Technical article

How Much Time Do Chores Take in Portugal and Spain?

What will a normal week of chores look like?

By Neil Solomon · 4 min read

Picture a couple named Frank and Diane. Both are 66. At home they have a washer and a dryer, and the laundry takes no thought. They are looking at an apartment in Lisbon and one in Valencia. They ask a small question. What will a normal week of chores look like?

I wanted to answer with the dryer first. Do most homes have one? Official surveys answer that, and the answer is no. About one home in four has a clothes dryer in each country. After that I give how much time people in each country give to the home.

How many homes have a dryer

In Portugal the Azores stand out at 67.8% (in the survey's words, because of the climate), against 14.8% in Madeira and 23.5% on the mainland. In Spain the release lists the dryer as the least common of the six appliances it charts. A dryer is the exception in both countries, so a flat without one, and a balcony or a rack, is normal.

My arithmetic on running one: the surveys do not publish a dryer's use. At an assumed 3 kWh for a load and Spain's household price of EUR 0.2509 per kWh in the first half of 2026 (Eurostat), one load costs about EUR 0.75, and four loads a week about EUR 13 a month. The 3 kWh is my assumption.

What the time-use surveys say

The two surveys do not measure the same thing, so I do not put the countries side by side. Each is a picture of its own country in its own year.

Spain. The national statistics office says that in 2009-10 men spent 1 hour 50 minutes a day on household and family tasks, up 20 minutes from 2002-03. Women spent 4 hours 4 minutes, down 20 minutes. Its 2010 press release says 83.5% of people took part on an average day: 74.4% of men and 92.2% of women. Those who took part spent 3 hours 34 minutes. These figures are more than fifteen years old. A newer wave may exist; the pages I read stop at 2009-10.

Portugal. A policy brief on the 2015 national time-use survey, hosted by the government's gender equality commission, gives women 4 hours 23 minutes a day of unpaid work and men 2 hours 38 minutes. Women spent 1 hour 12 minutes more on domestic tasks. On clothes care alone, the gap was 14 minutes on a weekday. It also says 10.5% of women and 1.4% of men looked after clothes every day for an hour or more. Among people who do laundry, 74% of the women do it for others in the home too. About half of the men do it only for themselves.

What this article leaves for another day

• Electricity per dryer load. The surveys count appliances, not loads. The label on the machine gives its use.
• Whether your building allows lines on a balcony. That depends on the building rules, not on a national page.
• The IDAE household study of January 2026 asks about dryers and when people use them; its results are on an interactive dashboard, so I cite the two statistics offices above instead.