I feel like a lot of this is due entirely to the shift away from generational/communal living.
If you live with a bunch of other people, and those people actually contribute to the environment you all live in, the daily tasks get split up such that they are much easier to maintain, for everyone.
Say you’ve got a set of parents, 2 kids and their spouses, and whatever offspring under that. Sure you need a bit more space than your average single family starter home offers, but if only one house is needed, that frees up a lot of money elsewhere so I feel like that’s an OK trade.
But beyond the added space, you could have one person who cooks, one who cleans common areas, one who does dishes, one who does laundry, one who pays bills and manages appointments, and one who makes sure the kids are handled. Rotate those jobs as desired, or assign them to whomever likes doing them most of the time, and all the big major draining tasks are handled. EZ.
With individualized living, everything falls to one or two people, and yeah that’s an absolute ton. Especially if one of the two can’t or won’t pull their weight.
Cooking for 8 people isn’t 8x as hard as cooking for one person. But, it’s still significantly harder than cooking for one person. 1 house is cheaper than 8 houses, but 1 house with enough room for 8 people is huge compared to a house for a single person.
I have relatives that live in a kind-of communal way like that. It works pretty well for them. But, I couldn’t possibly survive living with my mother. To give you an idea, she came from a family of 4 sisters. One sister died estranged from the other 3. My mother hasn’t visited the other 2 in decades. The one she’d like to visit, she won’t because she doesn’t think they can stand to be in each-other’s company for a week. That one’s her twin.
I feel like a lot of this is due entirely to the shift away from generational/communal living.
If you live with a bunch of other people, and those people actually contribute to the environment you all live in, the daily tasks get split up such that they are much easier to maintain, for everyone.
Say you’ve got a set of parents, 2 kids and their spouses, and whatever offspring under that. Sure you need a bit more space than your average single family starter home offers, but if only one house is needed, that frees up a lot of money elsewhere so I feel like that’s an OK trade.
But beyond the added space, you could have one person who cooks, one who cleans common areas, one who does dishes, one who does laundry, one who pays bills and manages appointments, and one who makes sure the kids are handled. Rotate those jobs as desired, or assign them to whomever likes doing them most of the time, and all the big major draining tasks are handled. EZ.
With individualized living, everything falls to one or two people, and yeah that’s an absolute ton. Especially if one of the two can’t or won’t pull their weight.
Can’t wait to see more of the power of diversity showing on a larger scale, as more people work directly together to survive and resist!
Cooking for 8 people isn’t 8x as hard as cooking for one person. But, it’s still significantly harder than cooking for one person. 1 house is cheaper than 8 houses, but 1 house with enough room for 8 people is huge compared to a house for a single person.
I have relatives that live in a kind-of communal way like that. It works pretty well for them. But, I couldn’t possibly survive living with my mother. To give you an idea, she came from a family of 4 sisters. One sister died estranged from the other 3. My mother hasn’t visited the other 2 in decades. The one she’d like to visit, she won’t because she doesn’t think they can stand to be in each-other’s company for a week. That one’s her twin.