Processes to manage stuff

📦️ "Stuff" is the term widely used in Kanthaus to refer to physical items that take up space in the house and are not food. Stuff can be useful or not, communal or private, a blessing or a curse. Managing stuff is a vital administrative task of the house, so we came up with several systems.

De-cluttering actions

Formerly known as ‘sales’ (based on the idea of doing an ‘internal yard sale’), which admittedly is an extremely confusing term, de-cluttering actions are events to clear out storage areas.

Communal stuff de-cluttering

On example for communal stuff de-cluttering is the K20 entrance with its communal shoe and jacket shelf. Let’s say we want to de-clutter the jacket shelf, the process is as follows:

1. Empty the shelf and put all its contents to an accessible location. People need to be able to look through everything there. It should also not be in the way. Past locations were the Dragon Room or Elephant Room tables.
2. Specify a time frame for the event and communicate it on site (the shelf itself, the sorting area and on Mattermost). Past actions usually took 1-2 weeks maximum.
3. During the event people are expected to take out the things they want to keep and hang them back onto the shelf.
4. When the time is up everything that’s left will go through the vortex.

Private stuff de-cluttering

Basically the same as the communal stuff de-cluttering, private stuff de-cluttering are events to make sure we don’t have unnecessary items in public spaces for private items. This is only necessary in the entrance of K20 where we have space for private shoes and jackets without name tags.

Spitz Storage Room concepts

Since the Spitz Storage Room is the newest storage area, we this time, took good care to come up with a nice system before it is filled with stuff. The details are in the room page, but the general idea is as outlined below

Communal stuff in Spitz Storage Room

• clear categories of stuff
• clear labels
• only sorted boxes are allowed in the area

Private stuff in Spitz Storage Room

• everybody can have up to a stack of 3 banana boxes
• everything needs to be labeled with a name
• people who are neither Volunteer or Member need to indicate when they last accessed the box (LDA = last date accessed) and remove it if this date is more than a year in the past

Privatization of communal stuff

Example of someone asking to privatize communal items

There is no perfectly choreographed process for privatization of communal stuff. However, there are best practices, which usually involve the following: - clearly identify the items you’d like to take, possibly with pictures - communicate your request online so that everybody has the chance to see it in time - formulate a deadline until which people are expected to react - be honestly open to other people’s potential claims on items and engage in productive discussion if necessary