Blueberries and Mustard: All About Fair Play

Mar 10

Learn About Eve Rodsky’s Fair Play Method

Have you ever heard of Fair Play? Fair Play is a book, a card game, a documentary and a lifestyle system coined by attorney Eve Rodsky. It is all about domestic labor rebalancing between couples.

The idea behind Fair Play started with blueberries. Years after marrying an equal partner, with two kids down the road, Rodsky found herself in her car sobbing. The emotional break came after she sent a text to her husband asking if he’d seen the groceries she left on the counter earlier. He responded yes, but was disappointed that she’d forgotten the blueberries. Despite all she was doing to support and maintain their household, he pointed out that she’d forgotten the blueberries. She felt irritation and rage.

Rodsky began to realize how overwhelming it was to be the default parent for every childcare and household task, such as:

Scheduling doctors appointments
Managing the family calendar
Prepping school lunches
Arranging play dates
Setting up kids’ hair appointments
Arranging babysitters for date nights

She took action by crowd-sourcing a list of these and similar tasks from women worldwide called the “Sh*t I Do” list. Compiling all of the dada energized her and offered a sense of community — so many women were in the same boat as she was. She felt excited to send the list to her husband so he could see all that she constantly had to anticipate, think about, plan for, delegate, and execute. Then he could take action and help her out!

He ignored the list, sending back the 🙈 emoji.

But the “Sh*t I Do” list sparked a flame in her that could not be extinguished. She pressed on and created Fair Play, a method to challenge the imbalance and inequalities she saw in her friends’ marriages and her own. This method has since transformed to a movement for women* seeking relational help. The cards have even sold more than Pokemon cards!

The Fair Play method addresses the invisible emotional labor (also known as the second shift, mental load, or the gendered division of labor) which is what happens when managing a household and taking care of a family becomes inequitable. The labor is keeping track of what needs to be done and what has already been done. It is the executive labor that keeps a household running, in addition to work domains and demands. It is all the things, all the time, and it is draining and exhausting.

A 2020 study showed that men think they’re contributing about 50% of the household workload, but in reality, that number is closer to 35%.

More recently, a 2024 study shows that women spend around two hours a day cooking, cleaning, and doing yard work. Their husbands did about half that amount.

Working women spend about two times as many hours per week as working men on childcare and household duties combined.

Even married women without children spend 2.4 times as much time as their male counterparts on household work.

This imbalance impacts wives’ cortisol (stress hormone) levels, resulting in depression, weight gain, anxiety, headaches, insomnia, digestive problems, insomnia, and sweating. And almost half of all women report that their husbands stress them out more than their children. In her research, Rodsky found that there’s no country where men take on more emotional labor than women.

Rodsky began a quest to disrupt the imbalance of emotional and household labor. She broke down what it meant to run her home as an organization, and how to run it as such with boundaries, systems, and communication. Rodsky interviewed hundreds of couples across age, race, ethnicity and nationality in order to create her book and accompanying card deck.

The card deck has four suits: home (ex: cleaning, cooking, laundry, home furnishings, money management, etc.), out (calendar management, school breaks and forms, children’s transportation and parties, cash and bills, travel, tutoring, coaching, etc.), caregiving (bathing children, bedtime routine, clothing and accessories, pets, parents and in-laws, estate planning, life insurance, etc.), and magic (adult friendships, disciplining children, extended family, holidays, informal education, thank you notes, romance, etc.).

There are also wild cards such as an aging or ailing parent, home renovation, job loss or new job, etc.) and two unicorn spaces which are the spaces and times to reclaim, or discover and nurture, the natural gifts and interests that make someone their unique selves.

Each Fair Play card reflects an action, task, or chore (as shown in the above parenthetical examples) that is important to your family and running your home. It asks the couple to take a task through each stage: conception, planning, and execution.

Conception: the behind-the scenes mental load where the couple assesses their family’s overall needs and defines the tasks that will meet those needs
Planning: research and create an action plan to get those needs met. Consult with other stakeholders for their opinions and buy-in as needed
Execution: getting the job done at an appropriate time.

See how the items on the cards are so much more than tasks? There is time, energy and reflection necessary for each of the displayed activities. Rodsky encourages couples to reflect on each task’s Minimum Standard of Care (MSC) by asking – what, at a minimum, is reasonable for this card in your home based on your shared values?

Let’s take a “home” example with a bit more granularity. How does mustard get in your refrigerator? First, someone has to notice that the mustard is running low, and pay attention to the brand and size. Then, it is written down on a handwritten or digital grocery list. Then, someone adds it to their grocery store run. But wait, do you need mustard this week, or can it wait for a later grocery pickup? And what kind of mustard are we talking about here - yellow, stone ground, honey, or dijon? All of the above?

How does mustard get in your refrigerator in your home?

The mustard example is salient because we can see just how much thought and effort go into making the most innocuous tasks, and the impact that not considering the time and effort they take can have on a relationship.

For some couples, old wounds and traumas may come up as they work through the cards or read the book. Working with a licensed therapist (either as a couple, as an individual, or both) can support processing previous discrepancies and traumas within the relationship, answer questions about the relationship’s sustainability, process fears about the unknown, and move toward offering respect, gratitude, and resolution.

Would you ever try the Fair Play card game or read the book?

If you and your partner choose to utilize the Fair Play method, and you find yourself struggling with what comes up, or if you see resentment popping up in your relationship because of labor inequities, I am here to help as you process difficult or confusing emotions. Please reach out and schedule a consultation with me so we can work towards sorting things out together.

*The Fair Play method was developed based on Rodsky’s research on heterosexual (straight) couples. Research has found that same sex partners engage in household tasks more equally.