Cleaning and food services in houses?

[lyrica9]

Is my sorority house the only one that doesn't have maid service and a cook that serves 3 meals a day to the whole house? I'm reading these threads about the pros of living in the house and I'm like "maid service, qua?"

I remember when I was talking to my dad about living in the house at first and he asked me about the maid and cooking stuff, and I looked at him like he was crazy. He told me that it was the norm at the houses at UT (I'm from Austin), and so I just assumed it was those crazy rich Fraternities/Sororities at UT and it wasn't a common thing elsewhere.

Anyone else not have these things in their house?

[AchtungBaby80]

Maybe. We didn't have a "maid," not the kind where you ring a bell and they bring you stuff, but we had a housekeeper who came five days a week to clean the bathrooms, run the sweeper, dust, and whatnot. We never had to clean.

We also had a chef. She was awesome--she made this great tortellini with pesto sauce. Yum! She came five days a week as well, and did lunch and supper, but not breakfast...we had cereal, bagels, and stuff that we fixed ourselves. On Fridays she usually didn't do supper, so our house mom got us pizza most of the time.

Damn, I wish I was living there again.

[dakareng]

A lot will depend upon the size of your house and the configuration of your common areas/ kitchen. The logistics of individual members storing personal food and cooking simultaneously in a single kitchen as well as university requirements for a meal plan to be offered are leading factors in a meal plan (i.e., having a cook). Whether a chapter has staff depends on how large a house it is (many residents make paying a salary easier) but all the housed chapters I've worked with (4 different states) had a cook that provided at least 10 meals/week. Maid service varied from daily to weekly.

Since your signature says Denton, if you are at UNT and are getting one of the new houses, you may have some changes next year. Many universities require all residents of university-owned housing to purchase a meal plan. That can be via resident halls or via the sorority... so that may be one of the discussion points for your house corporation this summer. As far as maid service... if that's something your members want, and are willing to pay for, it may be negotiable.

[_Lisa_]

SigKap @ the Univ. of KY had a housekeeper that would come 5 days a week to stock the bathrooms, vacuum the living room & common areas, dust, etc.
The cook made 3 meals a day/5 days a week & one of those meals was the big dinner on Mondays when all the sister's (& guests) came for dinner.
We also had a gardener too.
I'm assuming that nothing has changed since I went alum in 2002, considering I'm still down there quite a bit & I haven't noticed any changes!

[ISUKappa]

My experience is much like AchtungBaby80

At my undergrad chapter, we had a full-time housekeeper (not a maid!) and cook. They did not live-in house but easily worked 40+ hours per week. The housekeeper cleaned the common areas and bathrooms and she was the sweetest thing! She left after my senior year, but I'm sure they still have one. For meals, we get 14 meals a week (B/L/D M-R and B/L on F--though breakfast is really only cereal, toast, bagels or whatever you feel like making, not a fully prepared hot breakfast.) Plus, our kitchen is open until 10pm nights and open during the weekend so we could have leftovers or cook or whatever.

At the chapter I advise they have a cook who provides 13 meals per week (brunch only on Fridays) and a cleaning service that comes 2-3 times per week to clean common areas.

I'm pretty sure this is the standard at both campuses--cooks and some sort of cleaning service.

ETA our house held 65 women, most of the other chapters on campus were of similar size.

[33girl]

None of the houses at Clarion (or any of the Pa State Schools* for that matter) have cooks or maids or kitchens....they are all just off campus housing that happens to have Greek letters on it.

*By this I mean the 14 SSHE schools, not Penn State.

[Tom Earp]

HOLLY COW, Kiss My Butt and Call me the Maid fom Manhattan!

This has to be a dreamland childs _____!

Usually, in the olden days, there was a house mother who supervised the cooking and did help! She also taught manors, did not do dishes or cleaning!

Cleaning back in the dark ages was done by Pledges, today, everyone is to do House cleaning!

In Houses today, depending on the size of the Campus and Organizations, there is a food service who caters meals, so may times a day or week. If not, Chapters can subscribe to the School Food Plan!

Normally, food plans can cost the Chapters more Money than it is worth!

God, give me a friggen break, maid and food service????????

Do you live in the Ritz Carleton! DA!

Get off of your dead butt, do something!!!!!!!

[KSUViolet06]

Don't feel bad, we don't have a maid or a cook

[queequek]

None of Iowa State fraternity houses have "maid" or "clean full time cleaner" whatever to clean the house. We do it by ourselves!

[AXORissa]

we didnt have a maid. We had a cleaning service (a team of 2 or 3 people) who came twice a month, usually before a big event held at the house. heh. we all had house chores. every week we'd be assigned a different chore-- clean a bathroom, take out the trash, etc.

and we didnt have a cook. I wish we did. But then again, we lived right by all the great resturants off campus, so a cook was unnecessary. ANd our dues were very very low compared to what my sister pays for her huge house, cook, and maid...

[AOIIalum]

Our local chapter house is cleaned twice/week (general sweeping, dusting, vacumming, and deep cleaning the baths and showers.) We have a cook who prepares lunch and dinner M-F when school is in session. Continental breakfast is available 7 days/week (cereals, milk, juice, bagels, fruit, french toast sticks, etc.) I believe that is pretty standard on this particular campus.

[bruinaphi]

Originally posted by Tom Earp
HOLLY COW, Kiss My Butt and Call me the Maid fom Manhattan!

This has to be a dreamland childs _____!

Usually, in the olden days, there was a house mother who supervised the cooking and did help! She also taught manors, did not do dishes or cleaning!

Cleaning back in the dark ages was done by Pledges, today, everyone is to do House cleaning!

In Houses today, depending on the size of the Campus and Organizations, there is a food service who caters meals, so may times a day or week. If not, Chapters can subscribe to the School Food Plan!

Normally, food plans can cost the Chapters more Money than it is worth!

God, give me a friggen break, maid and food service????????

Do you live in the Ritz Carleton! DA!

Get off of your dead butt, do something!!!!!!!

Tom,

I have to disagree with you. Back in the "days" a lot of these larger chapters had house boys who lived in and served as hashers in addition to housekeepers, cooks and house moms.

We had a breakfast cook during the week and a cook who came in and did lunch and dinner during the week. We had a housekeeper who cleaned the common areas 5 days a week and hashers who served and cleaned up on Monday nights before meeting. On weekends our house mom would open the big kitchen for breakfast and then we would assign proctor duty to two rooms per weekend and they had to do the dishes and clean up the kitchen. We had a "little kitchen" where each person had space to store food and we could cook our lunches and dinners on the weekends or after school if we missed meals and didn't get late plates.

My mother's experience at UCLA 25 years earlier was very similar to mine as was my grandmother's at University of Washington 25 years before that.

When you live in a large house it is impractical to think that the members will keep it clean (meaning swept, dusted, etc.). I never would have paid to live in a really large house where I would have had to do more than my share of cleaning up the little kitchen or proctor duty and cleaning my room. I would probably feel differently if I had gone to a smaller school with smaller chapter houses.

[AchtungBaby80]

Originally posted by bruinaphi
Back in the "days" a lot of these larger chapters had house boys who lived in and served as hashers in addition to housekeepers, cooks and house moms.

I forgot to mention our houseboys. We had them (I think every sorority house on campus did), but they didn't live in, of course, they just came in to help the chef at lunch and supper. They were the ones who washed the dishes, cleaned up the kitchen, etc. Usually, the houseboys would all be from the same fraternity...one year we had several FIJIs, and then another time we had some Sig Eps. They were the only "guests" allowed in our kitchen.

[bruinaphi]

We only had hashers on Mondays when I was in college but they used to live in the house and serve and clear at every meal. At some of my other chapters we still have houseboys that don't live in but we call them hashers.

I've always associated the term "houseboy" with livinging in the house. Am I wrong?

[_Lisa_]

Originally posted by AchtungBaby80
I forgot to mention our houseboys. We had them (I think every sorority house on campus did), but they didn't live in, of course, they just came in to help the chef at lunch and supper. They were the ones who washed the dishes, cleaned up the kitchen, etc. Usually, the houseboys would all be from the same fraternity...one year we had several FIJIs, and then another time we had some Sig Eps. They were the only "guests" allowed in our kitchen.

We had houseboys too-members of a Fraternity on campus that came to help w/ dinner. They were very sweet.