This question was posted recently to the cohousing listserv.  As usual there were many great responses. A couple of those seemed useful, so we have gathered them here.   Raines Cohen offered is take on concepts around the deeper “why” of a Common House: Because through sharing space and resources and time together, we can live... Read More

A series of questions were posted to Cohousing-L, the cohousing listserv: How much, if anything, do you charge members or members’ guests per night in the common guest room? How much, if anything, do you charge members who use common spaces for work or income earning meetings? How much, if anything, do you charge members... Read More

Last week’s webchat with architect Grace Kim was full of useful information. Whether you are already using your common house or are in the design phase, taking time to think about acoustics and learning how to make them work well will add enjoyment and possibly participation to your common meals and other events. Grace offers... Read More

In October 2011 in this part of Massachusetts, we had an unusual snowfall. Leaves were still on the trees, but big, fat flakes of wet snow fell from the sky. As the snow kept coming down, there was an increasing chance that snow-laden tree branches might fall on power lines and cause an outage. Now... Read More

What shall we discuss as we are forming our communities? Every forming community (I hope!) asks this question and communities that have already moved in give lots of different answers. Many of those answers are in the form of “I wish we’d resolved this” and “we decided x which was irrelevant and should have decided... Read More

  Don’t Let Your Kids Space Become an Afterthought! Wild Sage had some cool things in our kids space, we took a small plain square room and built a loft, we added an old library ladder to access it, we painted each wall a different color and painted sparkly clouds on the ceiling…but is it... Read More

Communities designing their common houses often ask about what they will need. What do people really use? What kind of storage is needed and what will go in it? Is an office necessary and for what? They don’t know about storage for 8 snow shovels or 6 different kinds of brooms and mops. When our... Read More

I love to see communities reusing old stuff in a unique way. Recently when visiting Greyrock Commons in Fort Collins Colorado, I had the pleasure of touring their common house. Not only do they have the absolute-most-coolest-ever-indoor-kids-play-area, but they had lovely wooden floors in their dining space. It turns out that I have a long... Read More

Loneliness doesn’t always stem from being alone. For architect Grace Kim, loneliness is a function of how socially connected we feel to the people around us — and it’s often the result of the homes we live in. She shares an age-old antidote to isolation: cohousing, a way of living where people choose to share... Read More