Communal Living: Is it for you?

This post is a response to Aaron Ivey's Post on community http://aaronivey.com/?p=1663

I also posted an initial report about communal living. http://milowilson.blogspot.com/2008/07/dinner-table.html

We have been heavily impacted by Shane Claiborn’s book as well. Earlier this summer we invited some friends to come and live with us in the community mindset. Similar to you, we had an extra guest room that really doesn’t hurt us at all to let them use. Our friends still don’t seem to believe us when we say “stay as long as you are willing to.”

After all the “swingers” jokes go by, we really have grown to need them in the house. Because the reality of it is that life is many times easier with them there. We have 3 girls under 4 and a 6 month old puppy between us, and having extra hands around is a huge help. Also, my wife only cooks 3 times a week at the most. What a relief to her! And, when we all go shopping for groceries together, the “bonus” card rewards are much greater.

Also, with young children it allows each set of parents opportunity to get away together even for a simple McDonald’s run together, and have someone at home to watch the kids. We exercise more, we carpool more, we eat out less, we watch TV less, and we have 2 guys that can take out the trash or hang a ceiling fan. We are 9 weeks into the experiment and are confident this is something we want to continue to do.

Things that make it go well are:
1) Similarly aged children.
2)Similar choices in discipline of said children.
3) We stay away from “their” bathroom even if it is in the common area.
4) We cleared out the dressers and closets in the guest bedroom so that they could live in that space as normal as possible and we stay away from it.
5) We don’t commit them to any dinners, lunches, or work. They can decide to eat out with us after church if they want to or not.

We love our current situation! Do you?