s/o - living with another family

[IsabelC]

Following the discussion about multi-generational housing, what are your views about setting up house with other people who are not your immediate family members or in-laws.

 

Given that so many of us are bring up children in a slightly - or very - different way to the way in which we were brought up, do you think that living with another family who is 'like-minded', especially in the areas of parenting and education, might be a better bet? Or does that create a whole other set of issues?

[regentrude]

Never! Short term, maybe, but I can not imagine actually living, i.e. sharing a household, with another family.

Even with similar parenting philosophies, I would not want to be surrounded by other people, their kids, their stuff, their noise, their disagreements, their food preferences... shudder. It's like living with room mates, only worse.

 

Now, sharing a house with separate apartments and each family managing their own household, but being in close proximity - less of a problem. That's how people live who rent apartments. Works for all of my friends back home who don't own a house.

Edited October 10, 2012 by regentrude

[IsabelC]

I feel similarly. But sometimes I think I'd love to live in a kind of 'semi-commune' where there are families a bit like us living all around, and we have a fantastic kids' play/learning area to share, but we all have our own private quarters so we don't have to share bathrooms and stuff.

[Shamzanne]

I live communally. I LOVE it. I would never go back to living alone. Granted, it is just my daughter and I since I left an abusive marriage six years ago. I am thankful to have other people for us each to interact with.

 

There are nine of us in our house. We each have our own rooms plus a small office space. We share a bathroom and laundry room with a married couple. We share the kitchen and living space with the whole household.

 

We live with members of our church and within a few city blocks of our entire church. It is great to share life with like-minded people. We have lots of differences but are bound by our choice to be the body of Christ together. Only one other family homeschools but we're lucky that they live next door!

[Hoot]

No. I don't think I could ever do it and come out sane on the other side. Truly, I like my privacy too much to share my home with strangers, or even family.

 

I love the "semi-commune" idea. Being a raw-vegan crunchy granola type, I've long thought that would be a cool idea. However, we would need separate living spaces with absolutely no invasion of privacy inside those homes.

[Cassy]

I could never do it. Many days even living with my immediate family gets too much :tongue_smilie:. My ideal would be to live alone in a cave in the middle of nowhere :D.

[Michelle My Bell]

I wouldn't mind as long as the house was more like a duplex so I could have everything of my own. Well, actually being forced to see people daily probably would bug me too. I really need my space and alone time, a lot.

[DawnM]

We found a house where the downstairs was its own 3 bedroom house and the upstairs was its own 4 bedroom house. Each had its own kitchen, living room, etc....

 

In the above situation, yes, but in the same living spaces.....NO WAY!

 

Now, one of my best friends doesn't mind at all. She has had various people rent rooms from her, even a mother and son, for over a year.

 

I could not, nor would I have any desire to, do it!

[Cinder]

I would not want that living situation, but like some pp's I like my privacy.

 

I did know a couple of families that lived together for several months. One was buying a house that needed work; in the meantime their current house sold. They were invited to live with the friends until the new house was ready. It worked well for them; their kids went to the same private school and the husbands were rarely home. One's job took him away from home for weeks at a time and the other had such long hours he barely had time to sleep.

 

I just don't think I could do that. I suppose I could if I *had* to, but I wouldn't choose to.

[Farrar]

I don't know if I could. It seems like it would be hard.

 

But the first thing I thought of was this documentary about happiness, which is a really interesting movie if you haven't seen it. One of the segments in it is about how Denmark is the happiest country in Europe and it highlights that one of the reasons may be that it also has the highest number of people living in communal housing. It shows a woman and her daughter who live in a tiny apartment in a community with shared labor and cooking and how it all works. It definitely feels like it would be a nice life in many ways.

[AFwife Claire]

We did this with another family for about 8 months. They were (are) some of our very best friends. We were stationed in Colorado, and I had just had our first baby. They transferred to CO and were trying to sell their house back at their previous duty station, but it wasn't selling. So they lived in our basement until it sold and they could buy one in CO. It was too expensive for them to keep up their house payment and rent a 3 bedroom apt. in CO (they had 3 kids at the time, and that required a 3 bdrm. apt in CO).

 

It was WONDERFUL!! We had the best time. I would cook one week, and they would cook one week. Their kids were 8, 5, and 3 (and she was expecting--delivered a few weeks after moving into their house), and it was SO helpful for me as a new mom to see parenting in practice. Their kids are just wonderful. Now they are mostly adults, and they are still wonderful--we're close to them all!

 

It was fun too. We'd put the kids down, meet on the middle (main) floor, and have a fire, pop popcorn, play games, etc. We had a year-long hunt for the best pizza in Co. Springs. We went camping and hiking together.

 

I can honestly say I probably wouldn't be homeschooling now if we hadn't had that time with them. They homeschooled, and again, seeing that in action was really inspirational for me.

 

Now I don't think this arrangement would work with anyone. In fact, I can think of a great many families to whom we are very close where it definitely would NOT work, LOL, just because of personalities or whatever. But for our 2 families, it worked really well. In fact, for our last assignment, we picked VA largely because they were already stationed here. Now we are both retired, but we live about 2 miles from each other and see each other frequently!

[fairfarmhand]

Never! Short term, maybe, but I can not imagine actually living, i.e. sharing a household, with another family.

Even with similar parenting philosophies, I would not want to be surrounded by other people, their kids, their stuff, their noise, their disagreements, their food preferences... shudder. It's like living with room mates, only worse.

 

Now, sharing a house with separate apartments and each family managing their own household, but being in close proximity - less of a problem. That's how people live who rent apartments. Works for all of my friends back home who don't own a house.

:iagree:

[ocelotmom]

We've lived with another family for several years, first out of necessity, but continuing because it worked out.

 

There are issues, of course. They aren't intolerable, and the benefits outweight the drawbacks.

 

And it's not that they are the absolute one perfect compatible soul-mate family or anything like that. We just made it work.

 

I think we're all ready for a little more separation. But that's an issue of adequate personal space, and therefore, in our case, not unsolvable (we have several acres).

 

I would love to live in a cohousing community.

[TammyS]

I don't think I could share a single household, but I have heard of these mult-family complexes, where individual townhouse type homes are all connected to a central facility. The townhouses don't have their own laundry, or outdoor living area, and only mini-kitchens. Families share things like lawns, outdoor play equipment, a large kitchen and dining room (where they take turns preparing meals for ALL the families and all eat communally), social areas, etc.

 

I think some kind of set up like that with autonamous houses AND shared facility could be VERY interesting with the right people.

[tammyw]

I could never share my house with someone else. Heck, I have a hard enough time when someone stays over more than one night :)

 

The timing of this thread is interesting though, because in our neighborhood, there is someone who is renting their house out like it's an apartment. No one in the neighborhood is happy about this, and unfortunately there is nothing in the HOA rules against it (apparently he's rented to some unsavory individuals since he's been doing this.) He is the owner, and has his son part-time (he is divorced from his wife). He rents the bedrooms out to 1. a single man, and 2. a mom and 6yo daughter (they are new). I just met the mom the other day and I have to say I'm very worried about that daughter. Among many other things (and they JUST moved in) she is often patrolling the neighborhood on her scooter, knocking on every door up and down the street, trying to find someone to play with. The mom is practically inaccessible (the little girl stole a kid's bike, and when they went to ask the mom for help, she didn't answer the door and later said she was upstairs and can't hear the door from there).

[Adrienne_in_TX]

I know that I couldn't share a house, but I love the idea of semi-communal, compound style living. I'd love to have several homes encircling a large play area with a communal garden and a small "community" building for gathering for potluck meals.