Re: Should cohousers rebuild (or redesign) the wheel
From: Sharon Villines (sharonsharonvillines.com)
Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2004 12:41:43 -0800 (PST)
On Nov 3, 2004, at 4:03 PM, Jan wrote:

Furthermore, keeping the place up costs me energy too. To me, time = energy
= money, to a good approximation.  If you maintain it yourself, that is
time.  If you pay someone else to maintain it, that is money.  The only
wiggle room left is to find the cheapest way to maintain it, and no, doing it all yourself is not always the cheapest way. Those ignorant mistakes can
add up to big bucks, not to mention headaches.

Do you want to end up spending a lot of your energy maintaining your
physical plant?  Think carefully about it, please.

Along these same lines I promised a few weeks ago to write something about common areas and design.

From the start design your common and limited common areas so they make sense. Don't design a cute little corner planting area behind a house where it "feels" like a private garden. Don't build a fence or stair support in such a way as to create an obviously private storage space that is in reality not a private storage space but a common area that is supposed to be used by everyone.

Think twice before you put half your units around a lovely green of planted garden beds that require much maintenance and have other units looking out over the "back lot" that "no one sees." I'm on the "back lot" and it is very hard to point out that we back here are not "no one." It is also hard to ask for more attention for the back when people are working so hard on the front. There are only so many hours in the day. But I also look out on all the wheel barrows. bags of mulch, discarded deck and fencing wood, compost bins, etc. that are the result of maintaining a green that I can't even see!

Things like this are no one's "fault". But they happen and are hard to correct. As much as possible put yourself into your site plan to see what it will feel like and how it will be used by people.

Sharon
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Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org


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