The Vortex

Located in the Intermediate Storage Room in K20-1-5, the Vortex is a physical space to dump and look through various items. It physically consists of two tables, the space under as well as a shelf above those tables, and a cardboard box next to the window.

Alternative Names: The Vortex of Doom

What is it for?

There are three major use cases for the vortex:

1. Removing stuff from communal or your private inventory.
2. Clearing a corner of the household.
3. Adding stuff to the household.

1. Someone thinks a certain item should not be part of the Kanthaus household anymore and wants to start the process of getting rid of it. The vortex gives others time to take it back and/or privatize it.

2: When someone tidies up a cluttered space they usually find stuff that is clearly (or maybe) not trash but still does not belong there. Needing to find a good new or the proper previous location is hard and blocks tidying up efforts, so putting these things in the vortex is an appropriate way to go. It should be considered to

3: Sometimes people find stuff that might be useful to the house or individuals, but they’re not really sure. Putting it in the vortex means leaving the decision to communalize or privatize the items to others and just giving them prioritized access before it ends up in the Free Shop or the trash.

Alternatives to the Vortex

The Vortex gets partly dysfunctional when it overflows. Sometimes it is recommended to use alternative methods in order to reduce stress on the structure, the people using it and the people shifting.

• Use ~stuff to ask for resistance on getting rid of an item. If there's none after a defined timespan, doom the thing. Please do this with large or bulky things.
• Do de-cluttering actions and take care of announcing a "sale" in a reasonable place of the house. If everything is announced in chat, sales do not need to go through the Vortex.

Vortex categories

Found randomly - main category

• For all items that might have appeared in odd places.
• Every item which is not marked or sorted in otherwise is assumed to be of this category.
• Items in this category are expected to be sorted back to a fitting place - if possible.

Communal sorted out - box

• Use this category if you want to get rid off an item.
• Please attach a sign to the item saying why you want it to go.

• If you are opposed to sorting an item out, please inform the person who wanted to get rid off it.

Private sorted out - box

• For your personal items that you don't want to posess anymore
• Short duration: items move out after phase 1

Broken - box

• Put any broken items in here.
• Short duration: items move out after phase 1

Taking things out of the Vortex

Phase 1

• your personal items
• known or assumed communal things to return them to a fitting communal space
• anything from "Private sorted out" to privatize or communalize
• anything from "Broken" to repair it. If you want to privatize a broken item, write a message in ~stuff or talk to VolMems

Phase 2

• your personal items
• anything to communalize it

Phase 3

• anything to privatize or communalize it

Shifting

‘Vortex shifting’ is a Power Hour task, which means that it ideally happens every week, sometimes more seldom, never more often.

To make it possible for Kanthausians who are not currently in the space to also voice an opinion on the stuff in the vortex, it’s required to document vortex shifts in the channel ~stuff on Mattermost. Feel free to use the communal phone which should be at the charging dock.

Experience leads to the following best-practice of vortex shifting:

• Start on the back and doom phase 3.
  • Make (a) box(es) with things for the Free Shop and bring it there
  • You can communalize things, but consider that they have been in the Vortex for quite some time already.
  • Don’t be shy to use the trash bins! You might also use the big box next to the window.
• Move phase 2
  • Move items that are not labelled otherwise to fitting places in the house.
  • Move the rest to phase 3.
  • Take pictures and make sure that the things are identifiable. Mention that things are free for everyone in phase 3.

• Move phase 1
  • Doom the "short duration" categories or communalize them
  • Move communal items from the main category to fitting places in the house.
  • Move other items to phase 2
  • Take pictures and make sure the things are identifiable. Mention that things are free to communalize in phase 2 and people should be quick on getting back their personal stuff.
• Upload the pictures to ~stuff on Mattermost

Doom

Doom is a regular part of life and should not be seen (too) negatively.

Dooming related to the Vortex means:

• removing an item from the Kanthaus resources by putting it to the freeshop or the trash
• repurposing an item as e.g. building, crafting or towelette material

Dooming happens after phase 3 (or after phase 1 for short duration categories)

Good items usually go in the Free Shop Storage, trash may be put away according to Waste management. Some guidance:

• Clothes with holes can be repurposed as workshop clothes, towelette material or directly put into a bag for the commercial textile collection at the Free Shop.
• Not all electronics need to go to the electronic workshop. It's also fine to dump bigger things into the trash corner.

History

"Vortex of doom" from Tokyo Hackerspace, 2013

The Vortex was developed in response to having too much stuff. Although Kanthaus only came with toilets, radiators and wallpaper, many things were optimistically scavenged in the early days — too optimistically. Yet while people felt OK bringing things, people felt less OK getting rid of things, leading to accumulation. (At this time, the Lantern was completely filled with possibly-useful-stuff and was called "the crap room".)

Someone decided to look into how other communities deal with this issue. The issue is/was so prevalent in hackerspaces, that the "The Old Hardware Pattern" was identified in the hackerspace design patterns published in 2007 by Ohlig and Weiler:

Problem

You can’t bring in shiny new hardware, as there is no space left. Your space has become a hardware museum filled with junk.

Implementation

Create a pile/stack where you put that old, unused hardware on. Let everybody take from it. Anything left within a while should be thrown away. But make sure you announce that step not only once, but at least three times with an escalation system.

The 3-week, constant rotation model from the Tokyo Hackerspace (pictured) was more of less directly copied, using a table for each section instead of a box.