I Used a “Wheel of Chores” to Declutter and My Kids Loved It

After a busy few weeks of summer travel and adventures, my family and I returned to a home that was in need of a major declutter.

Unfortunately, with beautiful weather and more fun activities calling our names, we kept putting it off until it became too much to bear.

I was struggling to find places for everything—nothing had a home and everything was feeling messy.

Of course, I’m no stranger to decluttering our home. For the most part, I even find it therapeutic. I’ve tried several decluttering methods, but one new one particularly struck my interest—and it seemed like my whole family could get involved.

Enter: The Wheel of Chores

The Wheel of Chores is a concept coined by TikTok creator melitsmoi. Using a digital template to create a wheel of choices, Mel regularly applies this to her home by adding her “To-do” list to the wheel.

If nothing else, it seemed like this approach would solve my inability to decide where and how to start to tackle our mess.

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Step One: Create Your Wheel

To begin, I went to wheelofnames.com and entered the most pressing items I needed to organize. For me, this included the following areas that I desperately needed to clear out and declutter:

• Children’s schoolwork
• Pantry
• Kitchen cabinets
• Home office
• Mail pile
• Children’s art cart
• School uniforms
• Shoe shelf

Step Two: Spin the Wheel!

With my wheel ready to go, I clicked spin. I was thrilled that the wheel gave me something easy to start with: our mail pile.

I quickly flipped through it, got rid of the junk, dealt with the stuff for me, and made a separate pile for my husband. Done! Sorted! 

Step 3: Remove the Completed Task

One thing I loved right away was that, after my first spin, the wheel prompted me to remove the item from my list.

This was as satisfying as ticking an item off a physical to-do list. Plus, then you get to spin the wheel again.

Testing It Out On My Kids

After I completed all the tasks on my wheel, I felt pretty proud of myself. And that’s when I realized… this process would be great for kids.

In fact, I was so confident that I texted my husband to let him know TikTok just solved every problem we’ve ever had with getting my kids to tidy up.

He was dubious, but I pulled the site up on my daughter’s iPad and loaded it up with new categories:

• Lego
• Art cart
• Magnetiles
• Stuffed animals
• Books
• Puzzles

When I explained how it all worked, they were thrilled—and best of all, it worked. They spun the wheel, did the task, and came back to spin again!

I don’t know how long this excitement will last, but it turned tidying up into a game and allowed for screen time during a time of day that normally has a strict no-screens policy. Wins all around!

The Final Verdict

In the end, I think the Wheel of Chores is the perfect motivator to get started—especially when you have a lot of miscellaneous clutter and truly don’t know what to tackle first.

Much like my kids, I’m not sure it’ll be the thing that gets me excited to clean up every time, but for now, it’s definitely the hack that’s working.