Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: fees for participation/ CH cleaning

[Katie Henry (katie-henry]

At Eastern Village, cleaning was an enormously contentious issue when  
we moved in. Note that we have a large (95,000 sq. ft.) multi-family  
building with vast amounts of common space, including eleven common  
bathrooms, so cleaning really is a huge job.

We had:

1. People who refused to clean under any circumstances.
2. People who said they would clean, but didn't.
3. People who were willing to clean, but only if everyone else was  
also participating in cleaning.
4. People who were willing to clean, but were reluctant because they  
didn't want their work to be judged by others.
5. People who were willing to clean, but who needed to be told what  
to do and when to do it, and we didn't have anyone willing to take on  
a task coordination role.

We squabbled about cleaning for six months or so. Very little got  
done. The building decayed into a state of total squalor, with giant  
dust bunnies rolling down corridors like tumbleweeds and the floors  
being visibly and permanently damaged from the dirt. It reached the  
point where people were ashamed to have visitors over and our church  
ladies were threatening to move out.

We sucked it up and hired a cleaning service. LIfe immediately  
improved. Over the three years since move-in, we have increased their  
frequency and scope of work. Under the new contract we just signed,  
we will have someone on site for about 35 hours a week. We're paying  
about $30,000/year (shared among 67 units; 56 cohousing and 11  
other). Money well spent, everyone agrees.

The cleaning service focuses on the main public areas and the  
corridors. The meal teams do a lot of the kitchen cleaning. Other  
rooms, such as the kid's room, the exercise room, the laundry room,  
and the workshop, are cleaned by their users. Members were supposed  
to clean the guest rooms after their visitors leave, but it wasn't  
happening, so we've added the guest rooms to the cleaning contract.

Katie
Eastern Village Cohousing
Silver Spring, MD