My personal tales of collective living

Collective living kind of fell into my lap.

In November 2010 I returned from a life-changing journey where I travelled by bike with a group of 17 people in the east coast of Canada, performing a play about environmental and social justice issues. As well as performing, we also operated as a collective. We had rotating tasks and chores, cooking squads, and consensus meetings. We were a functioning, mobile community. It was during this trip that I really discovered collective living, and realized that it was the way I wanted to live.

What struck me about living collectively during that trip was that it just made sense. We were able to accomplish so much, even during the darkest times of our tour. On the second day of our tour we were involved in an accident and lost one of our team. It was a tremendous blow to our newly formed community. After a few days, we began to think about what we should do next. Ultimately, we decided to resume the tour, and in the next few days after that, I was absolutely floored by how much we had accomplished. We got ourselves back on our feet, gave each other the emotional support we really needed, and within a week and half were back on our bikes. It was during this time that it really hit me how much sense it makes to live in a collective.

When I returned home (to Victoria, at the time), I was in shock. I was no longer a member of a collective, I was on my own. Though I had the support of my friends and family, I still felt alone. I sunk into a depression and, among other things, I knew that the answer was finding community again. I decided to move to Vancouver for a change of scene, though looking back I knew that if I hadn't found my current house, I would have probably been worse off than before. I had made arrangements to move in with a friend, but about two weeks before the 1st of the month, I received an email from the Beehive through the VCHN listserve that they were looking for a new housemate. I sent them an email right away, then flew off to Toronto to visit my family. While in Toronto, I had a phone conversation with someone who lived in the house and was invited to come for dinner when I returned to BC.

I arrived at the Beehive for dinner on a December night, after a few days of some of the worst anxiety I remember experiencing. It was a glimmer of hope after a very low time for me and a sign that my life was about to take a turn for the better. We had an incredible vegan dinner, a delicious chocolate cake, inspiring conversation and a cozy cup of tea in the living room with Donut (the cat) afterwards. I suddenly felt uplifted and the joy I knew I had for life seeped back into my step as I walked back to the hostel that night.

The next day I was told I could move in, and I took the opportunity. I am normally a basket case when it comes to decision making, but this time I had not a single doubt in my mind after telling them I would move in. I went back to Victoria for the holidays, in great anticipation for the moving day.

My first few months of living at the Beehive, I went through a lot of personal transformation, and experienced some horrible anxiety. Looking back, the struggles I had were a necessary step in the change I was experiencing in my life. Every Sunday at the Beehive, we have a house meeting and the first thing we do is a check-in. During these times when I was struggling with anxiety, I began to open up about a lot of different things to my housemates and I felt really, truly listened to and supported. I felt completely accepted in this house very, very quickly.

I think of the struggles we had on the bike tour, as well as the personal struggles I experienced earlier this year, when I read the M. Scott Peck quote from my previous post. I learned very early on at the beehive that I could communicate honestly with my housemates, and that my relationships with them went "deeper than the masks of composure." I also learned how to bring this honesty and down-to-earth quality with everyone I meet. My interactions with people since moving into the Beehive have become more honest and far, far more present.

This is one of the ways I believe that collective living is really, truly special. You not only make a commitment to eat together, share chores, and make a lighter impact on the environment. You make a commitment to be each others' emotional supports. This, combined with sharing values with everyone I live with and making a commitment to live out my values with the support of my housemates, has made life that much more meaningful and wonderful.

I struggle a lot with feeling settled in any place. No matter where I am, I always feel that I should be somewhere else. I've heard this is true of a lot of people in their 20s. But I feel confident that no matter where I end up in my life, I owe a lot to this box-shaped house, which now contains six beautiful people, three hilarious felines, and more plants and vegetables than I care to count.

With love and gratitude,

Lisi

So, what is collective living anyway?

I get this question a lot.



When I tell people I live in a collective house, I feel I'm only scratching the surface. People usually have an idea of what it means, but few people have a full understanding (myself included--which is why I am starting this blog and writing down all the details!) Often people have the idea that I live in some sort of '70s hippie commune. While there are probably similarities, collective living in the modern sense is a different species. I would like to dispell the theories that I live in a house of drugs and rock 'n roll by attempting to define what a collective house is.



I am part of a listserve on Yahoo Groups called the Vancouver Collective House Network. It is exactly what it sounds like. It connects people living in various collective houses, as well as people who wish to live in collective houses, across the city of Vancouver. It informs people of room openings, potlucks, meetings, and all the rest of it. It's fantastic, end of story. It's how I found out about my house.



At the bottom of each email I get from the VCHN, there is a very official looking 'definition' of a collective house. This is what it says:



"Collective houses are one option on the spectrum of long-term shared living, a spectrum that also includes co-housing, coop apartments, and other shared land models. Unlike in co-housing and coop models, a collective house is a home where people - ranging from families with children to single adults - share personal living space and daily lives with housemates. Collective house members usually share food and shopping, nightly house dinners, social areas of the house, some amount of money (how much varies by house), and shared values, which also vary from house to house. Most houses in the Vancouver Collective House Network are centered around variations on social and/or environmental justice. Rather than just temorarily sharing space as roommates, collective living is often a long term life choice for those who prefer to live collectively for ecological, social, and other ethical reasons. Stronger social networks in our homes and between the collective houses in Vancouver results in: greater economic independence from market systems; lighter ecological impact due to better sharing of resources; improved skills for conflict resolution and collaborative decision-making; and stronger individuals, neighbourhoods, and communities."



Weeeyooooo. Still with me? Well, that basically says it all. Or most of it. What a collective house is defined as totally varies from house to house, but that definition gives a great overall picture. Some of the things that stand out for me are:

• Sharing food (with this one also comes a sharing of food values- I'll get to that later)



• Nightly house dinners



• Greater independence from market systems



• Lighter environmental impact



• Stronger individuals, neighbourhoods and communities

and I would add...

• Fostering meaningful connections and relationships, with oneself and others

The first ones I mentioned are really the main reasons a lot of people want to live collectively. It's beyond just wanting to live with roommates, and it is totally different. Living in community with others, and sharing things with others, creates a lifestyle that is meaningful, efficient and sustainable. By living with others who share similar values, you are able to live by your own values with much greater ease. Recently I adopted a vegan diet, for example, after being vegetarian for about a year and a half- but it is really due to the support of my house that I feel absolutely no anxiety around this switch.

Sharing food with other people in the house saves, well, food. If you have six people each cooking for themselves you may have an overabundance of food in the fridge, a lot of which will likely go to waste. It also saves money. But the issues around food in a collective house are the topic of another blog post- there is just way too much to say!

Living collectively creates a much lighter impact on the environment, for a number of reasons. Well, first of all, most people who want to live collectively often tend to think about their environmental impact, so living with others who feel the same way strengthens their desire and gumption to do so. The systems that are created by collective living-- from food sharing to gardening to grey water -- are all in an attempt to lessen our impact on the environment.

Then there is also the benefit of "many hands make light work". Each person in my house has between 3-5 chores. So instead of doing everything by yourself, you do your part and everyone else does theirs. By lessening the work load around the house for yourself, everyone is able to focus more on the way the house chooses to live.

And finally, I will leave you with another quote that I absolutely love. It relates to the last point I wrote, which is that collective living fosters meaningful connections and relationships, with oneself and others.

I found this quote hanging on the door to the backyard of my house, on a recycled piece of pink paper. It reads:

A definition of community:

"The coming together of a group of individuals who have learned how to communicate honestly with each other, whose relationships go deeper than their masks of composure, and who have developed some significant commitment to rejoice together, mourn together, and to delight in each other and make the conditions of others our own"

-M. Scott Peck, The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace

Collective living is more than living. It helps you to live truly how you would like to, and to really relate and connect with other people and with yourself.

Welcome to the world of collective living. The door is wide open.

-Lisi

Hugs and Welcomes

Greetings earthlings!

I have started this blog initially just for myself. For the past three months, I have been living in a collective house (will define that later!) near Commercial Drive in Vancouver, BC. I have been learning so much these past few months, that I wanted some way of keeping track of it all. And then I realized, why not start a blog and share what I am learning with the world? Heck, through this blog I could encourage more collective houses to emerge in the world. Maybe? Ok, maybe I'm thinking a little far ahead.

So here it is! It is hard to know where to begin in the piles and piles of knowledge I have been accumulating over the past few months. Everything from labelling different kinds of re-used plastic bags, to grey water, to organic gardening, to storing a vat of fermenting cabbage in your kitchen, this blog, I predict, will include a plethora of posts. Hopefully it will be interesting to ye readers, young and old.

With that, I bid you welcome!

-Lisi