If LDS Corp accepted cold brewed coffee and tea, stocked their fridges with a variety of caffeinated and other beverages. Had the Ward Donut Gopher get a bunch of them on Saturday mornings and made cleaning their chapel a weekly event instead of chore they might at least add a spoon full of caffeinated sugar to help the holy janitorial service go down.

...or they could just stop going altogether. No congregation - no mess to clean up.

i agree, stay out of the building and there will be nothing to clean!

raking up leaves and pine needles at the stake center 2 blocks from my house when I was walking the dogs. They were obviously not ward members.

The other place where I walk my dogs, about 1-1/2 miles from my home, they didn't water the large lawn last year. Guess what? They have huge patches of dirt now. They had a crew who came in on Thursday mornings and mowed.

Usually on Saturday mornings when I walk my dogs, I always think "Why are there people at church?" It never fails. I always forget. I was long gone before they started telling the members they had to clean.

at the local JW 'Kingdom (Klingon?) Hall, there are cars parked there (near the hwy into Sequim) nearly 24/7.

If I cared, I'd wonder why, but I don't.

Only Women can make donuts, and ONLY while the menfolk are at PH meeting...


RMN, April 1991

There's no shame in paying a professional cleaning staff. The church doesn't have to be penny-pinching.

I'm reminded of that scene in "Christmas Vacation" where the boss man is being chided by his wife for trying to "save a buck."

Many places of work offer free soda and snacks. It isn't a big thing but its nice.

LDS Corp runs itself like a big corp and then expects its membership to take full stewardship of their little corner of Zion and pay for their "coffee" and donuts themselves.

There are the resources of money and free labor available to leaders to lead. They fly first class. They have little perks but they can't do something like this and save so much money in paying for labor.

Oh! but what is some non Mormon,oops--member of the "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints" was to smoke in one of the restrooms? What about them there things?

wrap the pews in plastic.

and, wrap the smug TBMs in plastic!

My TBM sister recently mentioned that she had to be at the temple on a Thursday night at 8:30pm to go clean it. I’m wondering if she was assigned to do it or if she volunteered...she has young kids and that was a school night. Also I’m wondering what the members wear while cleaning the temple? I’m guessing she didn’t get to wear workout clothes and sneakers. Lol

Has anyone here had to clean the temple before??

in their area in SLC and they have also cleaned the conference center, but they were unable to get tickets to attend conference there. My daughter, who is good friends with the last stake RS president, got my aunt tickets to conference.

My sister went to clean the temple in place of her husband. It seems that he volunteers to do it. He retired early for HEALTH reasons. So he couldn't go one night, so she went. She said the list was LONG and they were supposed to check up on her to help if she wasn't able to do it all, but nobody checked on her except her husband got done early and came to check on her. It was EXPECTED that she would not leave until she did all the chores.

Bluebutterfly notloggedin Wrote:

> Has anyone here had to clean the temple before??

I never cleaned the temple, can you imagine how long it would take, how big a building it is? But in my ward, nobody ever volunteered, you were required by a guy whose calling it was to organize the cleaning crews for the ward building. Ours also met on Thursday evenings. It was pretty loose as far as clothes, I wore shirt and pants. Maybe the temple would be different.

In our ward, you could pick one (plastic sheet) of chores. They were set up more or less equally so that each sheet had the same time length to do those chores.

I did it once. It was hard work for me (I work a desk job), just the sheer size of it. Moving all the chairs to vacuum under them, picking up all the trash the kids had left. I did it once and resigned before they called me again.

Did cleaning duty make me leave? No, but it was definitely NOT a plus. Also, just the number of things LDS DON'T do, such as this, compared to what other churches do (The other church I attended, Baptist, had free coffee, often free refreshments or ice cream socials where they provided the ice cream, they paid their child-care workers, and they paid their own janitorial and security).

The thought of getting old and still being required every couple months to come vacuum for hours---just helped me in my decision to leave!!!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/15/2019 07:13PM by mel.

Pay someone-
Professionals!

Just hire some pro janitors.

Dave the Atheist Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Just hire some pro janitors.

Unfortunately, they've had some VERY BAD experiences with member paid janitors, I know of one first-hand:


some members without good skills get those jobs & things don't work out for various reasons, sometimes they did.

In the Redmond Stake a few yrs ago nearly at the end of church janitors, one AH autocrat was a closet-Nazi with his subordinates, made the situation much untenable for all; there was a MAJOR dust-up when he crossed a line in the sand.

Some ppl thought they 'couldn't' discipline / fire member janitors, that was unfortunate for everyone involved.

GNPE Wrote:

> Some ppl thought they 'couldn't' discipline / fire member janitors

If you are paying someone for a job, you can discipline or fire. This is a very poor excuse to get rid of all the paid janitors and make people do it for free.

Here's a novel idea. Find a retired couple who need a little extra income and pay them badly to be the janitors and caretakers of the church. You will get 10% of their piddly pay back, maybe save in church welfare that they might have needed to draw on, and probably have a couple who take it very seriously and take a lot of pride in having a building that is more than just presentable, but immaculate and something that makes the other ward members proud. Trust me, I know it works. It's called "how it was back in the 70s."

Oh wait, can't do that. It would take "blessings" away from the people who don't get to spend their only day off cleaning toilets as quickly and badly as they can.

My Baptist Church (about 75 individuals/family groups) has a number of individuals/families who rotate through five cleaning agendae. Each agenda is 1-2 hours work. Twice a year we have a major all-church cleaning day, where we pull the cabinets out and get behind them, shampoo carpet stains, things like that, with pizza, soda, coffee, etc. provided from general funds.

We have enough volunteers to fill the slots.

Perhaps the LDS work sheets are too long and should be spread out among more members for shorter work times. A common problem is that "10% of the people do 90% of the work." Maybe if they made it 50-50.

caffiend Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> We have enough volunteers to fill the slots.

That never happens in LDS. But then again LDS are required to be called to volunteer. It is a broken system.

We do kind of the same thing. We pay for weekly basic janitorial and yard service that mostly summer mowing. And twice a year we have a half-day Saturday deep cleaning/yard work day that everyone who can comes out to, ending with pizza and beer and other goodies.

Those clean up days are some of my favorite activities. It's where you really get to know people and we always make it fun. But it's not something that is high pressure or where they take roll or anything else. The usual suspects always show up, and some never do. Then there is a smattering of sometimers.

They could all find better ways to spend their Sundays and no one would have to clean bathrooms at church.

And, provide the faithful with black lights to make sure EVERYTHING is SPOTLESS. The Boner in the mens’ room.

The meeting house I attended as a kid had a janitor. I think he was responsible for all the buildings in the stake. He was in our ward. I remember that he was a nice guy.

After they announced that the members would be responsible for cleaning and that there would be no more professional janitorial services I immediately thought, "what about brother so-and-so? I never did find out what happened to him. As far as I know he never came to church again.

But you could probably get the same effect with cocoa. You just have to remind the Mormons on work detail that they need to keep dosing themselves every 15 minutes to prevent the insulin from getting ahead of the sugar. That way they'll be working their butts off scrubbing the floors and what not... and whistling with joy as they do it.

But a much more effective cost cutting method would be to simply gut the buildings, then reline all the walls, floors and ceilings with high-impact plastic, and stick a large drain hole at one end of the building with a subtle gradient in the floor sloping from all directions toward the drain hole.

Then everything can be done on a BYOS (bring your own stuff) basis. Every family brings their own floor cushions. The bishop brings a folding podium. And the music director brings a portable keyboard. Everybody brings their own hymnbooks.

Once a month, a team of 5 people wearing raincoats simply hose everything down. Wipe it dry with towels...and they're good to go for another month.

Wally Prince Wrote:

> Then everything can be done on a BYOS (bring your
> own stuff) basis.

You know, Walls, it was very dangerous to post this. You have probably just given then ideas. Though it will definitely cut down on successful convert action if they show up and realize because they did not bring a chair, they have to sit on the plastic-covered (probably sticky if it is the end of the month) floor. :)

Every family is expected to bring their own stuff, plus one additional item in each category to share with converts and visitors.

In emergencies people without floor cushions can lean against the wall, sit on someone else's head or lap, or sit on an old newspaper (which the Bishop will be required to have in his trunk).

It will work really well. People will just need a little time to get used to the different way of doing things.

And if they can get their hands on a high-pressure water hose system, it will be lots of fun blasting the walls clean. Deacons and Teachers will be begging to play "shoot the booger" with the virtual water cannons deployed to clean the chapel.

How about a virtual Sacrament Meeting like the Second Life app?

Elder Berry Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> How about a virtual Sacrament Meeting like the
> Second Life app?


that would reduce the water bill...

And the garment feel ups.