Cleaning of Natural Decay
Overview
Every Sunday (and especially 7pm – 9pm) is the casual, but collectively necessary, day to clean our wonderful hackerspace. We all make messes, and even if we pick up after ourselves (we really, really must), there is still left-over, natural decay. Some call it a "tragedy," but why be so melodramatic?
Sunday is a day to recognize, honor, and celebrate decay–through restoration, through cleaning.
Benefits
What's in it for you?
- Sometimes we clean and we're dancing while we do it. We listen to Erasure or even hug. I'm not joking--I have (encrypted, private, non public) videos to show it. just ask us. These things do happen.
- When any landlord we may have now or in the future sees us cleaning and sees us conscientously recycling and taking out the garbage, it creates a better relationship.
- Cleaning the common space is a great way to do community service! It doesn't just have to be about paying taxes or giving big donations.
- When people clean together, they bond in a cosmically happy way. Something about cleaning stuff up creates lots of little jokes, people reveal their hopes and dreams, and let their guard down. When people clean together they often stop trying so hard to be cool all the time. The posturing drops.
- Ever wonder what the hell something was but was too afraid or lazy to ask? when you're cleaning in the wood shop, you get to ask how to clean something and inadvertently learn more and more about what it is. It might lead to a great idea.
- You get a really nice overview of projects that other people are working on that have nothing to do with what you are doing. If you usually program in Python but never touch the biohacking equipment, it's good to just go near and understand what's there. You also learn that some things are sensitive for the biohacking projects that aren't so sensitive for other things--that biohacking projects are easily contaminated, that they have to remain at a certain temperature.
- You become aware of resources that are there that nobody at the space realized was there. Someone might be doing a sewing workshop the next day but not realize that there are two gigantic bags of fabric scraps in the back room.
- By cleaning you get agency and more personal motivation to do things in the space, to move things around and make them more useful to members and visitors.