Cohousing-L Mailing List: guestrooms/usage

[Hungerford, David (dghungerford]

At Muir Commons we have one small guest room.  Outside in the hall hangs a 
calendar, on which people sign up first-come, first-served.  There is no time 
limit, however, an etiquette has developed around long-term guests (say, more 
than a week or ten days) which makes it okay for someone to ask if they can 
have the room for a couple of days, the long-term guests either sleeping on 
their hosts' sofa or going to a motel.  This has worked out fine.  We charge 
nothing (we generally have seen nit-picking about very small costs--furniture 
wear and tear;utilities--as a greater hassle than benefit.  Besides, the 
common house IS an extension of our own homes, right?), but the hosts are 
expected to clean the room, wash linens, etc.

We do allow guests who are visiting cohousing rather than any one individual, 
but I believe we do charge a small fee and limit the time, and of course, 
residents have first dibs on the room.

In designing it, we made at least three mistakes:       1) it doesn't have a 
+closet or enough room for sitting space; there's no place to put suitcases 
etc. except on the floor, and the guest don't really have a place to go to 
have privacy.  Trust me, when your parents visit for 3 weeks, you and they 
both NEED a place for them to go sometimes.     2) we didn't put a shower in 
the bathroom next to the guest room.  We thought guests would just come to 
our houses, but that turns into a hassle when all their stuff is at the 
common house.  3) Although it is remote from activities INSIDE the common 
house, we inadvertantly put it against the main path, across the sidewalk 
from the children's play structure, so there is traffic just outside the 
windows and noise in the mornings.  We would make it more remote if we could 
do it over. 

We now wish we had another guest room, or another room which could serve as 
a guest room when there are overlaps.

Hope this is useful.

David Hungerford
dghungerford [at] ucdavis.edu