Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: "Community guests" in CH guest rooms

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On 1 Jul 2011, at 1:44 AM, Tim Pierce wrote:

> On 6/30/11 10:47 AM, Sharon Villines wrote:
>> We do have hugely unequal use of the guest rooms. A survey a few years ago 
>> revealed that one household (of 43) used the rooms 40+ nights a year, others 
>> none, with an average of 14.
> 
> A household of 43 people?  Is that a typo?  If it really is a household 
> of 43, that makes it less surprising that it's using the guest room for 
> 40 nights a year. :-)

Funny. "One household of 43 households."

2 guest rooms. Annually 730 overnights nights possible. ~16 per household if 
divided equally. (Some nights are blocked off for deep cleaning, painting, 
repairs, etc.)

Things we wish we had known when we started:

We have two sets of sheets and towels for each room. This allows one household 
to wash the linens with some leisure while the next guest checks in. We used to 
have only hours to do this between guests. It didn't work well. I bought my own 
set.

The four sets of linens are kept in the office near the sign in book with keys 
to the rooms — not in the rooms. When they were to be left in the room, you had 
to keep the key in order to return the linens. Thus the next person couldn't 
check in and leave their luggage even if they didn't have sheets. And you 
didn't know the linens were missing until you got up to the room — then had to 
come back down and find out who had the room last and find their phone number, 
etc. 

As I said, I don't use the guest rooms much but it sounded like a zoo of keys 
and stuff and sheets and who had what when. Now it works very well — You check 
in your guest by filling out a name and number form, take the key, and a bin of 
linens up to the room. When your guest leaves,  you clean the room, return the 
key, and sign out your guest. Then you wash the sheets and return them to the 
office. The next guest will have been already checked in and used the other 
set. 

We also changed the check out/in time from noon to 6:00. Noon was based on 
traditional hotel times, but of course with many people away all day, and even 
the guests out all day, 6:00 was a better time.

Of course people talk to each other and make other arrangements but 65 people 
can't be rearranging their lives based on the lives of everyone else and their 
guests 365 days a year. That would be a lot of pointless (and irritated) 
talking. It got old after a few years.

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