Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Common House Furnishings

[Rob Sandelin (floriferous]

This is a place where the esthetic police of your community will hold some
influence. Some folks insist that matching sets of "nice" furniture is a
requirement to make the common house "attractive". The obvious other scene
is mismatched handme downage and odds and ends as they get donated. The
mismatch esthetic of course has its own advocates, the funky look is more
comfortable  and "attractive". So there is clearly no  right answer here.
(Although people with strong  perspective one way or the other disagree and
insist their perspective is the right one)

This kind of esthetic tug of war makes for some bumps in consensus process,
kind of like picking colored tiles for the bathroom. It tends to be
difficult to  consent about esthetic issues because there is no clear best
answer. Sometimes groups can damage faith in decision making by spending
inordinate amounts of time thrashing through such things, until finally
everybody just  gives in to get the issue to go away. Although you may
actually make the decision, the result is people can get a bad attitude
about your decision process  that has negative effects on attendence and
morale in general.

Collaboration means listening to all sides before making a decision, but you
can do this  and also just do a weighted vote system to choose instead of
trying to convince somebody that their esthetic preferences are the wrong
ones....

Rob Sandelin, On the road, heading home under medication for severe
bronchitus, somewhere on the roads of NY.