As you may know, I am interested in cohousing. My two best friends and I are planning to either join a cohousing community, or create a mini one of our own in retirement. However, right now Sue lives in Orlando and Bill lives a few suburbs away from me.
Bill and I took a mini-step towards our cohousing ideal yesterday when we jointly bought a shredder. He needs one. I need one. We live in separate towns. But really, how often do you REALLY have to shred things? For me the big need is in January, when I go through all my files and clean things out. Most of the papers go into the recycling, but I don’t want to just recycle the financial papers. Sometimes I just burn them in the fireplace, but this year as I got ambitious and even cleared out the archives in the basement I had a whole big Tupperware bin filled with financial papers from years back.
I’ve been looking for more opportunities to share resources, to create community, to live more lightly on the earth. Honestly, a shredder seemed a stretch in some ways, but I DO feel there’s sufficient craziness afoot that ensuring one’s financial documents aren’t retrievable makes sense. So sharing the shredder with Bill seemed a step in the right direction.
I’ve also talked about sharing a snowblower with my neighbors Pete & Julie. So far we’ve opted to either tough it out (Pete all the time, me with lighter snows) or hire out (me for snows over 3″, Pete for snowpocalypses like we had last year).
I’ll be writing soon on the Transition Town network and other ideas for creating positive change in terms of sustainability and living more lightly on the earth.
A shared shredder is a small thing – but I believe big change is best achieved one personal, small step at a time.
Tell us about the resources you share with others – or ones you could share. What’s your “mini cohousing”/sustainability/living lightly success story? I really want to know!
I love this idea but am pretty limited. I take my Humanities subscription to my neighbor when I’m done reading it. When I was little and everyone had big gardens, we shared heavy equipment.
I’d say what you share now, Tammy, is ideas and recipes – and that’s terrific!
One of my biggest frustrations at this time in my life is that I’m occupying an entire (albeit small) house, by myself. I am also considering cohousing options with at least one good friend. Established cohousing communities in these parts tend to be either closed or very very expensive (or both). On a smaller scale, I share some garden equipment with friends and things like organic soil supplements. Real baby steps, but it feels better than doing nothing at all. I look forward to hearing more about your progress toward cohousing. Good luck!
Eleanor – I always want to occupy a small house – either by myself or with a partner – but not with others. What I like about cohousing is getting to have one’s own separate space – but then sharing a big common house with others – so one can have the solitude desired, the community desired – and a lot of sharing of time, talent, companionship, tools and stuff. I’m so lucky with the neighbors and friends I have locally – but from what I’ve seen with cohousing (and I’ve been to a lot of cohousing communities as Sue and I have been checking this out for years) actually being in a community where everyone is there because they want community would be just wonderful! Also – I hear you on the availabiity of local cohousing. Chicago has surprisingly little. Madison, Wisconsin has a lot and i’d love to live there but my sweet friends are weather wimps, so we are looking at Asheville, NC and at this moment I’m thinking we’ll end up with just us – but more will be revealed!
Pretty sure no one would EVER want to live with us…my teenage boys smell…really bad! But we do do a few things that I think would count as “community living”. We share a large garden in the spring and summer with our cousins and two friends – we all share a shed of tools and take turns on the calendar planting, weeding, watering, harvesting etc… and well Sauce Day – that rocks – lots of opera, red wine and the last of the tomatoes made into sauce – amazing. We also share driving to and from parties, dinners, shopping – yes even grocery shopping – etc…always two or three of doing that. And as this year Dave and my niece Charlotte are graduating at the same time, we are hosting a huge “joined” party for them – since we have a vast amount of the same relatives and circle of friends..the kids aren’t too thrilled – but I keep telling them it’ll double their money! And save us a ton in money, products and food!!!
Not sure I could ever do the whole co-housing thing- wouldn’t your sex life suffer???? Never mind that it’s hard enough to have a private argument when the kids are home….
Anyway – it’s a great idea.
Michele – oh, I have ZERO desire to live in a communal household – I saw how that {didn’t} worked ‘back in the day’ with my brother’s hippie house. Always out of toilet paper, food, your stuff being moved around and the pet monkey shitting on your head – no, I’ve done that tour of duty and none for me, thanks. I’m envisioning more a place like Westwood Cohousing in Asheville, NC – http://www.westwoodcohousing.com/ – which Sue and I visited last year. Each family has their own little house/townhouse and there’s a big common house with a huge kitchen, hanging out room, a TV/media room (so, if you’re like me and don’t have TV but ocasionally want to see something, there ya go). Communal garden, etc. I like the living more simply (one lawn mower/snowblower, hedge trimmers, et al); sharing of chores if desired, shared meals if desired. In many established cohousing communities you get great synergy of elders helping busy young families with childcare and strapping youngsters helping elders with physical chores – things like that. I just like the idea of pulling together as a community, of comnpanionship, and yet to have my own space, solitude and quiet. I have discovered that most people are NOT like me – my house is almost always totally silent (other than careening cats) which I prefer. And, living alone, I get to have that!
Thanks, as always for adding to the conversation!
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