So after spending quite a lot of time tidying the woodshop and phase 1 last week I came in today and all three rooms are a total mess again. Scraps and saw dust everywhere on and around each bench, a whole lot of new clutter has appeared on the phase 1 tables, tools left out everywhere in each room. As usual there is no bench space to do any making unless I spend at least 30 mins to clean up other people’s mess first, really frustrating.
Guys could all of us @members please factor in tidying up into our making time. This means putting tools back in a reasonable place, throwing off-cuts away, and vacuuming dust off the bench and floors and them putting the vacuum cleaner away. We are never goong to have a functional space otherwise.
what do people suggest as something to try?
How paternal do we need to get?
Should everyone be asked to go through an
induction and it really impressed upon them?
Theres a hostel here where I am, they got two pictures up
near each sink, one with “YES” written on it, and a picture of
how you are supposed to leave local area. One with “NO” and a picture of
it messy.
Seems to work surprisingly well, based on the last few days I’ve been
here
Personally I think this process has started, and we’ve also been starting to purge things, and tidy up, @boldaslove did a great job burning stuff out the front the other day too.
It would be worth considering a change of the rules to include some rules about disposal of abandoned items.
London Hackspace has a 3-week bin system for things found laying about, and a storage request system for holding items in the space with labeling.
A great example is Joe’s van stuff… He’s been doing work for the space and has more to do yet, so it would be a great way to ensure it’s labeled as keep safe.
Abandoned stuff around that space is a real problem, it’s hard to tackle because we don’t know if it’s Makerspace property, or members property or projects. If we had Makerspace property labeled some how, anything that doesn’t have a storage notice on it would be free to be disposed of.
has the problem being abandoned items or items for disposal.
A bin system would address the abandoned ones.Burning stuff or
having Joe do yet another dump run is a way of dealing with stuff that has
been binned/bagged, and will be something we will always need to deal with,
but maybe we could improve this as well.
My question is really about what the Barnaby described, lots of sawdust and scraps.
This means people have to spend time actually clearing away other people mess.
What is our current system for dealing with this, is it failing (seems to be from above posts),
what do we think we should do to make better?
It is a whole range of issues, from not cleaning up after construction to using the space and making a mess, to a general lack of organisation.
A bin system is a solution for the day to day use of the space, but it doesn’t fix the issue of leaving things out after they’ve used them.
In my mind that probably comes down to a lack of clear places to put things away, as often you find something the last place it was used, use it yourself and leave it where you last used it. There isn’t a place for many things to go.
There’s a lot of talk about a lack of storage as the issue, I actually realised after someone’s comment recently about this that it’s probably a lack of signage about where things go. Yes we need a bit more storage for things, but this isn’t the real issue, organisation and labeling of where things go is the issue.
We could do with a proper way to dispose of sawdust and scraps in the first place as this isn’t suitable for our current waste disposal solution, but also the mess of sawdust in the clean room is because of construction yesterday.
This is going off topic a little but there is some work that needs doing to get people to embrace the roles of each room:
Clean Room - Should be clean, dust free, quiet, smell free (except food) Messy Workshop – Should be dust free Wood Workshop – Should be oil/paint/etc free Snug – Should be absolutely no noise
To facilitate this we need to keep doors closed and agree on this so we can collectively enforce it.
I have noticed too that sawdust is in many cases not cleaned up by the person who generates it. Also, when the laser cutter has been operational, there are often little bits of broken acrylic and laser ply discarded within the vicinity of the machine which people have broken off removing their work from a sheet and not bothered to put in the bin.
I was wondering whether it might be worth having a couple of bagless Dustbusters hanging on the walls for clearing up sawdust from benches and around the machine tools. They can be had for less than £20 each.
Even with a dustpan and brush it takes 30 seconds to sweep a bench clean.
Yes and no photos might be worth trying. And signs on the inside of each door to remind you to check and clear the area before you leave it. I think the reverse rota is working well for the loo. But the work areas should just never ever be left in a mess for the next person to clear up. I’m sometimes tempted to take photos of piles of mess and post them on here to demand who left it like that.
On Wednesday evening I spent a while cleaning and tidying at the beginning of the night, but then left empty crisp bowls on the table when I left, and only remembered them half way home. So thank you to whoever tidied those away.
I think we should keep discussing this, but I think it’s worth holding off on making behavioural changes when we haven’t seen how the space is used when there isn’t construction going on.
It’s true that it’s difficult to tidy when you’re not sure where to put anything and that having storage sorted and labelled boxes and/or spots of shelves for everything will help a lot.
But it’s absolutely not difficult to throw out rubbish that you generated and to sweep up after yourself if you made a mess. I think we should start changing those behaviours asap. It’s just rude to leave a mess for others to clean.
unsurprisingly, since we are new, we need to develop modalities for keeping the space clean.
Regardless of what we deicide, if the maximum number of members feel like they were involved in the development of procedures then they are much more likely to be aware of and follow any procedures that are decided on, so we should work hard to extract opinions from people
I am pessimistic about the effectiveness of a “come on you guys” approach to cleanliness so I’m already thinking ahead to the “what else might work?” stage.
I had an idea while waking from sleep today (which means it’s either genius or deluded): Semi-regular cleaning parties. Participants get £5/10 knocked off their fee this month (or credited to their laser cutting account or whatever).
-Make throwing away the scrap and vacuuming dust after use part of the induction process for each machine (dust piles build up really fast)
-Have more bins, ie one next to each bench.
-Good storage with clear locations for each tool and easy access
-Signs sound a bit silly but I’m sure they help as connor suggests. We need to promote this as part of the ethos of the space
-when construction phase 2 is ended, hide away all the clutter so the space looks organised and any small mess is more visible
-have stray screw storage near each bench ? unless we say they go in the bin from now on. These seem to proliferate on the benches for some reason and get mixed up in the sawdust
we are obviously going to have mess but we can keep it manageable. universities seem to manage ok, the one I visited had massive self-run workshops and they were spotless all day long they must be doing something right