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Almost everyone does chores in their living environment or compensates someone else for doing them. This is a perfectly normal aspect of being a functional adult. Maybe if you live alone and have low standards you don't do many, but you still have to at least occasionally do some laundry, take out some trash, shovel some snow, etc. Maybe if you live with one other person you split the chores, or one of you does most of the them and the other pays most of the bills, and hopefully you both consider that a worthwhile trade. If both people in a couple have jobs and split the bills, most of the people I regularly interact with understand that it's unreasonable to expect one of them (probably the woman) to do all of the housework. These all seem to be well understood concepts in our society. No one is confused when these scenarios are assumed background for a conversation or piece of fiction or proposed policy. Everyone understands when divergence from these norms is assumed to be problematic.
Somehow, all of that goes out the window when discussing living with larger groups of people. Most people hear about an expectation that they do their share of the household chores in a coliving environment and respond with things like "I can't work a job AND do work at home" or "I'm not signing up for a second job" or "Are you going to pay me for all of that work?". Somehow, those same 2-5 hours a week that they would have spent on laundry, dishes, trash, snow, lawn, sweeping, etc living alone becomes "not my job" as soon as they live with other people. Oddly, they see this as somehow fundamentally distinct from the same statement made by a man who moves in with a woman, which scenario they would strenuously object to. Further, this isn't just self interest; many people still feel this way when discussing other people in the same situation. There's something about the larger group that fundamentally changes people's understanding of household responsibilities.
The situation is even worse, from my perspective, because I advocate for the economies of scale in coliving. When a bunch of people pool their resources, including their labor, everything should, and usually does, get easier. Mowing a single big yard takes less time than mowing a bunch of smaller yards. Cooking dinner and washing dishes for 20 people is significantly easier than doing it ten times for two people. This pattern continues across almost all chores. So, when someone rejects the idea of coliving chores, not only are they breaking a norm that exists even in smaller groups or for individuals, they are also somehow making it sound like more hardship despite it being less work than it would be otherwise.
It gets worse again when you consider the benefits gained by consolidating the resources behind those chores. Hopefully, they've made a good decision about the environment they want to live in. They'll enjoy that big yard more than they would a tiny yard. They'll enjoy those group dinners more than they would eating alone. They'll enjoy a larger home theater, a bigger garage, and so on across all the other experiences and amenities they'll be able to take part in that they wouldn't otherwise. So, now they aren't just complaining about doing the same work they'd be doing living alone, or even about doing less work than living alone, but they're complaining about doing less work for more benefit!
How does someone get from "Spending 30min/wk doing dishes from eating alone is necessary" to "Spending 20min/wk doing dishes from dinners shared with my friends is unacceptable"? I have never been able to wrap my head around this in a charitable way. I am hopeful that someone reading this might be able to offer some insights that will better inform my future engagements on this topic. Since I don't plan to stop founding intentional communities, I expect this will continue to be an important recurring conversation in my life.
PS: For reference, the last large scale chore system I developed for a ~20 person household required each person to do three chores per week, with about 1/3 of the available slots being cooking communal meals and maintaining our most active kitchen, and the other 2/3 covering everything else. One version of those chore descriptions is still visible online here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1797qiZ5iODelLS6oZm41gwEhtlMcttHfrG6CYM0c7Q4/preview
Somehow, all of that goes out the window when discussing living with larger groups of people. Most people hear about an expectation that they do their share of the household chores in a coliving environment and respond with things like "I can't work a job AND do work at home" or "I'm not signing up for a second job" or "Are you going to pay me for all of that work?". Somehow, those same 2-5 hours a week that they would have spent on laundry, dishes, trash, snow, lawn, sweeping, etc living alone becomes "not my job" as soon as they live with other people. Oddly, they see this as somehow fundamentally distinct from the same statement made by a man who moves in with a woman, which scenario they would strenuously object to. Further, this isn't just self interest; many people still feel this way when discussing other people in the same situation. There's something about the larger group that fundamentally changes people's understanding of household responsibilities.
The situation is even worse, from my perspective, because I advocate for the economies of scale in coliving. When a bunch of people pool their resources, including their labor, everything should, and usually does, get easier. Mowing a single big yard takes less time than mowing a bunch of smaller yards. Cooking dinner and washing dishes for 20 people is significantly easier than doing it ten times for two people. This pattern continues across almost all chores. So, when someone rejects the idea of coliving chores, not only are they breaking a norm that exists even in smaller groups or for individuals, they are also somehow making it sound like more hardship despite it being less work than it would be otherwise.
It gets worse again when you consider the benefits gained by consolidating the resources behind those chores. Hopefully, they've made a good decision about the environment they want to live in. They'll enjoy that big yard more than they would a tiny yard. They'll enjoy those group dinners more than they would eating alone. They'll enjoy a larger home theater, a bigger garage, and so on across all the other experiences and amenities they'll be able to take part in that they wouldn't otherwise. So, now they aren't just complaining about doing the same work they'd be doing living alone, or even about doing less work than living alone, but they're complaining about doing less work for more benefit!
How does someone get from "Spending 30min/wk doing dishes from eating alone is necessary" to "Spending 20min/wk doing dishes from dinners shared with my friends is unacceptable"? I have never been able to wrap my head around this in a charitable way. I am hopeful that someone reading this might be able to offer some insights that will better inform my future engagements on this topic. Since I don't plan to stop founding intentional communities, I expect this will continue to be an important recurring conversation in my life.
PS: For reference, the last large scale chore system I developed for a ~20 person household required each person to do three chores per week, with about 1/3 of the available slots being cooking communal meals and maintaining our most active kitchen, and the other 2/3 covering everything else. One version of those chore descriptions is still visible online here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1797qiZ5iODelLS6oZm41gwEhtlMcttHfrG6CYM0c7Q4/preview
