Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: kitchen storage

[David Hungerford (dghungerford]

On Wed, 2 Nov 1994, Judy wrote:

>       MoCoCo is tackling again the disposition of our pre-existing common 
> spaces,
> and wondering about trade offs relating to storage space in the kitchen, i.e.
> common freezer space, refrigerator space, shelf space (as for canned goods, 
> dry
> foods, grains, beans, etc).  At present, we have been buying quite a bit in
> bulk, and when the need arises, we can cook for 20 or so without shopping,
> which to me is great.  Plus savings on bulk purchases.  Currently the freezer
> is used for organic beef, turkey, chicken, and vegies and tortillas.  Not a 
> lot
> of freezer space.
> 
> But space is tight, so some ideas about how it works with more folks would be
> very helpful.  We now cook for anywhere from 10  to 18 most nights, sometimes
> as high as 20.  We plan to eventually be 23 households, probably 35 or so
> adults plus a bunch of kids (so far, 9, with only 16 households ).  If we
> follow David's (i thin) advice, we need to plan for nearly full house a good
> part of the time. 
> 
> I've been searching the archives a little, and tho I found some comments on
> this, they don't exactly address my question, which is what is the minimum
> storage space you would need for our size crowd, and pros and cons of having
> more?

Questions I would ask facing a similar decision:

*Would additional storage space necessarily affect the number a people we 
can cook for, or is that limited by something else (i.e. seating, pan 
size, stove/oven configuration, counter space)
*How far in advance do we purchase in bulk?  Would doubling the frequency 
of bulk buying (i.e. 2x rather than 1x/month) save us from having to 
remodel if we double the # of households?
*Are people using common storage space for private storage?  Do we want 
to provide for that?  Could the new houses include [private] space that 
isn't available in the current buildings?
*Is it at all feasible to increase the bulk storage proportionally with the 
expected increase in #housholds (#people is a better measure)? Or do we 
have to somehow be more frugal with our space?
*How fast is stuff getting used?  Do we really need a 3-month supply of 
dry pintos?  Or are we running out of stuff too quickly?
*Which things are we storing for a long time; which go quickly?
*Which things do we have to buy in a particular quantity that last a long 
time and which we wouldn't necessarily buy more of at a time?  (our 
example is dishwashing soap, which comes in a fairly large box and lasts 
for months; we'd just buy it a little more often if we were using more)
*Are there other things we need more?


Just a comment on number that will eat regularly:  I'm gleaning from the 
discussions in this forum that the variation is great between groups.  
Your best measure is what you're doing now.  If you get 80% attendance at 
most meals, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect relatively high 
average attendance when you add more households.  I would also argue that 
the % attendance will fluctuate over time.  At the very least, you should 
be *able* to seat everyone in the community for dinner, although it might 
be a little tight.

David Hungerford
Muir Commons