Repro orga

How we organize our reproductive work.

Repro what?

Reproductive work is the work that needs to be done to keep things running. It's the underlying foundation that people need to focus on something else. It's about food, cleaning, tidyness and social care. Or to say it with wikipedia:

Reproductive labor or work is often associated with care giving and domestic housework roles including cleaning, cooking, child care, and the unpaid domestic labor force. Wikipedia

We recognize this kind of work as extremely important and make structures to try and distribute it on as many shoulders as reasonably possible.

Systems we use

We have come up with different systems for different use cases. These systems are by no means exhaustive and they are always a work in progress.

Power Hour

The weekly time of communal cleaning is meant to establish basic cleanliness and include every resident. It's a well tested and often improved structure of ours that deserves its' own page: Power Hour page

Task lottery

Just like the name suggests this is a lottery for tasks. In this case it's an online toll custom made for us but adaptable to many cases (and important enough to have its' own page: Task Lottery page). We mainly use it for communal food preparation shifts.

Repro Sheet

The repro sheet exists in many different versions in a variety of places. It's simplicity is what makes it so attractive and versatile: You just make a table, put tasks to each day and let people fill themselves in.

This is very useful for times of heightened organization levels, like building weeks when we invite external people to help us with construction work. The influx of new people and the focus on joint efforts results in frequent (maybe even daily) meetings, which can also be used to make sure the repro sheet gets filled.

Example of a repro sheet

Repro work that is not covered

We are fully aware that not all the necessary repro work is covered by our systems and that it never will be. Things like emotional care work can not be pressed into a system. Sure, there are ways to try like e.g. appointing a person that can be approched, but who's to say that people who have a problem will open up to this exact person? There will always be work done that is not part of a system. We have accepted it and try to incorporate this understanding most productively.

Laundry

Since the perfect moment for doing laundry depends heavily on the weather (solar power, drying space and rain water available) we do not subject it to any system for now. Tilmann is especially motivated to run washing machines when the time is right. He will often do huge amounts of laundry on sunny days and then leave baskets of clean wet laundry in the K20 entrance. If you see one, feel very much invited to put it up somewhere. :) More on laundry on its' own page: Laundry page

Food on the weekends

The weekends are a structure-free time. People can make food if they feel like it, but nobody is expecting to get fed. Often people just eat small meals in small groups or someone spontaneously prepares something.

Cleaning of central area

The Main Kitchen, the Snack Kitchen and the Dining Room are used especially much, which naturally results in more need for cleaning. Although we expect everyone to tidy up behind themselves and sometimes do the extra effort of wiping a table or washing some pots, it is obvious that some people do more of this than others.

Usually it goes in waves:

• Someone takes extra care and everything looks neat.
• That person doesn't feel like doing this service anymore and/or gets annoyed.
• They bring it up or just stop doing it.
• If nobody takes over it gets messier, to a point where more people complain.
• Everybody becomes more aware and puts in more effort.
• Things look neat again.
• Over time most people stop putting in extra effort.
• And we're back to the beginning.

So far there was never intense frustration and bringing up the topic actually works. But only for a while. And maybe that's also okay..?

Everything out of the ordinary

Irregular cleaning, sorting, organizing and maintaining is always dependent on the initiative of individuals. If they want to make a big communal action out of it, it might work. How it usually goes, though, is that someone sees a task, feels motivation, gets started and maybe someone else joins in.