Seeking my BFF Mansion

WANTED:

“Semi-charming redhead seeking: 3-9 people to create a gorgeous, cozy, cooperative dream house filled with delicious shared meals and incredible smells, fabulous art, and plenty of space to garden, and to develop numerous and varied zones for us and friends to live, relax, and make food, art, projects...”

That was the text I shared recently when I was looking for a new place to live. I didn’t want to live alone but I didn’t know anyone looking for a place who wanted to live how I wanted…

Living alone, living with partners, or living with family members are not the only ways we can make our lives and our homes.

Let’s Get that Golden Girls Dream

I decided when I was a kid / teenager that I never wanted to have kids or get married. But just because I don’t want to have a single partner for my entire life or to raise children means I want to live alone.

There are so many apps and websites devoted to finding romantic partners and not quite as much attention is devoted to some of the other key relationships we have in our lives.

Aside from the heroic models of the show Golden Girls, there aren’t many examples of adults living together beyond their 20s (know of some? tell me! Three’s Company?).

Is This the Only Way We Can Imagine to Live?

Like we’re all supposed to fall into the life of either half of a couple or if not a part of a couple well just live alone and be alone and eat alone and exist alone.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m INCREDIBLE company (hair flip) for myself and I don’t mind being alone with myself ever. I could live in a cave (if it’s cozy) with books and a notebook to great pleasure for the rest of this here life.

But I also am super into other people. I’m a deep extrovert from a big family and I want to have a big home with big joy and big potlucks and murals and gardens and collaborators and community!

Wanted: Human to Pay Bills / Nothing Else Matters

It’s not uncommon for people in their 20s & 30s in larger cities to live in apartments or houses with other people to make housing more affordable. But that’s often just temporary — on the way to settling down with a partner or alone.

These living situations are often advertised on social media or craigslist or (now even Zillow is in on the roommate game) announcing that there’s a room in a house with other people. But so often these listings offer almost no information about those people you’d be sharing a HOME with. How is that possible?!

I have so many questions!

How do those people live? Are they in metal bands that practice at dawn? Are they new doctors who go on benders when they get off their long shifts? Are they well-meaning-but-unable-to-pay-the-bills musicians and writers? Are they experimental chefs born without a sense of smell and no idea the scents their whipping up to waft into your delicate Ol’ Factory?

How could something as intimate and important to life as the people we share a home with be left to a quick email / interview and maybe a fast tour?

Let’s Be More Intentional About How We (Want to) Live

What if we were more intentional about the way live?

When we need a place to live, it’s common / easiest to search for the building, rather than the people we want to live with.

What if we start to pay attention to all of our preferences and look for other people who want to live that way too?

What if we meet up and interview each other (more than once!) and talk about all of the things that matter about our home lives and then look for places together if we think it’s a good fit?

What if choosing to live together becomes something to aspire to?

The Top Ten elements of your dream Home

I started to make a list of the top ten things I was looking for in creating my dream home but once I got started, I remembered I had zillions of lists I’ve been compiling about my dream house and the list kept getting longer and longer and now it’s up to, er, 55.

While it’s fairly incredibly unlikely I’ll find anyone who matches with or agrees with my all of dream elements, it was helpful to spell out everything in advance rather than remembering later, as I stare forlornly out the window… that I really was pretty into the idea of having a garden, not living in a house with no outside access.

But in the meantime, what about you? Are you into living alone, with a partner/family, or other people?

Have you tried to find compatible people to live with besides a partner?

Let’s talk about housing!

Think someone else might be into this? Why not pass it along?

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