Cleaning Day: This is how you do it

TAKING PART IN

A set of tips on how to bring the Cleaning Day to your neighborhood

ABOUT THESE TIPS

What is Cleaning Day?

How to participate in Cleaning Day?

How to get started?

What to take into consideration?

How to take the day to a next level; how to spread the word and activate people?

What kind of material and support we, the people behind the concept of Cleaning Day give you?

We made these tips because we want to share our knowledge, inspire you and make participating to

Cleaning Day as easy as possible.

This is a set of guidelines and tips to help and support you to bring the Cleaning Day to your neighborhood.This set of tips answers to these questions:

Example from

FINLANDWe give you examples on how

Cleaning Day is done in Helsinki. These are examples you can get inspired

from, but you can be creative and find your own ways to make the day happen.

THIS IS CLEANING DAYCleaning Day started in Helsinki, spread all over Finland and you can also make it happen in your neighborhood.

The idea is that during one day anyone can set up a flea market stand anywhere they want to: in their home, street or a park.

Cleaning Day was originally born on Facebook in spring 2012 from conversation. A group of volunteer and active people started to work on the idea and the first Cleaning Day was organized in May 2012, just a few months after the idea was first presented.

During the day, tens of thousands of people sell, shop and give away secondhand items everywhere.

Fleamarket stands are marked on the map by the sellers at www.cleaningday.org for everyone to find.

Cleaning Day takes place twice a year: every May on a Saturday week 21 and every last Saturday in August.

Cleaning Day is created by all the people participating to the day. There is no single organizer, everyone act as event organizer just by participating.

At the end of the day everyone cleans after themselves. Cleaning Day is a neat day.

Cleaning Day is a new day of celebration for friends of secondhand and urban culture.

Cleaning Day turns cities into giant secondhand markets, where anyone can

sell or give away their old things, as well as make the neighborhood’s best finds.

The idea of Clening Day is to make recycling easy - one man’s trash is another man’s treasure - as well as creating dynamic and responsible

urban culture.

Click here for more info

A n y o n e c a n p a r t i c i p a t e t o C l e a n i n g D a y !

PICTURES Here are some pictures from the past Cleaning Days in Helsinki.

Pictures by: Jaakko Blomberg, Venla Helenius, Milla Ruuska

HOW TO PARTICIPATEIt is as simple as this:

Do you want to be more involved in organizing the Cleaning Day?

Then keep reading!

Mark your spot on the map at www.cleaningday.org. It only takes a minute!

Set up your own fleamarket stand during the Cleaning Day.

Don’t forget to clean and take away your extra stuff at the

end of the day.

BRING CLEANING DAY TO YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD

Activate people. Tell your friends and ask them to joint he day with you. With friends it’s more fun!

Spread the word and promote the day. In social media, press releases, printed posters etc.

Translate and localize the Cleaning Day website to your language. Contact us for the material.

Find out about permits and possible restrictions for the use of urban spaces. What to take into consideration? Could you make the day happen in your whole city or the whole country?

The following pages give you more detailed information on what you can do to bring Cleaning Day to your neighborhood! To get started, consider about these things:

Partners to help divide the work and possible expences.

Further considerations:

Remember, you can always contact us if you need more help or advise!Our contact informations are at

the end of these tips.

ACTIVATEPEOPLEWhy would people participate?

There are meany reasons why people participate to diffe-rent events and activities, but the most important are the rewards they get. Participating to Cleaning Day can be rewarding in many aspects for just a little effort. You can for example..

...get rid off the things you don’t need anymore in a sustainable way

...get money from selling your things

..spend the day with your friends

...enliven your neighborhood, get to know your neighbors and meet new people

...explore a city turned into a huge secondhand market

...shop treasures at affordable prices and make great bargains

...and most important of all, have fun!

The people in Helsinki behind the concept of the Cleaning Day were very exited and inspired about the

idea of organizing a fleamarket day all over the city.

Seeing how exited they were, got more and more people to join the

day and the event grew bigger and bigger.

How to activate people??

Start with your friends. Think about who do you know that could be interested? Contact them and ask them to join you. Tell them about the rewards they could get. And ask them to spread the word forward.

Use social media! It is an effective way to find people with similar interests.

You can start with your own neighborhood. Tell your neighbors and organize a neigborhood carnival together with them!

And remember to mark your fleamarket stand on the map. That also works as a way of activating more and more people. The popularity of the day feeds itself; the more people are setting up fleamarket stands, the more people get curious about what’s happening and join the day too.

Example from

FINLAND

SPREAD THE WORD

Set up a Facebook, Twitter or other social media page or group. It could be for example a Facebook group for your own neighborhood. Use the power of social media where critical masses ar easily reached.

Ask your friends to join and spread the word. Your friends are likely to be into same things as you.

Find something similar in your own city from Facebook or other social media, that meets the values and the idea of the Cleaning Day. Contact the people, ask them to join and spread the word.

Consider translating the Cleaning Day website to your own language and add some local content. We give you the materials, you only need to do the trans-lations and we’ll do the rest!

Spread printed posters around your neighborhood and city.

Send press releases to your local newspapers to get more visibility.

In Finland it all started from a Facebook page that got over 5000 likes in a few days.

Press got interested and that way the first Cleaning Day got more visibility.

We offer free materials for you to use. Look at the examples at the end of these tips.

Here are some simple tips how you can promote the Cleaning Day. The great thing is that promoting doesn’t require any budget.

Example from

FINLAND

CLICK HERE!

TAKE OTHERS INTOCONSIDERATION

Tell your neighbors, residental association or housing company about your plans to organize the Cleaning Day in your yard or neighborhood.

Think if there is something you need to do for setting up a flea market stand during one day in the urban areas such as parks. Ask your local muncipalities to make sure it is not a problem.

Take into consideration the cultural differences and local ways of using the urban spaces.

Remember to clean up after yourself and ask others to do it too.

The first time in Helsinki the Cleaning Day was organized very informally and everything

went fine. The second time we agreed with the Helsinki City public works department

to make the day more official.

Cleaning Day website works currently as a tool for the city officials to see what is happening and where. This is possible if

people mark their selling spots on the map.

There might be some restrictions you should take into consideration. These might vary very much depending on the country and city.

To make sure you are respectfull, you can do for example this:

Example from

FINLAND

PARTNERS AND FUNDING

We take care of the web service and other materials and facilities expen-ses. If you want to print posters and spread the word on Facebook, go ahead! For bigger marketing investments, you can try to get partners and funding.

Please note that that all the commercial partners should support Cleaning Day values and the Cleaning Day brand. Please always contact Yhteismaa in matters concerning partnerships and funding.Our contact information is at the end of these tips.

In Helsinki a non profit organization called Yhteismaa NGO (www.yhteismaa.fi/en/)

is organising the Cleaning Day and some side events.

In other cities in Finland the local people are in charge.

The important thing to point out is that:

You don’t need any money for making the Cleaning Day happen!

Since the Cleaning Day has no official organizer, each participant themself acts as an event organizer, and the day is happening because of the people participating!

Example from

FINLAND

Click here to read more

about our values

Cleaning Day website that you can localize to your own language and culture.

The map on our website

The Cleaning Day

Visual identity

Customizable Templates for posters, press releases, pricetags and letters

CLICK HERE!

CLICK HERE!

To make it as easy for you as possible, we have a lot of open and free materials under the concept of Cleaning Day for

you to use!

CLICK HERE!

CLICK HERE!

www. .orgCOMMON RESOURCES

In addition to these materials, we can also support you by giving

you ideas on social media updates and other concrete ways

to inpspire people. Contact us for more information.

Right and Responsibility:People have the right to do things in the urban space by themselves the way they want to. The world is ours and we should be free to use public spaces freely. But we should keep in mind that we have to take the responsibility and care of the spaces. Cleaning Day is a neat day.

Community and Urban Culture:The day is about community and doing things together. It is about spending the day with your friends and neighbors. Let’s enliven our neighborhoods and create the day together for all citizens.

Ecology: One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. People today have too much stuff they don’t need but someone else might treasure. Recycling and secondhand should become a lifestyle and Cleaning Day is here to support that.

Co-Creation:Cleaning Day is a do it yourself- and do it together-day. Anyone can participate to Cleaning Day the way they want to and be creative in making it look like they want to. Individuals may use the Cleaning Day logo and name freely, in the context of the Cleaning Day. Co-creation is the word!

CLEANING DAY PHILOSOPHY

Anyone can organize and participate to Cleaning Day anyway and anywhere they want to. But it is important to respect and keep in mind the values that define the day.

CONTACT US

[email protected]

Is there something else you are wondering about? Don’t hesitate to contact us.We would love to hear about you

and help you with anything.

[email protected]

[email protected]

Please send us feedback on this set of tips.These tips are still a work in process and

we will update them based on your feedback.Credits:The Concept of the Cleaning Day is created by Yhteismaa NGO.

Ossi Pirkonen made the logo and visual identity.Riina Oikari put together these guidelines

with the help of Yhteismaa and Neea Laakso as a graphic advisor.