Combatting Clutter

If we unbalance nature, humankind will suffer. Furthermore, we must consider future generations: a clean environment is a human right like any other. It is therefore part of our responsibility towards others to ensure that the world we pass on is as healthy as, if not healthier than we found it. This is not quite such a difficult proposition as it might sound. For although there is a limit to what we as individuals can do, there is no limit to what a universal response might achieve.

-- The Dalai Lama

A Board Member Speaks

Okay, may I speak frankly for a moment? Why is FG so... well....uh... messy these days? The last two times I've been there on a Saturday, the receiving area could not even be entered. Once there, even if the Rev. hadn't flaked, I realized there was no way I would have actually been able to film there under those circumstances. Not even enough open space to set up a tripod! (Also, I brought a wealthy individual on a tour a few Saturdays back, and he had many positive comments, but also said to me, "I think we should get a group in here and clean this place up!") Why are things so much messier than they used to be? Are we being inundated with gizmos? Do we not have enough bodies to process it so it just piles and piles up in the receiving area? Why are there piles of dirt and stuff? Do we have brooms and mops? do they get used?

I would be happy to organize a cleaning party some weekend, but I worry that it's too cluttered to clean, we wouldn't be able to get at surfaces. What can we do?

The reason I bring this up is I would like to be able to capture something in addition to chaos on film. In the past, I was able to film pretty easily, but there was more open floor back then to walk on and through. Can someone clue me in? Suggest solutions?

-Marie D.

The problem

The end of the year influx of gizmos, plus the annual holiday shortage of volunteers is a contributing factor, but it is not our main problem.

Consider the library area. I used to try to keep this area orderly, because it was right outside my office, and when it was in order my work life was much liveable. It was a constant battle, though. People were removing the furniture for movie night or other events, and not always putting them back. The empty space would attract the overflow intended for the white hole, and then it would be hard to reclaim the space. At one point someone decided to put an extra couch there, on top of the existing couch. A couple of weeks ago it was in pretty good shape (through no effort on my part). Then someone set a monitor on the couch. Now the couch is holding the monitor, several items bound for the white hole, and a few boxes of books.

Now a rhetorical question: How many people here would expect to see a pile of junk stacked on the chairs for a couple of weeks at the pulbic library? It's an absurd proposition outside of Free Geek, but somehow people inside the mothership seem to think it's reasonable to store a couch on a couch or use a library for giant hub and chunks of steel storage. (The books I understand, but the keyboards, speakers, servers, and monitors, eh?)

Ubiquitous

Take that example and multiply it out by some factor and you see the situation we now have:

(None of this is intended to place blame on anyone.)

• The staff lounge area of the staff lounge/kitchen has been unusable for months. (If it had been available last Wednesday night, we could have moved the board meeting there and not kicked out the perl mongers group that was scheduled to meet in the meeting room.)

• The classroom is filled with all sorts of miscellaneous stuff. Multiple bicycles, random unused shelving, lots of chairs. The kids built a fort in one corner. There's a curtain that someone has hung, inconveniently blocking the light switch.

• The lab has a lot of random overflow junk in it.

• There are printers in the way of where the systems go on the shelves in the warehouse, pushing systems into the aisles and making it hard to get the printers out.

I could go on with the examples, but don't need to. You can fill in the details for yourself.

Part of the Norm

The clutter has gotten so bad that the Free Geek community has begun to accept it as normal. We've started to assume that we can't do anything about it, and in making this unspoken assumption, we've given in and become a community of clutter bugs.

Getting Worse?

Plus, it shows every sign of getting worse. Gizmo donations climb steadily and appear to climb faster than the adoption volunteers sign up. We are filling up all the space we have and have zero opportunity for physical expansion for at least the next year. This points to a faster increase in the incoming gizmo stream than in our ability to process the stuff.

The Hand-off

The clutter is entertainingly exasperated by The FreeGeek Hand-off. We have gotten so good at avoiding playing this game that it has been replaced by a new game, The FreeGeek Drop-off. Where things mysteriously appear, sometimes in one's lap.

This problem is made worse again by the many unfinshed projects. People wanting to clean up have to balance the desire of clean with the fear of hearing, "Where is that unique gizmo I need to finish my lifelong work that I left where you cleaned?"

I believe this "clutter culture" problem will require lots of points of solutions. --Revphil 17:33, 22 Jun 2006 (PDT)

Solutions

So what can we do?

Here are some things we can agree upon that will help if everyone buys in to the idea and tries to make this work:

Short Term, Common Sense Fixes

• A cleaning party:

I would be happy to organize a cleaning party some weekend, but I  worry 
that it's too cluttered to clean, we wouldn't be able to get at 
surfaces.  What can we do?

This is a good first step, but it's only a temporary measure without an ongoing plan to back it up. The whole community needs to pitch in and attack the problem and change our collective attitude about the clutter.

• Label every area. The classroom should have a sign that says CLASSROOM, the library should have a sign that says LIBRARY, etc. This shows the short term volunteers where they are so they're less likely to put stuff in the wrong spot.

• Designate an incoming spot for each area. These should be clearly labeled "LIBRARY INCOMING', 'RECYCLING INCOMING' etc. This is where stuff bound for that area goes.

• Assign each area to a staff person. The staff person's name should be posted. This person should be the authority on what goes in the space and what does not. (Of course, volunteers can take on an area too, but they should be working with a staff member, since staff people are here more regularly.)

• When an INCOMING area is full, we need to increase the ruthlessness and simplicity of the triage system for that area, sending more stuff to recycling. This will mean that more good stuff goes to recycling without being tested, which is not great, but it's better than storing it for weeks before we recycle it anyway.

• There's no such thing as a "special" stash. Everything has a place it belongs and that place is documented so anyone can figure out where gizmo X goes. As new gizmos are encountered, we have to pick a place where it belongs. (By default this is RECYCLING INCOMING.)

• Everybody in core is responsible for moving things to where they belong when they are found to be out of place (volunteers and staff alike). This needs to happen in real time. We need to take the lead in making it happen or chaos ensues.

• Each room that gets used for multiple purposes needs a map of that room on the wall showing where tables, chairs, etc. go. Anyone using the room needs to put it back into the standard order indicated on the map, not whatever random order things were in when they got to the room. Off the top of my head this should include at least:
  • the classroom,
  • the lab,
  • the meeting room, and
  • the staff lounge/kitchen.

• No bicycles inside during business hours. This is current policy and we used to enforce it, but it has been ignored for so long the old timers had given up and the newbies haven't been told. We are once again enforcing this rule. At the last staff meeting we decided the Action Committee will find an appropriate storage area for a couple of the community bikes, probably hung up and out of the way so they're accessible but not in the way. All other bikes must stay outside during business hours. Folks who want to leave bikes overnight inside need to be here in the morning to move them out. This will require coordination with the tenants upstairs, who will have to bring their bikes up with them or lock them up outside.

• Keep trying to make receiving and recycling more efficient. We can't grow the space and we've done a lot already, but anything that makes stuff move faster and more efficiently through the mothership will help out here.

I'm sure there is more that can be added to this list. (Please do.) I may have even had points that I lost in my laptop crash.

All the above stuff everyone can help do. Any one person trying to tackle this will find themselves in a vey quixotic world very fast however.

Longer Term Strategies and Solutions

• Recruit more adoption volunteers. These folks are the work horses that move stuff through the Geek. Looking at the number of volunteers per donations, quarter by quarter from the database, it appears that the ratio has dropped steadily throughout our history. Adding more adoption volunteers to the mix will help us process stuff faster.

• Adding more build volunteers would probably help as well, but that doesn't seem to be as much of a problem right now as the shortage of adoption volunteers.

• More space. Free Geek is stuck with the size we have for now. But there are some opportunities to grow larger in the long run. We could take over the neighbors space (upstairs above the warehouse) when their lease is up at the end of 2006. We could eventually ask our upstairs tenants above the meeting room and monkeyhouse to move elsewhere. Each of these would require more rent money and probably more staff to cover additional space and neither can take place right now.

• More time. Free Geek could open on another day of the week (Monday or Sunday), or for more hours per day and therefore be processing donations more time during the week. This would require more staff to cover the additional time open, so there's a cost associated with this option as well.

Neither the more time nor the more space option work unless there are more volunteers to process the stuff.