Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: tasks at sharingwood

[Rob Sandelin (Floriferous]

>Rob Sandelin said:

> At Sharingwood there are no participation expectations for anyone,
> people partipate as they see the need, both community and personal.
> This means some folks do more than others, but, in theory anyway,
> it's because they want to, not because they have to. 

I suspect this is the exception rather than the rule.  They must have
a very close and trusting group of people to make it work without
formal rules.  I would want something written down.

Yeah we do have a lot of trust, having been together for quite awhile. 
However, we do have one written list of tasks for monthly cleaning the 
commonhouse, something that is new for us. One observation that was made came 
from someone who wanted her name on the list, was having names on a list 
alerts everyone that yes, they did do something. One of the perceived 
disavantages of the "somebody jest did it" model of tasks is somethings get 
done and its unclear who did what. I personally think this is an bit of an 
avantage because you don't always know who does what, so you can only worry 
about yourself and your own contributions and not have to worry about 
comparing yourself to others or whether or not others did their "fair share". 
I have always been dubious about the notions of fairness in tasks, so that an 
hour of childcare is less than two hours of hanging siding. 

I think community comes when you stop worrying about that stuff and just 
appreciate what gets done and celebrate what gets accomplished, not who does 
it.

Rob Sandelin
Sharingwood