My Commune-Living Dreams

My husband and I have an addiction to Grand Designs. If you’re unfamiliar, it’s a British architecture and design show that’s been on since 1999 (!) that follows ordinary people who are building their own house (or hiring folks to do it), most often from the ground up, or sometimes “renovating” old ruins of historic buildings. Every single episode is hosted by architect, Kevin McCloud, who is known for pontificating philosophically on architecture in his mini monologues throughout. Since the show left Netflix, we had kind of forgotten about it, but recently we discovered that Amazon (Frevee?) has a channel that streams the show live all day, every day. This means you could turn it on and be watching a grainy version of the show from its first season where the “beautiful” architecture is now most definitely dated or from one of its most recent seasons where the designs lean industrial chic. 

Honestly, I could go on about Grand Designs for a whole post, but it would most definitely veer off topic of this Substack. Rather, I come here today to talk about an episode I recently came across of twin brothers building nearly identical post-industrial homes next to each other. Of course I loved the transformation from blank canvas to beautiful homes that I would move into tomorrow if given the opportunity. I mean, that’s why I love Grand Designs in general. But what I keep thinking about is the end. After Kevin’s pontificating and the notes of the closing song begin, they show footage of the two families (each have four kids) running from house to house or all sitting outside on their side-by-by steps overlooking the pond in the back of the houses or hanging out around a fire pit as the evening sun sets and the glow of lights shines from the new houses. What they show is a communal living lifestyle that I very much desire. 

I want to live on a commune like that, I’ve been thinking after watching the episode.

Now, listen. I know what these brothers are doing is not technically a commune. I have no idea what kind of resources they share or whatever, but what I loved was the freedom to go between houses and that these cousins all get to literally grow up together. Normally when I think of the term “commune” I’m picturing something much more extreme than what these guys are doing. You know, the kind of hippy havens where communal living seems a bit more cult-ish than purely sustainable. I do also think of the back-to-the-land movement that was popular in the 1960s and 1970s, but largely fell to the wayside when the young leftists who went “back” to the land to try to escape the challenges of the time realized that they weren’t necessarily cut out for it.

And I have to admit, there are not as utopian aspects of living communally with people I’m not that thrilled about. I lived in group houses for pretty much all of my 20s. The last one was a house (“The Blue House” many of my DC peeps will remember) had six of us living in a huge house in the Takoma neighborhood of Washington, DC. It wasn’t communal in that we went the official “coop” route. But communal in that we had cleaning schedules and responsibilities, and very occasionally we’d need to meet to discuss some issues. During my time living in The Blue House, I visited a friend in Colorado who lived in a literal co-op house and I realized that what we were doing at our place in DC was nothing compared to that crew. And I was okay with that. Because my friend’s co-op required weekly hours-long meetings, cooking schedules, and other such things that to my just-about-to-go-to-grad-school self definitely didn’t feel like I had the time or energy for. And while we didn’t hold hours-long meetings, living in a group house (where three of us residents lived with each other for the better part of 4 years), it does not come without conflict. By the end of the four years, after years of kind of dancing around each others’ differences, a roommate and I had a blowout argument. It seemed to get enough out that we just kind of wrote each other off for the next few months before I moved to Baltimore. Honestly, I don’t even know what we fought about, I just think our personalities didn’t go quite well together and it was an inevitable course after living with each other for nearly half a decade. Interestingly, the other long-term roommate and I became like sisters, which also meant we argued like sisters, but we’re still close to this day, so it could go either way.

That is all to say that while I’m romanticizing communal living in one sense, I completely get both the pros and the cons of it. But also, what I think drew me to this semi-communal living these brothers set up in Grand Designs was that they have their own living space, can take care of their own daily needs without consulting the community, but also can convene with other people and share in certain things (tool-sharing and food sharing) for example that aren’t built naturally into our single-family living culture.

Danish Cohousing Photos via Flickr by Seier+Seier https://flic.kr/p/aC1YHf. Top Images: Trudeslund Cohousing Community, Birkerød, Copenhagen built 1979-1981; Bottom Images: Jystrup Savværk Cohousing Community, Jystrup, Denmark built 1982-1984

I know that this idea of communal-but-not-too-communal living already exists through the cohousing movement. These are intentional, cooperative, self-governing, multi-generational communities with shared land and communal space. There are several cohousing communities in Portland (and I’m sure in the urban areas you’re near as well). It’s a concept that came out of Denmark (I mean, of course it did) and today, Danes are more likely to want to live in cohousing units than traditional single-family homes. I love this concept so much and appreciate that it’s kind of like a commune-without-the-commune kind of thing. You get all the benefits, but also the autonomy.

But what about those of us who live in single-family homes and don’t want to leave said home? That’s my conundrum of course. But a friend recently flipped that for me while we were at the beach the other weekend where when you’re vacationing with another family, you really get the commune-like feel. And because we vacation so well together, I mentioned wistfully that I want to live on a commune, or something like a commune. And she was like, “we kind of already are.” What she was referring to is that there are a group of families in our neighborhood that have kind of used childcare as our means of cooperative living. Just the week before, my kid, her kid, and another family’s kid carpooled to camp and then the three children spent the after-camp hours at the house of whoever did the pickup. And just this last weekend, my child spent the night at another neighbor-friend’s house so that my husband could take me out for a fancy meal. And then there’s the tool-sharing between our neighbors, my sister’s family, and our family and the ingredient-swapping that comes with being neighborly. 

The one thing that I do feel is missing is the spontaneity of socializing in the communal space that could be between our houses if we happened to live in direct neighbor proximity to one another. I definitely do want more. Although my introvert spouse might say otherwise, lol. I love the idea of just really making a community work because of the sum of everyone’s parts. And I think one day I–we–will get there. I just don’t know when or how. But for the moment, I’ll take the communal wins where I can.