The Fair Play Deck: A Couple's Conversation Deck for Prioritizing What's Important

Great starting point for divvying up chores, though I highly recommend getting the book with it. Starts a conversation about division of labor, though some cards need customizing to your own experience (e.g. a couple large dogs with high grooming needs had us pulling out a "kid" card to cover bathing/nails).

Very helpful to visually see what you and your spouse literally carry. It’s eye opening to physically hold your cards and see how each person’s time is spent.

My husband and I have been using the Fair Play system, based on reading the book Fair Play, for about eight months now. Although the book isn't perfect, the system is working for us and we adapt it to fit our lives. When I first finished reading the book, like many people I asked, "Where are the cards?" Then I realized the game is a metaphor and you can use whatever system you like. We have been using a Trello board with digital cards. So when this physical deck was released, I thought it would be a waste of money and a hard pass. Then I decided to give it a try, because these are hard discussions and any tool that makes it easier might just be worth it. It turns out I like the cards! Our biggest struggle with Fair Play is the looooong conversations. There are a lot of cards, and a lot to figure out together. Even with a pared down deck and relatively low housekeeping standards. I don't send Christmas cards, lol. The book doesn't give a lot of examples about how a Fair Play meeting might go. It all looks easy, but as you begin to have these meetings you can really get lost in the weeds. I found that this deck of cards encouraged us to be quick about it. Instead of yakking at length, we quickly flipped through the cards and grabbed the ones we needed to. Having a physical deck puts the emphasis on simply *taking* the card. Sure, we need to have conversations about standards too, and the fact that we've been using this system helped move things along. But I found the cards sped things up, made it easy to visualize the act of "taking on" a responsibility, and even made it easy to quickly trade and do the exercise of considering what our spouse was holding. I am taking off one star because the cards should include some more definition about what goes into each task. While these can be found on the website and in the book, if you're paying for a printed deck, some version of it should be on the card in your hands. A lot of space is wasted by having the back of each card look (mostly) identical, like traditional playing cards. Put some CPE info there instead.

Good couples game

This deck is a decent conversation starter. My partner and I already do a good job splitting the chores, so it felt satisfying to deal them out and see that we naturally held a fair amount based on what we already did. The best part: - Some tasks are fully his now! Certain tasks he would do 80% of the way but I still did that last 20%. After these cards, he’ll do 100% of the task. It definitely feels like a relief to not feel jointly responsible for everything. Things that could be improved: - There’s only one card for cleaning. I thought for sure cleaning would at least be split into rooms, or maybe vacuuming, dusting, mopping, etc. Nope! Just “Cleaning.” That’s way too broad. - The cards are gigantic for no reason. They barely have any information on them. You have to have a huge space to lay them out to look at them. I wish they were the size of regular playing cards. - Some tasks are too big for someone to be completely responsible for the whole thing. There’s one card for dishes, but why should only one person be responsible for all the dishes? We split this task in our daily life and felt it was wrong to give one person 100% of the dishes. Another thing we alternate doing day-to-day is cooking. The cooking cards are split a couple ways, but not into categories that work for us. - The game is overwhelming even if you get along. We really don’t fight over chores and my fiancé still got a little overwhelmed by the sheer number of cards there were to talk about. And we threw half of them out since we don’t have kids! - It’s not much of a game. I wish there was a little playfulness built into it, but it’s really just a starting point for a (really long) conversation.

My partner and I have improved our communication and priorities significantly with the help of this interactive and respectful relationship tool. Highly recommend it.

This is such a great tool to promote healthy conversation with your partner about the visible vs invisible load of a family. Random things you've never considered come up and resolved in the same conversation.

I like this cards. It helped me to organize things in our household. I reccomend it.

me encanta :)

This was a great way to visualise the workload both of us have and to reassign certain activities - clarity around housework most definitely helped!

Excellent way to distribute the tasks between the partners! Very good and inclusive list of everyday tasks in the family. I recommend