I took a designing intentional communities intensive course at Occidental Arts & Ecology Center years ago. And the most surprising idea that they had was that the people cooking should also clean. 1/

This was shocking to me and the members of the community I was part of. We thought equitable labor was one group clean after the cooks. But they walked us through their thinking. 2/

They said some people love to cook complicated meals and other people like to cook simple eat meals. And there was another division between people who were efficient with cleaning up after themselves and those that made big messes. 3/

Their idea was to incentivize simplicity and seeing the consequences of your actions. If somebody wants to make a big delicious amazing meal They need to be willing to be the person to clean up after themselves. 4/

It sounds exhausting the idea of cooking for a large group of people and having to clean up but it’s amazing how efficient you can get when you have to plan for the whole system 5/

The meal is not truly over until the dishes are clean. The same thing is true of an industrial society if you’re going to use all that stored oil energy and take apart the planet you have to clean it up before you get too sleepy