Laundry room: helping circle to fill in the practical details

The Reef
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Hello @reef-buildfin,

Here’s my thinking about the laundry room:

  • By the time we move in, we are going to be so overwhelmed that thinking about a laundry room may not make it to the top of the list.

  • The first thing we’ll need when we move in will be the laundry room.

  • There are only four households missing now, and there is not a whole lot of work on the Building & Finance front, so to avoid we are going to stink like a bunch of sweaty little squirrels, how about we start a Helping Circle now and work towards a proposal on how to set up this thing?

Here’s a couple of things that could be researched or that should be part of a proposal:

  • Washing machines: Brutopia uses semi-professional ones, l’Echappée went with domestic ones. What are the pros and cons of each option?

  • How many machines will we need?

  • Financing of the washing machines:

    • If new machines would need to be bought: how are we going to finance them?

    • What about people who will want to opt out 100% because they will have their own washing machine?

    • How are we going to take care of the costs of water, electricity and repairs? How is this done in other cohousings?

  • Dryer(s)

    • Assuming that all four of the new households will want a dryer, how many people would like to contribute to one or more dryers?
    • In function of the answer to the question above: how many dryers, how to finance the purchase cost, how to finance the operational costs etc.

Set-up of the Helping Cirlce in terms of governance:

  • The mandate of the HC is to deliver a proposal for a plenary meeting on which machines to buy or use, and how to finance purchase and operational costs.

  • There is no deadline other than avoiding that we won’t be ready by the time we move in.

  • The HC will be linked to the Coordination Team (parent circle).

  • The HC will need to function as a regular team: select a Coordinator, write minutes etc.

  • A folder with all the files can go in the Team Building folder.

Would there be any volunteers who would be interested to work on this?

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A little bit of extra info, when asking the architects on how many machines we could fit in as a maximum

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I’m interesed in joining as of mid-October :slight_smile:

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Hi Els,
Just a though, would’nt it be an idea to first use the individual washmachines and dryers of the reeflings?
By exemple I just bought a new washmachine and would find it a pitty to give it away.

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I could be part of the helping circle if you still need people.

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Hi Chantal,

This is definitely an option. For this helping circle to decide…

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I am willing to step in as of mid October :slight_smile:

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Hey @mieke and @Liesbet are you still up for joining this helping circle? We could have a quick chat about how to get started this coming weekend?

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Hi Sophie, I would still like to be a part of it, but I am not very available until the end of the year. Happy to discuss during the weekend though.

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Hi Sophie, yes and yes :slight_smile:

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Hello heling circle (@Mieke, @Liesbet),

Let’s make our first (online/pre-plenary) meeting happen:

  • 20/11 8pm
  • 23/11 8pm
  • 24/11 8pm
  • 25/11 before the plenary
0 voters

P.S.: I also came across this post and survey that was already run on the use of a common laundry room: Survey to get a better view on how the common washing machine area (buanderie) will be used - #7 by els

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Ok, let’s see if and where the plenary is happening to decide on our meeting on 25/11 :slight_smile:

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24/11 could also work for me but only after 20:45

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Hi @Sophie_B, hi @mieke, here’s the link to the Laundry room folder: https://c301.nl.tabdigital.eu/apps/files/files/255592?dir=/The%20Reef%20shared%20folder/Team%20Building/Laundry%20room
There are the meeting minutes (not sure if I noted everything that should be noted; I was a bit tired - feel free to correct or add items).
There is also a document I started with a “brainstorm” of questions we can ask other cohousings to learn from them.
Have a nice evening! :hugs:

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Hey @Liesbet (and @mieke), I’ve added to the questions to other cohousings document as well as another brainstorming document on a follow-up survey among Reeflings - feel free to complete :slight_smile:

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For the helping circle: would you be willing to move your Nextcloud folder into the Helping circles folder? Makes more sense, as the others are also being moved there (and teams building and finance have been dissolved).

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