Imagine you arrive home after an exhausting day filled with errands, tasks, and a much too long to-do list with little crossed off. You are exhausted and really hungry. You had no time to stop by the grocery store and you realize there is little to eat in your kitchen. You resign yourself to another night of scrounging together a meal and it likely won’t be nutritious.
Now imagine the same arrival. But instead, you walk by the common house and you smell something delicious. Could it be a savory roast chicken and fresh baked bread? Your spirits pick up because you remember you had signed up for the common house meal this evening and you send up a prayer of thanks for not having to figure out dinner tonight. Plus! No dirty dishes to clean up! You simply need to show up and enjoy a lovely meal with your friends and neighbors.
Here’s how common meals in a cohousing community often work:
- Typically a community will have 2-5 scheduled meals a week.
- It’s YOUR choice. You can choose to take part or not.
- To share the workload, you will be assigned a meal to prepare, maybe once a month. A fair trade I’d say – a month of meals for one night of doing the work. Think how much time this will save!
- Plus, it is simply wonderful to sit down at a table and share a meal. I would venture to say that if we are not living in cohousing , we are not doing this enough.
I recently read a newsletter article from
Wolf Creek Lodge
, a 55+ Cohousing Community that has been open for a little over five years. They did some calculation and found that they had shared more than 1000 meals together. One thousand! This number sounded outlandish to me until I calculated it in my head. I thought back on the last five years of my life and to the times I’ve enjoyed a dinner meal with friends (maybe 25 times?). Those moments have created lovely memories and have enriched my life. I couldn’t help consider how much richer my life will be when I live in cohousing.
As for me, I’m going to really love those common house meals!