Have you ever been to a nice party that lasts all afternoon and into the evening at a big comfortable house where people relax, sit around talking, eat well, have a great time--then said to yourself --

"Why can't I live like this everyday?"

Seven of us, (two couples and three individuals), live together in what might be considered an ideal living situation. We share a two-story 2850 square foot house in San Rafael, California. There is almost always someone at home so the house is cheery, active and secure. Our per person cost for living comfortably is very inexpensive. (Less than $27 per day per person for housing, utilities and food--2024 prices-(details below).

Potential areas of conflict, such as the use of the three bathrooms and large kitchen, are minimized because of differing schedules and a well coordinated routine that allows everyone privacy, yet utilizes the house and its contents to the maximum. The ample kitchen has been converted into the communal living room since that's where everybody hangs out anyway. It contains a large round table of oak planks, sofas and comfortable chairs. The floor is hardwood planks revealed when the linoleum and old carpet was removed. A coat of wax makes wood an attractive material. The old "living room" is now a comfortable private living area and study for one couple.

In addition to the kitchen living area, there are private alcoves throughout the house and in various areas of the garden where one can get away and be alone.

Sustainability

Built in the late 1940s, the structure embodies a tremendous amount of lumber, concrete and natural materials. The even minimal-level of gas heat, lights, water and other resources required to make the house comfortable and to keep the garden alive would be wasted with just one couple or even one family living alone in the house. (The situation that existed for 70+ years before we arrived.) However, with seven people and their guests now enjoying the house everything is used to the maximum and costs are divided seven ways.

For example, the kitchen with its heavy duty gas range and high quality fixtures, is utilized almost nonstop throughout the day. It helps to heat the house in winter and there is the ever-present smell of baking and cooking. On cold days, the kitchen fireplace, fueled by free construction wood or tree branches emits plenty of heat. The large garden is worked by all who enjoy it and produces a large amount of produce. Time's valuable and the organic vegetable box provides produce that wouldn't grow in our climate. See our Grow your own food page.

When something is needed for the house heavy duty and high quality items, preferably free and used, are always the first option. The sink hardly ever dries and the kitchen utensils are in constant use. It's counter intuitive, but when things get used frequently they are easy to clean. With many people using the shared areas of the house and picking up after themselves, these areas stay cleaner than if just a few people were living there and the dust bunnies were to accumulate. The communal desktop Mac in the kitchen alcove is in use about 20 hours per day, every day. It would sit unused most of the time in the average home. The keyboard shows a wear pattern. it came free from an office and will be replaced at no cost with a better unit when that becomes available, also for free.

When things are shared this way their cost per-use plummets to almost nothing. When expenses are shared this way the time required for each person to work to pay for them with after tax dollars is insignificant.

If more people used homes and pooled their possessions this way there would be no housing shortage. People can save a tremendous amount of money and can live without the need to work two, or three, jobs just to afford a place to live and money to buy seldom used "necessities" that sit around unused most of the time.

Food.

The two couples and three individuals that share the house have their own period of time during the day when the kitchen is reserved for their exclusive use. Other times it's open to all. Communal meals at the large table are regularly scheduled several times a week. Sometimes a dish is prepared by someone who specializes in it. Other times everyone helps. It takes just about as much time and human and fossil energy to prepare a meal for 10 as it does for 2 and it's a lot more fun because the cook gets more satisfaction and gratitude for their labor and works far less frequently than cooking for just themself or one or two every day.

Cooking utensils are numerous and of high quality. Everything is hanging in the open on its own hook or on pegboard. The dishwasher is run once a day on a regular schedule so that personal and communal dishes can be included.

A community based agriculture farm delivers two large boxes of in-season organic produce weekly. Cost, approximately $1.25 per person/day Between this and the produce from the garden, most nondairy/non-protein food needs are met.

There is often a pot of soup or stew simmering on the stove that receives vegetable from the deliveries or the garden. This is nutritious, quick and costs next to nothing. "Leftovers" don't get generated in the house. There is far more seasonal fruit from the yard than can be eaten or juiced. The surplus of apples, oranges, Asian pears, lemons, plums, herbs etc, gets traded for other things such as bread from a local bakery, eggs from neighbors' chickens, finished laundry and dry-cleaning or coffee beans from a nearby shop, which also provides hundreds of pounds of coffee grounds and filters for the compost heap.

We put surplus fruit on our sidewalk bench for neighbors to pick up next to our free library book exchange. This builds camaraderie in the neighborhood and gets folks into the spirit of giving and looking out for each other. At our previous house in Oakland, the little kids up the block, who became rough teenagers then adults, took our surplus fruit home for years. We taught them how to raise their own vegetables and do fruit tree grafting. They brought us useful surplus things, or items being dumped, from their jobs in the building trades or fixed what we couldn't repair ourselves.

Coffee is made at 7 and 9 in the morning and 4:30 in the afternoon when friends know that they are welcome to drop by. Often they bring food to share. One key to our arrangements is that several people have small refrigerators in their private area to supplement the large unit in the kitchen. (All retrieved for free at the end of the school year from alongside college dorm dumpsters).

The first thing that we installed in the home when we moved in was a high-quality reverse-osmosis water purifier. The cost of the used restaurant unit was paid back decades ago at our last house as coffee and cooking water are of the highest quality. Nobody needs to buy plastic bottles of water, rather they just refill them or pitchers from the purified water spigot behind the sink. 4 people agree to fill containers during the morning and the other three at night, this way the storage tank rarely runs dry. The non-potable-filter backwash, about 3 gallons for every gallon of purified water produced, is diverted via tubing to a downstairs toilet tank reservoir to flush it instead of using fresh water.

Supplies/Services

There are 4 nice bicycles (2 electric) to share and one person has a small electric pickup truck that anyone can use. Each couple has a car.

Gallon jugs of high quality, low toxicity Griffith Remedy shampoo, conditioner and Dr. Bronner's hand soap are ordered by the case from the factory and shipped directly to the house. Shampoo and conditioner, cost approximately $95 a gallon, which lasts for three months or more. The washing machine runs 3 to 4 times a day with full loads. Using the appropriate biocompatable soap, washing machine, shower and bath sink water is drained to the downhill garden via a built in gray-water system, thus offsetting the high water consumption. Trees and vegetation are green and productive all summer long in our Mediterranean climate. In the winter, the rainy season hereabouts, we run washing machine water to a rain barrel on the deck with a diverter valve that can run water to flush downstairs toilets. During the day almost all water heating is by rooftop solar panels. Bathrooms are vented by a home made device that uses water pressure flowing to the shower to turn a turbine that fans moist air out of the bathroom.

When the roof needed replacement we paid about 75% more for standing-seam steel nontoxic epoxy industrial roofing with a fifty year warranty. Composition or asphalt shingles (Read sand and refinery waste compressed together that give off lead, cadmium and mercury which are neurotoxins, and which build up in the soil), would have only lasted about 20 years and been cheaper but who wants to eat vegetables watered by rain running off that? After re-roofing we installed solar electric panels with a capacity of 6 kilowatts.

We use annual net metering, which means surplus electricity that the sun produces above and beyond what the house uses is fed to the electric grid and spins our time-of-use meter backwards. This used to offset nightime electricity Use. However, state politicians and Governor Newsom's five Public Utilities Commission appointees, having received large political donations from Pacific Gas and Electric and wanting to keep their stock price up, pushed a bill slashing what we get back to .03 cents a kilowatt hour so we no longer break even or make money. Great way to save the environment.

The true opportunity cost of the money we spent on that system, is the loss of the paltry taxable interest we could be making on the money that the solar electric system cost, after the State rebate.

After we compost and recycle we often don't even fill one smaller garbage can per pickup. Every week several hundred pounds of coffee grounds and vegetable waste are brought home for the compost heap from juice bars and coffee houses that we're going to for work or pleasure anyway, so no extra fuel is used. Add the scrap firewood used in the winter and the house is actually a net importer of solid waste while it exports food and sometimes a little daytime electricity.