Cohousing-L Mailing List: cooking and cleaning, was Meal Frequency

[Lynn Nadeau / Maraiah (welcome]

> We do have a terrible problem getting people to clean.
> ... We have a few very dedicated cooks or we'd have far fewer
> meals. One was recently cancelled due to no one volunteering to clean.
>
> We all agreed to cook or clean once a month if we are participating in
> the meals, but that is not tracked and therefore doesn't always  
> happen.

At RoseWind we also have two regular meals a week (ten years now): one  
potluck, one with a cook team.
For the cooked meals, there is a posted list with the dates and a sign  
up line for cooks. 1-4 people sign up to cook for a date.

But everyone cleans up, for both potlucks and cooked meals.  I think  
if people had to sign up to clean, they would not. Some cooks clean as  
they go and pride themselves on going into dinner with all the prep  
stuff cleaned and away. Others leave a mess. In either case, probably  
half the adult diners actively clean up. Self-selected jobs include  
organizing the scraped dishes, rinsing the dishes and filling the  
racks (for our push-through fast sanitizer). Drying dishes when they  
come out (onto the rolling cart where they are kept). Washing stemware  
and sharp knives by hand. Pot-sink clean up of big pans and big bowls.  
Wiping counters, collecting last dishes, wiping tables, sweeping the  
dining room, cleaning up spills. Emptying serving dishes into take- 
home containers. At the end, cleaning sinks and strainers, kitchen  
floor, trash to can, compost to bucket, laundry started. I can't  
imagine how hard it would be without at least ten people helping! The  
cook is the buck stopper, and has final responsibility that all is  
done and put away. With meals of about 30 people, clean up is usually  
all done in about half an hour. Because it's a gang, it's social, too.

It helps that we have a clear system. The clean dish towels are in a  
bin on the bottom shelf of the clean-dish cart. Counter rags are in a  
marked drawer. A pantry has the brooms and dustpans. There is a drawer  
under the serving counter for yogurt-container type take-home packaging.

Somehow, it sounds like it would be great if you could sell your  
community on the everyone-cleans system. We'd have some frequent  
visitors, or less motivated members, who'd sit around after a meal  
like we had servants. I started handing them warm wet rags and asking  
them to please wipe the tables, or handing them a broom, or asking  
them to round up the last glasses. Most said, oh, sure, and I walked  
away....!

I guess it helps too that our dishwasher is very stainless-steel  
industrial, with lots of whooshing and levers and clouds of steam: I  
like to run it, but usually have to negotiate a turn with the guys.  
Whoosh, clunk, sssssssssh! I think they feel like they are engineers  
on a locomotive!

Maraiah Lynn Nadeau
RoseWind Cohousing, Port Townsend WA
where a week ago it was sunny gardening weather, then we got a big  
surprise snowstorm, a rarity the kids have loved
www.rosewind.org