Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: The Common House

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On Jan 1, 2004, at 2:14 PM, Guy Koehler, Rivendell Ranch wrote:

> I envision the Rivendell common house to be an Inn: fire, food, ale, 
> music,
> tales, games.
This sounds wonderful. Reality:

1. The fire became a gas fire because too many people were sensitive to 
air-born particles. It looks nice and is warm but the smell and sound 
of a "real" fire are missing. However, the wood and ashes for the real 
fire would have added work and expense that no one wanted -- or were 
sure they wanted.

2. The food gets cooked when someone cooks it. It has to be vegan, 
vegetarian, and carnivore friendly. No leftovers can be left in the 
fridge.

3. The alcoholic beverages have to be left in a locked room since we 
have teenagers roaming the premises.

4. The acoustics make music painful and no one agrees on what is  music 
and what is noise.

5. We do have tales and games. And pizza -- delivered.

Sometimes I think we should have started with a common house and worked 
out all the kinks of socializing first -- eliminate some diversity?

One group had ideas of having their kitchen used by a caterer who would 
use the facilities to do their business during the day and then leave 
food for the community at the end of the day. This would seem to be a 
good solution to a lot of problems -- plus keep the common house 
occupied during the day.

Sharon
-----
Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org

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