Sharing Culture

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No longer a housie but still in it together

For the first time in a couple of years, I climbed the steps to the Friends House not as a resident but as a guy with no way in.  

I had to remind myself not to use the special doorbell code for housies who’ve forgotten their key. Instead, I pressed the bell once and waited, much as any passerby might.

The greeting I got from Ben was a boisterous reminder that, at least among my former housemates, I’m no stranger.

IMG_0349The visit got me thinking about what I share with the 32 people previously known as strangers with whom I did dish crew, shoveled snow, painted a bathroom, installed a lightswitch, scrubbed toilets, washed windows, sat in silence and passed the talking rock between June 2013 and August 2015.

Stepping into the office, Ben pointed me to a bin of mail the Post Office had failed to forward. I glanced at the mailboxes of the 21 current residents and noticed a couple of new names above our old slots

Heading downstairs to the kitchen, I ran into Billy, who’d made such an impression on Leila, our two-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter, that she was convinced he’d be joining us in our new apartment in Brookline. Encountering a friendly face I didn’t recognize, I figured it must be John, who moved in by virtue of us moving out. He lives now in our old room on the third floor.   Continue reading →

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On losing it in front of friends

1993 Photo of Evelyn Mitchell by Anne Peters

1993 Photo of Evelyn Mitchell by Anne Peters

I’ve written previously about Talking Rock, the device we use at house meetings to share what’s going on in our lives. Whoever happens to be sitting closest to the rock (it lives on the fireplace mantel in the library) grabs it and spends a couple of minutes updating the 20 other housemates.

The revelations range from matter of fact to life and death. As much as I’m getting more comfortable with the exercise, I still struggle to get beyond the nuts and bolts of daily life and share at the level of my braver housemates.

A show and tell/talent show at a recent house retreat seemed like a good opportunity to go deeper, especially since lack of musical or related talent had me leaning toward the show and tell option for the session.

So a few minutes before the group gathered in the parlor, I grabbed the photograph of my Mom, Evelyn, from our room. I began framing the story I wanted to tell about this eldest daughter who gave birth to me just a few miles from where we live now on Beacon Hill. Continue reading →

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Thoughts on living large(r)

Screenshot 2014-11-24 13.23.39After 17 months of sharing a single room, Carol and I recently spent a week in our friend’s quite spacious two-bedroom, two bath (plus office) high-rise apartment overlooking downtown St. Petersburg, Fl. Spacious enough, in fact, that I found myself losing track of stuff — and Carol! — until I got used to the extra real estate.

I’ve always liked Judy’s place, located steps from the water in a building where we also lived when we moved to St. Pete 15 years ago. What surprised me about this recent week was how much I enjoyed our time up there on the 24th floor. It taught me something about how I’m feeling about living spaces and places these days.

Continue reading →

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Learning to love the Avenger and the culture of sharing

If you’d asked me a few months ago what new skills and small pleasures I saw on my horizon, restaurant-style dishwashing wasn’t that high on the list.

That was before I met The Avenger.

avenger pantry and kitchenThe Avenger is the sanitizer used by Beacon Hill Friends House to ensure the cleanliness of the dishes, utensils, cups and glasses used by residents and guests. The drill in brief: We wash by hand anything people have used for eating or drinking. We stack everything in a rack and run it through the Avenger’s high-temperature rinse for two minutes. We remove the rack, empty it and stack everything on the shelves. It turns out that those things dry perfectly well, eventually, without the intervention of towels.

Unless you’re planning to stop by for dinner soon (which I hope you are), that’s an awfully fat paragraph about how clean we keep our dishes at the Friends House.

I burden you with it because the Avenger has become both my favorite chore and my handiest image of what I like about the sharing economy. Continue reading →