House Cleanliness
 

How do you encourage a chapter to keep their house clean? Suppose you have tried chore duties, theres no money in the budget for a maid, and even attempted fining people who left their stuff lying around but nothing works. Any and all ideas would be helpful.

We had a standing rule at our chapter for keeping the kitchen clean.

Any members personal pots, pans, dishes, food items etc that were left out for more than 3 hours were thrown away.

Guys learned real quick to clean up their own mess and wash their own dishes. Chapter owned kitchen utencils, dishes etc were kept locked up and cleaned right away after use.

We also had a big sign in the kitchen that said "Your Mom Does'nt Work Here, Clean Up After Yourself".

We have a system of daily and weekly duties to keep our house clean. Our house has 25 single rooms, a large kitchen, a large lounge/lobby/dining area, and 3 bathrooms. Even though it's a house full of girls, the house gets really dirty, really quick. We have cleaning people that come 3 times a week to do the floors and take out the trash, and clean the bathrooms. Even with that, we have a big problem with keeping our kitchen clean and people leaving their shit in common areas. Last semester there were 4 daily duties and 5 weekly duties.

The four daily duties were kitchen, lobby, 1st floor bathrooms, 3rd floor bathrooms. People signed-up for 14 duties per semenster, on they day they had a duty the house manager would put a door tag with her duty on her door first thing in the morning.

The kitchen duty involved cleaning the counters/stove/appliances and putting any dirty dishes/pots/utensils in a bin (and everything in the bin is thrown out at the end of the week). The bin used to be emptied every day, but there was a lot of hostility in the house.

The lobby duty involved straightening up the furniture, smoothingout the sofa covers, cleaning the tables, throwing away trash, and then putting misc crap that people left in a bin in our mail room (again, emptied at the end of the week).

The bathroom duties are pretty self explanitory, replace the tp, lysol the stalls, clean the mirrors, etc.

The weekly duties are vacuuming (1st&2nd floors, 3rd &4th floors), cleaning the laundry room (and doing a load of house laundry), and something else which escapes me.


It works pretty well all in all, having door tags to remind people helps a *lot*. Also, there is a fine for missed duties, 3$ for daily, 5$ for weekly.

Next semester we're trying out a system that has 23 weekly duties (all much smaller than the previous). The smaller suties would be cleaning out the ashtray in front of the house, vacuuming one floor, cleaning just mirrors, etc.

There are 6 main areas of the house: sisterhood room, kitchen, dining room, living room, bathroom 1, and bathroom 2. Every week, each house girl gets one of these areas to clean. Your assigned area has to be cleaned by chapter meeting Sunday night. It's listed on a big chart in the kitchen. If you don't do your chore, you have a meeting with the house manager and could be fined. We usually don't have those problems because no one wants to be fined. :)

This might work for guys, but it DOES NOT work for girls. Trust me. It just makes them extremely pissed at the HM. Even if it's left out, destroying members' personal property is extremely disrespectful. (Unless it's food and stinking - that's a different story)

Everyone who's suggested different duties every week is on the right track. Be sure you make it so everyone gets a "free week" somewhere in the cycle.

Are people in the house because they want to be there, or are they pretty much being forced into living in? If it's the latter, you might want to consider a smaller house or get rid of it altogether.

If I were in charge, I'd just make an announcement that next semester dues will be raised so that you can hire cleaning people because people aren't being responsible enough to clean up after themselves. Either people will get their act together so they don't have to pay the extra money, or they'll pay up and you guys can have somebody else do it.

We had cleaning people come three times a week (this was a pretty big house -- 50 girls living in). We weren't allowed in the kitchen (only our housemom and the waiters were), which I think makes a big difference, and people didn't really make a big mess in the first floor common areas. The only times we ever had problems were people leaving stuff in the 2nd and 3rd floor TV lounges, and the bathrooms, which tended to get a little messy on weekends.

When I was in college:
Each week at chapter it was announced who would clean what in our chapter suite: Formal, informal, kitchen, bathrooms, parque, etc. All members were required to clean at some point during the semester. Chapter meetings were on Sunday nights, and your cleaning was to be done by Wednesday night at 9pm. By Friday, you had to check you cleaning areas and straighten them if need be. There was a list posted in the chapter suite every week where you would initial for the first cleaning and then for the second of the week. If it wasn't done, you were fined. The house manager/property manager was in charge of this.

As an advisor the only solution that we as an Alum Committe and Corp Board could come up with was suspending social privlages for a month if more than 5% of the house chores aren't done.

We have a chore list which includes public and private areas which is checked by the collegiate property manager as well as an adviser. It is checked before monday night meeting. The girls are still fined if they don't do thier individual chore too.

We have tried everything. So far this is the only thing that has come even close to working.

My first thought after reading the first post was "If you have a budget for a formal, then you have money for a cleaning lady". I would assign house duties as others said, fine people for not doing them and use the fine money, along with money from the SOCIAL budget to pay for a cleaning service.

Jocelyn, I'm a bit confused. I think that in one of your previous posts you said that Tri Sigma nationals doesn't allow chapters to fine their members, or something like that. Correct me if I'm wrong. It may be just the meds talking. :(

Individual chapters cannot fine members for missing events. Our housing corp can issue fines for violations (continual neglect of housekeeping responsibilities, alcohol, males, etc.). That's pretty much the only fining that's allowed, and it's pretty rare and must be approved first by HQ.

You don't get a fine for forgetting to clean bathroom 2 once. If you just forget one week, it's a warning from the house manager (usually an older active who's lived there for at least 2 years). It's pretty hard to get a fine for not cleaning. To do that, you'd have to completely neglect your assigned chore for at least 2 months. Like I said, it's very rare, I don't even think it's happened in years. Fines are reserved for serious offenses like alcohol and men in the house.

Sorry to confuse you KLPDaisy, it's just that it's so rare that I neglected to mention it. :)

Well, our house is fairly new and we have also had quite a bit of trouble making sure that it was clean. Since only about 1/4 of the chapter lives in the house, each week during chapter 4 names get drawn out of a hat. Those 4 members are responsible for doing 3 chores around the house that week. (ex. vacuuming, dishes, trash, dusting) They get to choose which three they do from a list. They must do it by the following chapter and must have a member of the executive board sign them for doing the chore. After they have been picked, they do not have to do it again in the semester.

When we have a major event happening at the house, like an alumni event, all sisters must come on a designated day and do their chore. Each item is random and nothing takes more than 5 minutes to do. After that, the house is basically detailed and looks great for the event.

There hasn't been too much complaining about this system compared to other ways that we have tried to work it out. It is all random and a sister might luck out and not get their named drawn one semester.

I don't think that would be legal unless every single member of the chapter lives in the house. Plus I thought that once a budget was made you can't just move money from here to there at will.

And ummm, not everyone is in areas with reputable bonded cleaning services. I would not have let some of the sketchy mono townies in our house to sell Girl Scout cookies, let alone to clean it.

"mono townies"?

After throwing eggs at and beating our pledges, we make them clean the house

Actually, only three brothers live at the house and generally a good portion of us feel sorry for them and help clean up when they ask