Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Meal cleaners

[R.P. Aditya (aditya]

At Great Oak our meal prep labor is integrated into our community work
system entirely. That is, all adults are expected to contribute to
community labor and one of the options is to do meal work (cooking or
cleaning). Meals work represents slightly less than 50% of the total
hours of labor, and just about 50% of households at any given time
are diners. There is general acknowledgement that meals "are the glue"
of living in our community, so even those who don't participate
frequently in meals, contribute to meal labor.

There are many folks who are happy to eat but would rather weed or plow
snow, and many who want to spend all their allocated hours cooking
rather than anything else.

The cooking team (1 head cook, 4 hours credit, and 2 assistants, 2 hours
credit each) is distinct from the cleaning team (3 cleaners, 1.5 hours
credit each though it usually takes about 1 hour to clean up or less now
that we are well practiced, the bottleneck being the Hobart) though any
individual can opt to be on both. Cleaning is typically the most popular
job in our quarterly work survey.

Teenagers, given their parent(s)' consent, are encouraged to participate
in the work program and often choose to be assistant cooks.

The system works well and our meal dining partcipation has been
consistent for 8+ years -- averaging, over the last 1933 tracked meals,
26 adults, 1 teen and 10 kids per meal.

Lots more info on how it works here:

  http://gocoho.org/blog/?cat=7

Hope that helps,

Adi
Great Oak Cohousing
Ann Arbor, MI, USA
http://www.gocoho.org