“Safe!” yells the umpire as the runner slides home. Safety. It’s a primal, basic need. We need shelter where we can be free from harm. We need security and stability. These needs are so deeply a part of us that Abraham Maslow, the psychologist, when he constructed his hierarchy of needs, put safety after food […]
Read More...The Five Commandments of Keeping a Tidy Household
As someone who has lived with a series of flatmates, I learned for that initial interview to ask, “Are you neat?” Of course, everyone answers in the affirmative yet the the reality is that we have lapses when it comes to keeping our home in order. That’s why I came up with five commandments for […]
Read More...Family Mode Sharing Together
“Family mode” is what Sandy calls what happens when you live with someone for a while. She lives with three housemates in an apartment in downtown Brattleboro. She says, “I’ve been co-housing all my life. In my early twenties I had an open marriage. We lived with people we loved. My parents had an open […]
Read More...Cooperative of Friends—A Lively Life
It became a cooperative. Julie and friends from college had a vision of living together. And where many of us may have enjoyed conversations where we dreamed about maybe living together, these friends actually did it. In 1979, they bought fifty acres in New Hampshire. Eleven years later, they moved into the house they built […]
Read More...Feedback — Essential to Successful Home-Mating
Here is excellent article about feedback that showed up in my inbox. This one offers a slightly different twist on this most important aspect of good relationships. I’m republishing it because the skill of giving and receiving feedback is essential in a home-mate situation. It is written by Michael Bungay Stanier, the founder and Senior […]
Read More...Interview with Ira Wood on The Lowdown
Last month, I traveled to Cape Cod for family gathering and an interview. The Lowdown is hosted by Ira Wood on the public radio station of the Outermost Cape, Provincetown, MA – all the way at the tip of the Cape. The interview is a full half-hour long. Having read the book, Ira had great […]
Read More...The 3 Mistakes that Niki Made (and you might too!)
When I met Niki, she told me I should have bad housemate stories on this website. She volunteered her own two stories. Here they are with commentary from me afterwards. First Mistake Niki moved to Philadelphia as a twentysomething with a good job and decided that she should have a housemate. It only made sense […]
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