Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: My final comments on ...

[Hungerford, David (dghungerford]

Kevin Wolf suggested that cohousing might mean
> a lot less washers, dryers, garden tools, lawn mowers, 
>hopefully cars, camping equipment, and the like will be purchased.  Each 
>house won't need its own of everything.

Just to point out that the lives of "durable" goods are shorter if they are 
used more, so if a washing machine has X number of loads it is capable of 
washing before disintigrating, if 10 _average_ families use one, it should 
wear out 10 times as fast. (They probably don't wear out that fast, but they 
would wear out faster--it must work something like highway miles on cars) .  
Camping equipment usually gets replaced by newer, cooler, designs when some 
major failure (busted zipper, lost pole) occurs, a more frequent occurance if 
many people use them.  It's possible for cohousers to consume in ways they 
wouldn't have been able to (more camping trips, better camping equipment, 
more CDs) due to the economies of sharing some expenses, like the ones 
mentioned above.   Actually, I agree with Kevin in principle, we CAN use less 
if we CHOOSE to use less, but that is a larger committment we have to make 
whether we live in cohousing or not--although cohousing does make it easier.

David Hungerford
Muir Commons