House Maintenance
This page contains information about how the house is maintained.
In general, the idea is to keep the house clean at all times with everyone participating in the process. When the house is clean, it eliminates one possible source of common tension between flat mates. Personally, I try to leave a room a bit cleaner than when I entered it, that way I know I’m doing something to help my fellow room mates and myself out by creating a comfortable environment.
We manage our share of the housework by posting a list of all the house duties that need to be done from sweeping, mopping, taking garbage out to watering the plants. Every time you do a chore, you mark your initial in the box to the right of the chore. This way everyone can see who is doing what and how many times they have done it. The idea is to have house members self monitor the balance of work using a transparent honor system. This system represents a way to eliminate the question of balanced participation in maintaining the house. Copies of this list can be found on top of the refrigerator or by downloading the file berlin chore list.png.
More to follow on chores a bit later
November 22, 2007 at 10:59 am |
An excellent start…something to give thanks about
congratulations and thanks to us all. we managed to get the house in a good basic clean and functional condition; everyone chipped in with enthusiasm and no complaint…brilliant! now that we have a nice base to work from let’s continue to maintain and improve upon what we have in as our little world.
like i said before, this whole experiment is about us developing a conscious compassion for ourselves and each other in order to create our near perfect little energizing and secure home-world. our main methodology is based on the principle of balanced sharing of responsibility, time, expense and effort in order to help satisfy each of our physical, psychological, emotional, intellectual and spiritual needs as related to our home.
the house maintenance list, the house supply list, our weekly diner, the house blog and the house manual are the tools (so far) that allow us to transparently organize and account for our; needs, personal effort, communication, ideas and responsibilities. In general and my experience, i think we can address any issues with the following motivation: if you observe something or a situation out of balance/place, address it and fix it as soon as possible. this, of course, means that in order for any of this to work we all have to become more conscious observers and actors. if each of us can succeed in this ‘becoming a more conscious observer/actor’ then that should lead each of us to creating a better situation for ourselves and each other.
with that said let me go on to some specific categories for our attention:
1) house maintenance observations (please continue to use the list on the fridge to track our balance)
a) the kitchen has remained much cleaner lately, i feel like most of the time i can walk in there and start from a relatively clean slate with nice fresh open space to cook or clean in plus there’s no more food sitting in the sink all the time. specifically, i like that everyone is cleaning up their cooking/eating messes quickly so that someone else does not have to work around or clean the messes. also, the bottles and recycling scene is not overflowing anymore. here are some more things we can improve on:
• use the dishwasher to store all dirty plates, spoons, cups etc – if we can leave stuff by the sink, we can take the extra 5 seconds it takes to slap it in the dishwasher even when rushing out of the house; if it’s full, empty it or turn it on to preserve our storage capacity.
• the floor could be swept a bit more often – maybe every 3 days or so
• stove spills – these are much easier and quicker to clean when fresh
• bottles – i find it very helpful to rinse out all bottles then they don’t sit around and stink or spill stinky stuff into the bottle bucket
• compost – the bucket need some washing, i’ll do that since i have not done compost duty yet since i’ve been back. next time it’s your turn, remember to rinse off that bucket
• lets try to recyle a bit more out of the garbage like candy bar wrappers, egg crates, paper coffee cups or anything with that ying/yangy recyle logo on it
• we need – garbage bags, compost bags, aluminum foil and cat food
• i have flooring in the back to put on the floor, i figure i will have time next week to do it…any offers for help?
• gunter – you still need to defrost the freezer. how’s that project unfolding?
b) the bathroom(toilet) has been smelling and looking fresher lately too, i’ve been flushing larry crap down the toilet and letting him outside in the back yard more often. also, it’s nice that people are not leaving their laundry in the washer all day. some improvements:
• we have some weird leak under the sink by the toilet, let’s store the mop bucket there so it does not leak on the floor and get the larry cat box paper all wet
• the floor could be swept a bit more often
• let’s continue to keep the toilet seat down for the ladies and children
• whenever we do laundry, try to keep the door closed because it’s noisy
c) the shower room is a bazillion times cleaner too; i feel like i can actually get clean in there! the bathmat outside the shower has been staying much dryer so we don’t have to clean it as often and it does not smell; the same for under the shower crate. the sink is all clean free of hair, toothpaste and general funk. most impressively, the shower itself is clean inside but i’m cleaning it again this week out of inspiration while it’s nice and easy anyway.
• shower hairball – we have way less of these, please continue to remind yourself or your guests to keep the shower hairball free
• the floor could be swept and mopped at least once a week, if you have not done it yet, take a look at the list
• we need a new shower head holder to mount to the wall….volunteers?
d) the living room is obviously much cleaner too. thanks everyone for not leaving stuff laying around all the time.
• the floor could be swept more often, perhaps once every 2 or 3 days….check the list
• the light bulb in the overhead lamp needs to be replaced, rachel just got some bulbs so we should be ok there. i just replaced the last one less than a week ago…who feels like climbing a ladder?
e) the painted hallway is in nice condition too but could be swept more often; it will probably need a good mopping after this weekend.
• i’m going to move all the wood in the hall to the back so it looks nicer
f) the front hallway is much cleaner thanks to gunter. everybody has been putting their shoes away neatly under the bench or shelf so when our visitors come in, they do the same. thanks.
• does anyone know where the spare key for the front door is? it would be nice to have that back in place so we don’t haave to run around looking for a key to let someone in.
• please help water the plant in there and the living room too
2) the house supply list – just like the house maintenance list, this allows us to balance out the effort and money that we spend on the house needs. so far this month the balance looks like this:
scott – 47,15 euro
john – 17,00 euro
rachel – 3,50 euro
elisabeth – 1,10 euro
gunter – 0,00 euro
the average that we each should have spent so far is 13,70. that leaves me overspent by 33,45. although i know i will get the money back by the end of the month (like a little savings bank), i’d rather be able to have 20 or so more of my money to spend on other things. my point being that we need to balance this situation out a bit better. please check the list of what we need below and sign up to go make it happen. i would get the things myself but i just don’t have the money right now; most of these things are available around the corner at the rossman or all the grocery stores.
• garbage bags
• compost bags
• a new mop (the old one is completely broken but the bucket is good)
• a new pole to mount the shower head on
• a new copy of the front door key
• aluminum foil
• cat food
• toilet paper
3) weekly house diner – this week it’s thanksgiving, thank you john for providing the inspiration and organization to make this happen.
4) the house blog – everyone should have recieved an email allowing you to set up a wordpress user name and become a contributor to the house blog.
• i’m logging this communication to the house blog on the ‘maintenance’ page so we can archive and share the process
• if you have anything that you’d like to post, go for it.
• if you think we should organize the blog in another way, suggest it.
• i still have yet to update my upcoming events but it’s just around the corner for me,,,how about you?
• john – any essays about thanksgiving? i’d have some clever comments…
• attached to this email are the house blog stats, i think you would be surprised at how many folks are checking us out on a regular basis…
5) the house manual needs to be updated, a copy is attached for you to review and update or edit. the idea of the house manual is make information about every aspect of living here, easily accessible. there are some things that are on there that need to be updated and some things that just don’t exist. the manual could be updated more quickly and be more useful if you all could chip in a bit of your experience.