Ladies and gentlemen, I stand before you to make a case for organization. By this I mean if you find yourself living with someone who has the mistaken notion that the expensive Henkels paring knife belongs with the tools, it’s time you and your home-mate have a heart-to-heart discussion of where certain items belong. I […]
Read More...When Bureaucrats Mandate Sharing
The bureaucrats – who I am sure were well-meaning, nice people –thought it was a great idea. The residents will share kitchens! This would be nice, they could cook together, have meals together and wouldn’t that be a good thing? Nope. It was hell. Bacon Congregate Bacon Congregate came into existence in 1984. An old […]
Read More...Meanwhile They Own a Condo
Judy and Donna own a condo they have lived in for almost 20 years. Says Judy, “By buying together and moving in at the same time, it is all fair. No one has a foot over the other. We have mutual respect and a 50/50 arrangement.” They were already housemates when they made the decision to […]
Read More...Unexpectedly Gaining a Deep Friendship
“The best part is the deep friendship we’ve created,” says Wendi Burkhardt, CEO of Silvernest. As part of developing the Silvernest business, Wendi was invited to work in San Francisco for four months. Since she lives in Boulder, Colorado, she needed a place to live. But as she says, “San Francisco is brutally expensive and […]
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...This House Needs People
“This house needs people” is the thought that came unbidden one day as Patricia walked through the living room of her large four-bedroom colonial with three and a half baths. She had lived there with her husband but, now widowed, she simply carried on living in her home. The Scare And then she had a […]
Read More...Cooperative Living — Two Couples and Three Children
Karen and Tom live with his fifteen year old daughter and their two-year old child in a large house in the Boston area. They share this house with Dan, Selma and their four-year-old daughter. Karen says. “I’ve always preferred living cooperatively. What I’ve always liked is that it both makes life easier and more fun. […]
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