up all the unpaid, invisible work she was doing for her family — and then sent that list to her husband, asking for things to change. His response was… underwhelming. Rodsky realized that simply identifying the issue of unequal labor on the home front wasn’t enough: She needed a solution to this universal problem. Her sanity, identity, career, and marriage depended on it.
The result is Fair Play: a time- and anxiety-saving system that offers couples a completely new way to divvy up chores and responsibilities. Rodsky interviewed more than five hundred men and women from all walks of life to figure out what the invisible work in a family actually entails and how to get it all done efficiently. With four easy-to-follow rules, 100 household tasks, and a series of conversation starters for you and your partner, Fair Play helps you prioritize what’s important to your family and who should take the lead on every chore from laundry to homework to dinner.
“Winning” this game means rebalancing your home life, reigniting your relationship with your significant other, and reclaiming your Unicorn Space — as in, the time to develop the skills and passions that keep you interested and interesting. Stop drowning in to-dos and lose some of that invisible workload that’s pulling you down. Are you ready to try Fair Play? Let’s deal you in.
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I’m so impressed with the Fair Play handbook. Not only did Eve break down every task that a couple is responsible for, but she managed to create a system where dividing those tasks is fun, insightful and gratifying. Her approach is filled with love, humor, wisdom and the idea that if we can work together and acknowledge each other’s strengths and weaknesses, we can build better, stronger, and longer lasting relationships.
There are three ‘people’ in every busy relationship: Person A, Person B, and the system that governs them. When things feel overwhelming, most people point at themselves or their partner to explain it, but more often than not the system itself is the problem. This is brilliantly illustrated in Fair Play, where Eve Rodsky makes the existing system visible and provides a clear path to build a new one that enables readers to focus on what their family values most.
If your family is struggling to achieve a happy division of household labor, read this book. Fair Play offers practical tools for maximizing peace and minimizing resentment — while freeing up all parties to pursue their best lives.
Eve Rodsky has created a new language and fresh conversation around the topic of doing it all, stressing out and losing ourselves and relationships in the process. Every page of this book has a take-away, a new idea of approaching a topic that has plagued parents for decades and has needed a plan.
I just want to thank Eve Rodsky, brave woman, for taking on the mental load… of solving the mental load. Fair Play isn’t just a great idea… it’s going to change cultural norms so that women can have equity at home and equality in the workplace. Yes, better division of laundry can help solve the pay gap!
First off, this review may change based on results. I’ve just finished reading the book, and I feel positively about it. My husband has said he will be a willing participant in trying this new system out. Once that happens, our actual experience using Fair Play can either negatively or positively affect my review and rating.
That being said, just from reading this book I feel good. I feel like I might have a realistic plan in my hands that can improve my home life. The main thing I loved from the very beginning of reading this book is that I don’t feel alone. After reading the different stories described and reading the author’s guesses at what I am feeling or thinking, I would think, “That’s me!” It helped me in just that aspect alone. What I have been feeling and experiencing in my life is something others experience and it is one version of normal. And it’s ok to want for something better.
This book does mainly focus on the perspective of Mother and Wife of a household with children. However, the game is customizable to fit your family’s needs and values. Cards can be removed if they do not apply. In my personal opinion, cards can be added if you find something missing. You and your partner define the logistics of each card and work together to figure out what is best for your family.
Eve Rodsky does talk about the benefits for everyone in the household to have an organized system in place like this one. She talks about the benefits for an over exhausted wife/mother, as well as the benefits for a well meaning, overly nagged husband/father. She even points out the benefits to children in the home who see a working positive relationship between their parents who still can identify as interesting people outside of their roles as parent or spouse.
One funny thing from my life is I tried to create a similar system for my own home about a year ago. It was definitely no where near this detailed and thought out, but I thought of putting chores on index cards and my husband and I each held half. It didn’t work out very well. But after reading this book and seeing all the research and testing Eve Rodsky did, it makes so much sense why it didn’t work. We lacked a lot of the fundamentals found in the Fair Play system, like the rules, and the knowledge of fair instead of equal. This system jumped out at me because of the card game mentality, and I think it is right up my alley.
Again, I haven’t yet put this system into practice yet. I am planning on updating my review once my family has tried it out. But after reading the book, I am looking forward to the process and potentially seeing the benefits it talks about.