House Care

As a cooperative, we share routine care and cleaning of the house. However, larger tasks provide an opportunity to work together on periodic maintainence and improvement projects. For example, three common rooms and three bedrooms have been repainted on house work days recently. These work days usually occur every two months, on a Saturday. Other work day projects have included:

• hanging storm windows
• reorganizing the kitchen and pantries
• sanding and refinishing the porch swing
• repairing our sliding pocket doors

Teams of residents and even neighbors have also joined together on their own in tasks like painting, leaf-raking, tree-trimming, and picking up shares from our CSA (organic produce from a community farm).

Five smaller jobs are identified below, which we rotate among members. These are routine tasks that we know need doing every week, although others (like emptying the dishwasher or taking out the compost) need doing more often. Each of us is responsible not only for cleaning up after ourselves, but for noticing and helping out with what needs doing on behalf of the house.

1. Kitchen, pantries and trash: Clean all surfaces weekly and oversee trash and recycling.
2. Bathrooms: Clean all areas weekly.
3. Shopping: Take inventory and shop regularly at local grocery, health food, and warehouse stores.
4. Downstairs common rooms: Sweep and vaccuum the living room, dining room, parlor, and front and back halls
5. Upstairs common areas and stairs: Sweep and vaccuum all stairs, the second and third-floor halls, and the third-floor library.

Common areas are for everyone's use and are everyone's responsibility; individuals' rooms are their own responsibility.