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shared living: searching for community

May 4th, 2010
by Jim Reverend.
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image by 27147

As we live a life of ease
Every one of us has all we need,
Sky of blue, and sea green,
In our yellow submarine!

I’m amazed at how many of my friends are interested in living together. It makes me believe that maybe the culture I’m looking for here in Dallas isn’t lost after all. I’ve seen an outpouring of ideas and offers from lots of people over the past week or so and it’s really helped me flesh this out a bit.

One of the most interesting offers was to share a home with a family in Austin. The family is already very dear to my heart and like-minded in terms of family and responsibility. And I long ago decided that Austin was an ideal city for me if I was going to stay in Texas. This seemed like a perfect situation.

But, the more I consider it the more I realize how much risk and difficulty there is involved with it. I’d have to take C away from her Mom. It’s only a few hours away and she’d still be able to see her almost as often as she’d like. But, it adds some complication. Factor in that I’d need to drop everything, move, look for a job, rent out my house, and leave everything I know and love here in DFW, it was just too much to do all at once. I still think this is ideal, and if I haven’t found what I’m looking for in Dallas within a few years, I’ll start looking out that way again. But for now, I think I have to let that go.

Another amazing offer I received was to share a home with a family in North Richland Hills. This place is beautiful! There’s lots of room! I’ve been friends (though not incredibly close friends) with half of the parental unit for over 10 years. I met the rest of the family and we all got along wonderfully. I’m still having conversations with them and working some bits out in my head.

But, as I see it now, there are a few limiting factors. Despite being a huge home, there are only 4 bedrooms. 3 of them are occupied by this family, so C and I would share a room. We do that now, so that’s okay. But as she gets older I’d prefer she share with another child. There’s nothing to say she couldn’t share with one of the other kids though. So that’s a wait-and-see kind of thing. The other limiting factor is that this house very much belongs to this family. I had envisioned a “our home” mentality and perhaps this would blossom into that as time progressed, but that isn’t the feel I got right away. So, another wait-and-see. The biggest limiting factor, though, is that, because after I move in all the rooms would be taken, it will be, at most, a two family home. Again, the family there said that there might be opportunity for more but wants to do it on a wait-and-see basis. So there’s a whole lot of wait-and-see.

I’m okay with wait-and-see. But I’d like to limit the disruptions to my daughter’s life as much as possible. With a move, a change in schooling/daycare, a whole new city, and the need to untie us from our current house, that’s a LOT to go with for so much wait-and-see. I’m still talking with them, and we’re going to have lots of sleep overs in the future, both to see where this goes and also because I’m excited to have met a friendly, open, like-minded family with an open-door policy so similar to my own.

So that leaves me with three options for now. I intend to pursue all three until one pans out.

I am going to keep looking for an existing home that I could share with another family. Ideally, there’d be room for at least three families but I’m flexible there for the right situation. Proximity to Irving, Denton, or Dallas is ideal, though not required. If you know of anyone that lives in a home with a room or two that they would spare and are interested in an intentional community of this nature, please let me know or send them my way.

I am going to think of ways to make my current home more suited to multi-family living and seek out families to share it with. I got an offer from a friend who would be willing to share my home. However, with her and her daughter here, that exhausts all of the “conventional” sleeping space my home has to offer (and that’s with our daughters sharing a room). The rooms in my house are large, however. So I’m looking for creative ways to split them into smaller spaces suitable for children as well adults who would consider even more open-minded living arrangements (like large rooms being shared by adults, etc). If you’re creative and budget-minded and would like to help me think of ways to split up this space let me know. If you would be open to “interesting” living arrangements with a very small financial obligation, contact me.

Finally, I’m looking to buy a home more suitable to what I want. Something large-ish with emphasis on the number of rooms not the size of them. Ideally in the Denton, Coppell, or Dallas (Oak Cliff, likely) areas. If you know of a home like this, or would be interested in helping to find one and share it, please let me know.

a common goal

Apr 22nd, 2010
by Jim Reverend.
9 comments

My dream is to live in — for lack of a better term — a commune. A group of 10-50 people (adults, kids, animals, etc) living on the same property, occupying the same communal spaces, and spending at least part of their energy working toward a common goal. Something similar in feel to La Selva. But, I also realize that finding a like minded commune to join or finding a property and financial means to start my own may be far off. So, in the mean time, I’m seeking what has recently been dubbed the “mini-commune”.

My vision of the Mini-Commune is between 2 and 5 families (depending on the size of those families and the size of the dwelling) sharing a single, larger house. Ideally, the house would have lots of smaller rooms to be used as bedrooms as well as several larger rooms to be used as communal living spaces. Certainly some properties will lend themselves better to this than others but, as long as it’s large enough, almost anything can be made to work.

The benefits of even the mini-commune are quite impressive.

First, there’s the sheer financial aspect of it all. Based on a house I’ve been able to find in the area and average expenses, with even 3 families living together the monthly cost would be around $575/family. When you factor in group meals (less eating out), bulk purchases, and reduced needs for travel, you save even more. Consider the fact that, under this arrangement, it might be possible to get rid of as many as half of the vehicles owned by the group, there’s even more savings. Once you bundle in the social aspects of always having a “family” of people around to lend a helping hand, to make tedious tasks more enjoyable, to provide comfort, and to encourage it, the cons seem entirely manageable.

The cons, of course, having to share a space with other people. If people are inconsiderate, rude, sloppy, or selfish, sharing a space with them can be difficult if not impossible. Obviously, this would require appropriately minded people. I think it’s very important to select fellow commune (or mini-commune) members based on their nature and their lifestyle and how close to your own that those things are more so than how well your interests mesh with theirs or how close of friends you may be now. As you get deeper into the communal unit, more cons can arise, like not having certain amenities (cars, showers, etc) available to you the very second that you want them. It is very much about personal sacrifice in order to increase the benefits for all, including yourself. However, in an ideal commune, these issues will be worked out as a matter of routine. In the fully fledged commune, one could alter the dwelling to more closely match the needs of those that lived there. In this mini-commune one would have to be willing to adapt to what was available.

The fully fledged commune would, of course, be able to grow vegetables, raise a garden, and contribute space to the greater community as well. These things would only be possible in much smaller doses in a mini-commune.

I haven’t fully fleshed out where I’d like to live. But, my tentative selections are Denton, Coppell, Western Dallas (as long as we have home schoolers), and “The Sticks”. If you’re interested — truly interested — in joining let me know. And, if you have any advice (other than, simply, “COMMUNES SUCK”) I’d love to hear it.

I know, I’ll just hire it out!

Apr 6th, 2010
by Jim Reverend.
4 comments

I’m overwhelmed with the very notion of maintaining a household. After a nine hour day and two hours of commuting, I’ve got three hours left in each day to get dressed, get my daughter dressed, feed us both breakfast, feed us both dinner, play games, take baths, read stories, pick up after ourselves, have adventures, and get to bed. And that’s assuming we don’t rest — not even once — from wake up to bed time. Single people without children and dual income families with children can probably relate to this as well. After work, there simply isn’t that much time in the day.

As much as I enjoy cooking, love making extravagant meals and trying new techniques, the time it takes to do so is not worth what I’d have to give up to get it. So this means I either make very quick meals, eat raw foods, find people to share the cooking burden with, or hire the job out and eat at restaurants.

A month or two ago I finally broke down and paid someone to pull my weeds, trim my bushes, lay down landscapers cloth, and put down mulch. I was just tired of the letters from my HOA and they were claiming they were going to pay someone to do it and bill me and I was afraid of what they were going to cost. So now, my flower beds look beautiful.

But my yard still looks terrible. And my HOA has started sending notes about that. My grass is not really grass. It’s mostly weeds — low weeds mind you — with grass in between. As evidenced by the vacant lots in my neighborhood, it’s simply the nature of things around here. Without direct supervision and control, the weeds grow and the grass doesn’t.

So I’m supposed to go buy some “weed and feed” product, lock my kid inside the house because she certainly can’t be around that stuff, and spend a couple of days not enjoying her and, instead, following some intricate and arcane pattern of water then feed then water then rain dance. Then I can’t let my kid outside for at least two or three days as I wait for that stuff to go away. The alternative, as I did with the flowerbeds, is to hire the job out. For $50-70 a month, someone trained to do so will apply a steady stream of life threatening chemicals to my lawn to ensure that it grows green and “Natural”.

I get around to cleaning baseboards and fans every couple of months. Storage closets and such can go a whole year without being rearranged. I get to the toilets and bathroom counters once a week or so. The daily use surfaces like the kitchen counters and such get cleaned as soon as they are used in order to maintain a livable space. But, if you stick your hand in my couch cushions, to be honest, I have no idea what you’ll find. If you take out the white glove and start wiping surfaces, well, you may as well buy those things in bulk. I try to teach my daughter about housework by including her in it. But spending hours and hours toiling with a toothbrush at bathroom tile grout just doesn’t make any sense. Not when that means my kid is going to have to spend that time alone. For $400 a month, there are at least 10 different cleaning services that are more than willing to do the job for me.

Throw in the pest control service, the lawn guy, and some landscapers and, for $650 a month, I too could have a home kept up to societies standards. Assuming a salary of $40k a year, that means I only need to work 8 more hours every week to afford it. Well, aside from the eating thing. And an interior decorator. And a shopping assistant. And a wardrobe coordinator. And a crafts specialist.

So my options are to hire all of this stuff out and work my butt off to pay for it, force my child to play alone for a large portion of the time we have each day while I perform these tasks myself, or just not do them at all.

Currently I’m choosing some combination of the last two. I try to spend 30-60 minutes each day cleaning with my daughter’s help. This is, of course, above and beyond the basic pick up and cleaning and laundry and such. And I try to spend another 30-60 minutes cleaning on my own before she wakes up in the morning. This works well for all the small jobs. But for anything that needs more than 30-60 minutes of my time, it just doesn’t get done.

The right way!

So I’m trying to find new ways to do things that allow me to tackle the big jobs in small pieces.

I’m trying to find non-dangerous, child-friendly ways of, fertilizing the lawn, killing weeds, and cleaning hard water deposits out of the shower.

I try to decorate the house in ways that don’t require renovation or lengthy installation efforts. And when something does require some additional time, I try to find people to help.

I’m trying to find people to share meals with. Ideally on a semi-planned schedule. This saves the cost of restaurants and either lets someone else do the cooking or brings someone else around to keep my daughter from being alone as I do the cooking or some combination of the two.

And maybe some day I’ll make so much money that I’ll laugh at myself for ever wondering why people tried to do this stuff themselves.

Whether you’re a single person without kids, a single parent, a double income family, or a stay at home parent with an active lifestyle — if you’ve got any ideas, tips, secrets, or magic tricks about how you get things done, I’d love to hear them.