User:Doug/Orderliness

On Tuesday 11th November 2025 I hosted a session on "Cleanliness and orderliness" in response to a perceived drop in standards. It was useful, interesting and the dining table has been a lot cleaner since then. (Also, Lena started a "general responsibilities" and "weekly tasks" board, which may have helped.) This page is for me to publicly organize my thoughts towards further improvements and making the current improvements stick.

General advice

The classic, general advice is "leave things as good as you found them". This has limitations, since people have different perceptions of "good" and different observations of "how they found them".

Philosophical side-note: In wild places, the general advice is "leave no trace" or "leave only footprints" - the idea being that if you don't leave trash and don't take anything, the place will be conserved. But you still shed hair and skin and leave footprints: the weather and countless organisms clean up and reset things after you. This is not the case in human structures, like buildings, where we specifically keep out the weather and non-humans, so the humans responsible for all dirt and chaos inside them. Further, the structures themselves age and degrade thanks to weather and entropy. Therefore, it really is necessary to not only clean up after yourself, but do more. I have heard it formulated as "leave better trace" and "leave it (3%) better than you found it".

Specific states

The following table aims to capture more specifically capture the state things should be left in and when:

Item/area...	to be left in default state...	when...	with known exceptions
sinks	clear, clean, sieve empty	before leaving room
dining table	clear and clean	before leaving room	items temporarily left for community benefit: festive decoration, important information, etc
other communal surfaces	clear and clean	before leaving room	Works-in-progress marked with name and date
toilets	clean; seat dry; used towelets in bucket; with towelettes, toilet paper and menstrual products for next person	before leaving room
hallways	clear	A.S.A.P.	big arrivals of communal stuff, temporary storage of private things (marked with name and date)
private rooms	free of personal items, surfaces clean - nice for unknown next person	before reservation ends
beds	covered with usable sheets, free of debris and presentable	before claim ends
personal desks	personal items stored on or under desk, preferably enough free space for another person to be able to use temporarily	when claim ends	very small desks need not be usable by others
personal storage areas	clear and clean; people with extra spaces to actively clear one as new people need	when claim ends
couches/sofas	free of debris and presentable	when leaving couch/sofa