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

[Karen Scheer (karen]

I've really enjoyed it when we pitch in and work together to clean up 
after meals...which we've done a lot lately because of insufficient teams.
Here's one woman's perspective on the benefits of "everyone cleans up" 
as a "gang"


On 11/25/10 6:52 PM, Lynn Nadeau / Maraiah wrote:
> > 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
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