Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re:Common meals B4 commons House

[Dahako (Dahako]

Hi - 

To supplement what my Eno Commons neighbor, Christine, wrote, we do love eating 
together here.  Back when we only had a small group, we were having trouble 
starting and ending our business meetings on time.  We were really a group of 
strangers with a dream we weren't completely sure we held common views on.  So, 
on a hunch, we started having potluck hours before meetings and regular weekend 
pancake breakfasts.  Suddenly, our business meetings snapped into focus and 
keeping close to the designated duration became more of a rule than an 
exception.  Plus, we found out we liked each other.

When we realized that the people who came to our shared meals were more likely 
to join (and stay in) than those who didn't, we made a concerted effort to 
invite prospective members to eat with us - at our homes, restaurants, parks. . 
.  

The current all-community Tuesday night and business meeting Sunday dinners are 
a continuation of what we've always done. All adults who live on site are 
expected to take a turn cooking, even if they don't ever eat (but everyone does 
- at least sometimes).  But we are finding we have lots of different 
expectations about how often, how expensive, how to pay, who should pay, how to 
deal with food preferences, how to deal with kid noise (we've got 18 kids 
on-site who are 9 and under), sign-ups or not, and all the other usual 
suspects.  A couple of us are formally interviewing all the adults in the group 
to try to find out what the issues and ideas are. Then I expect we'll probably 
spend the next couple of years (especially after we have a commons house) 
figuring out what process suits us best.  

Jessie Handforth Kome
Eno Commons
Durham, NC