About Our Abode

We live in a cohousing community, and Wikipedia and other sites provide good general descriptions of that concept, so I won't go into it here. There is much to say about our particular community, CoHo Ecovillage (not a very original or evocative name, but there it is). Unfortunately our CoHo Web site is way out of date, still featuring a lot of pre-move-in info. Construction was finished last October, and all 34 units were sold at that time. These units are distributed among nine two-story buildings. There is also the Common House, Bike Barn, and a large workshop. Some of the units are two-story townhouses, others are single-story flats. Whoever picked out the drab, earth-tone color scheme for the buildings did not share our sensibilities, but Leela and others are doing everything they can to bring some vibrancy to the place.

Our unit is an upstairs flat. With four bedrooms and two baths (just under 1,300 sq. ft.), it's the largest floor plan available at CoHo. We like it very much, although the kitchen is rather cramped. Leela and I each have an office. The fourth bedroom is a guest-meditation room, where we meditate on all the guests who will be visiting us. We also have a nice balcony, which Leela has festooned with flower boxes and hanging baskets.

Leela on our balcony entrance (sunflower shown actual size). (Click photo to see enlargement.)

The Common House has a big, commercial-grade kitchen and dining hall, where we have the opportunity to participate in four or five common meals a week, though with schedule conflicts and all, we only do about one every two weeks. The Common House also has a guest room, a children's play room, a living room, and a laundry room. Some residents have washer-dryers in their units. We have a washing machine but no dryer. So we either dry our laundry on racks or use the Common House dryers.

Our property is very nicely situated, with an old cemetery to the north, a huge city park and semi-wilderness area to the east, and residential neighborhood to the south and west. The buildings are connected by paved pathways, and there's usually a lot of activity out there -- especially kids. We have lots of gardening going on, and our common property also contains its own little wilderness preserve. A giant old oak tree used to stand at the east end of the path, but it fell just before move-in.

Lots needs to be done -- landscaping, building maintenance, paperwork, etc. In a cohousing community, the residents take care of a lot of stuff that a normal condominium would hire out. Everyone's supposed to put in four hours a week on community projects. This is a challenge for some. Yes, we have a lot of meetings and some disagreements. The upside is that our neighbors are a bunch of very intelligent people dedicated to improving their communication skills. Everyone moved in here because they wanted to make something like this work. It was about a decade in the planning. We joined right at the end of a long process, and I'm in awe of what these people have accomplished.