Jar chart template for friends: one sheet, one evening, a lot of laughing

What you need

Almost nothing. The free printable jar sheet has sixteen jars on one page, each with tick marks up the side for 0 to 5 and a line underneath for the label. There is a spot for a name and a theme at the top. Print one per person, or one per pair if you are sharing pens. If you would rather skip paper, the jar chart maker does the same thing on a phone: tap a jar to fill it, then save a picture.

Colouring tools matter more than you would think. Give everyone the same three or four felt tips and the shelves look like a set. Give them whatever is in the drawer and you get a gloriously messy gallery, which is also fine.

Pick a theme before anyone starts

A chart with no theme drifts into vague answers. Agree on one lens and the jars become easy to fill and fun to compare. Themes that work well for friend groups:

• Friendship: long voice notes, surprise visits, inside jokes, being the one who plans, last-minute plans.
• Weekend hobbies: board games, hiking, thrifting, baking, a long afternoon doing nothing.
• Comfort food: soup, noodles, toast, anything from a grandparent's kitchen, snacks eaten standing at the fridge.
• Self-care: early nights, a long walk, a clean desk, a playlist for tidying, a very hot shower.
• Date night: good for couples or a group of couples: mini golf, cooking together, a film you have seen ten times.

Not sure which? Let the group vote. Whichever theme gets the most hands wins, and the runner-up becomes next month's round.

Choose the jars together

Sixteen is a lot of labels to invent from nothing, so split the work. Ask each friend to bring two or three jars they would like to see on the shelf, then trim to the sixteen that make people laugh or lean in. Keep the labels short enough to fit under a jar, three words or fewer, and write them on a sticky note or the board before printing.

Aim for a mix. A few jars everyone will fill high, a few where opinions will split, and one or two odd ones that are specific to your group, like the café you always end up in or the board game that has caused arguments. The odd ones are the ones people remember.

Fill in private, reveal together

This is the step that makes it a game. Everyone fills their own sheet without peeking, then you swap or pin them up side by side. Compare jar by jar. Who has the fullest jar for long walks? Whose jar for group chats is bone dry? You will find out quickly who is secretly the planner, who is the homebody, and who has been pretending to like hiking.

If there are more than six of you, work in pairs. Each pair fills one sheet together and negotiates every jar, which is where the best conversation happens.

Game-night ways to use your shelves

Once the sheets exist, they are a ready-made game. A few formats to try:

• Guess whose shelf: collect the sheets without names, shuffle, and have the group match each one to its owner. Points for each correct match.
• Predict the jar: pick a friend, and everyone guesses how full they will fill a chosen jar before the reveal. Closest guess wins.
• Common ground: find the three jars that are fullest across the whole group, and that is the plan for the next outing.
• Swap shelves: trade sheets and fill in a friend's jars the way you think they would. Then compare to the real thing.

Keep the shelves going

Snap a photo of each sheet and drop them in the group chat. Fill the same theme again in a few months and see which jars have changed. Seasons shift things: the soup jar rises in autumn, the picnic jar in summer. Pinned to a fridge or a corkboard, a finished sheet doubles as a quick reminder of what your friends actually enjoy, which makes gift ideas and weekend plans much easier.

When you want a fresh version, the maker lets you add your own jars, up to twenty per shelf, and share a link that reopens the exact shelf. If you would like the full background first, read what the jar meme is and why people love it.