Swamp Dog Hobble

Appearance

Welcome to Swampdog Hobble ​

We’re so glad you made your way here! We hope you enjoy your time to the fullest!

For contact info, wifi credentials, and a house key, check the mail-sort by the toaster oven.

Music and Sound ​

Music gets played and practiced loud and often! You’re welcome to make as much or as little noise as you would like. There are no “quiet hours” and the piano in the front room is considered a 24 hour instrument.

If you are in need of noise mitigation, we can help with white noise machines.

General Cleaning and Upkeep ​

  • Be kind, hang out in communal spaces, pick up after yourself
  • Our home is shoes-on. Not mandatory, but the floors can get grimy.
  • Feel free to deposit any loose object in a common space into the Bullshit Box in the dining room (shoes, jackets, laptops, books, etc.)
  • No one has assigned chores, if you see something that needs to be done and you have the time, do it
  • When you finish a chore, write your name, the task, and the day it was completed on the chore sheet on the kitchen bulletin board for a shout-out at family dinner

Food, Cooking, and Kitchen ​

  • Food is for sharing! Everything in the larder and fridge is communal unless it’s got a name on it.
  • If you’d like to earmark a specific portion of something, say lunch for the next work day, give it a label with your name and it will be respected. Label making supplies are located in the drawer under the toaster oven.
  • Meat is only rarely cooked inside the house unless it is for distro.
  • Please label items in the fridge that contain meat; we keep them to a minimum.
  • When we cook, we cook more than one portion. Always leftovers! Always sharing!
  • Saturdays, we engage in war with the overwhelming bounty of CSA vegetables. It’s a day of heavy cooking that dominates the kitchen; feel free to enlist in the ranks and serve your home
  • Leave no dishes in the sink! We have a bus tub located to the left of the fridge, if you don’t have time to wash something, rinse your dish and put it in the tub
  • If you have time in the kitchen, empty the drying rack and wash whatever is in the bus tub
  • Sharp objects (knives, mandolin, etc) should never go in the bus tub nor drying rack; wash, dry immediately and put away to protect fingers and the sharpness of the blades.
  • Wash pots, pans, and the most-used cooking utensils after cooking so they are ready for the next cook.

Bathrooms ​

  • Use whichever bathroom you desire.
  • Extra toilet paper is in the “Harry Potter Closet” which is located under the front stairs.
  • Use best judgment on length of a bath or shower, there are 8 people here and two full bathrooms we sometimes run out of hot water
  • Keep the sink-top clear for cleaning
  • During weekly cleaning, the day’s janitor may put any in-the-way bathroom objects in a cardboard box during cleaning, it will remain outside the bathroom after cleaning; it’s the individual’s job to claim their objects

Laundry ​

  • Located downstairs and to the left in the basement
  • Detergent is communal and lives on shelf next to the machines
  • Please clean lint out of the dryer before/after each use
  • Clothesline in the backyard during warm & dry weather
  • Drying racks in the secret room during cold & wet weather
  • Clear out laundry spaces (machines, hamper in secret room) asap so others can use them

Distro ​

Every Thursday and Friday, we embark on a big cook for the Tompkins square distro on Saturday. There’s more about this effort linked on our distro webpage. It means the kitchen will be fairly occupied with that cooking effort during those days. Distro food is stored in the fridge in the shop and in the Secret Room, opposite the laundry.

Bulletin Board ​

  • If you have an item you’d like to bring up at a family dinner, write it on the top sheet of paper on the board in the kitchen.
  • Completed chores go on the bottom sheet, this gets read at the top of the next family dinner.
  • If something is going on - (Eg. guest comings and goings), write it on the paper calendar!

Family Dinner ​

The heartbeat of the home, a weekly meeting over food which every member is expected to attend. Guests are welcome to join for the initial meal portion, and we ask guests who stay for a week or longer to join the discussion afterward, at least to speak to the bulletin agenda items that concern them. The content of discussion varies, but regularly addresses the following:

  • When is the next family dinner?
  • Celebrate the previous week’s labor from the chore chart
  • Proceed through the previous week’s accumulated bulletin board agenda items
  • A-F grade on how we did eating CSA veggies
  • Upcoming guests
  • House events
  • Conflict within the home
  • Swampdog financial health
  • Change in community membership
  • Auction the items from the Bullshit Box (“Bullshit Bauction”)

Howl (media server) ​

Jordan built a local-network media server. If you’re on the house wifi and navigate to http://howl, you can access a treasure trove of media.

Woodshop/Bike Locker ​

The materials and tools in the shop are available for communal project impulse. If you have a project but don’t know how to bring it about or use a tool, ask around the house and someone will be happy to help you.

We store bikes in the shop as well. If we run out, we can build more hanging storage.

Smoking and Burning ​

If you smoke anything at all, do so outside. The porch is a lovely venue for that, replete with an ashtray and loose lighters. Close the front door and porch-fronting windows if you smoke there; it tends to vent in. Feel free to burn incense and candles in your room, but not in communal spaces without consent.