Day 34: On living with 40+ people

I’m currently on a layover on my way to NYC where I’ll be spending the next 10 weeks, but before I write about why I’m moving there and what I’ll be doing, I want to reflect on one of the most important parts of my time in Austin. For the last 6 months, my daily schedule looked roughly like this:

Wake up, drive to Austin Bouldering Project, and either climb or lift weights
Work upstairs in the co-working space all day
Drive home, eat dinner, and sleep

I absolutely loved this schedule, and it was the bedrock that formed one of the most productive periods of my life. Some of you might see this and think, “wait, but you were working all day long, and you work by yourself — didn’t you ever get lonely?”

Nope, because loneliness is pretty hard to come by when you live in a house with 40+ other people.

For most people, the world outside of home is where they go to be social before returning home to be mostly by themselves and recharge. With a community house or co-op, it’s different. When you go from living by yourself or with a few others to living with lots of people, “home” transforms into a source of community that feels a lot more conducive to well-being than how we normally think of home. For indie makers who don’t get their social fix from interacting with familiar faces at work, I don’t think there’s a better way to live.

Every community house is different, but to give an idea of what it’s like to live in one, here were my favorite parts of the one I stayed in:

My house drew in people from all walks of life: students, researchers, massage therapists, freelancers, marketers, receptionists, software engineers, and lots and lots of people from abroad. (One time, I drove some of my housemates to the grocery store and when the conversation turned into a passionate criticism of American cheese, I realized that I was the only American in a car full of Europeans.)

Given the diversity of backgrounds, conversations were pretty much always interesting, ranging from me looking dazed while one of my housemates explained her quantum physics research project to hearing from another housemate about how fun and scary he found installing a sign while being high enough where falling off would’ve killed him.

It felt a lot like living in a hostel, except instead of being in a 16-person room with bunk beds, I had my own room which was nice for the times when I actually wanted to be alone.

I loved that after a day of working by myself, I could come home to friends who’d be down to cook together, tell me about something crazy that happened that day, play Secret Hitler, watch some obscure movie, or go out for ice cream. When living in a community, you don’t need to make plans to hang out — it just happens, which is especially nice when you saunter over to the kitchen at 4am because you can’t fall asleep and find someone else there to commiserate with.

Every Sunday, everyone got together for a family dinner where someone cooked for the whole house.

Heated accusations being thrown around in a game of Mafia.

I was “Tex-Mex” for Halloween. — I was "Tex-Mex" for Halloween.

A grocery store called H-E-B pretty much owns all of Texas and sponsors stuff like Christmas light installations for people to enjoy.

Faster skill development

Being surrounded by people with all kinds of experiences also helps you learn skills a lot faster. Before I moved into my community house, I had never purchased a car and cars were mysterious contraptions that somehow magically converted foot pressure into motion. I had housemates coach me on what to look for when buying a car (thanks Scott and Pagan) and make sure I didn’t end myself when learning to swap out my spark plugs or change my brakes (thanks Jake and Aaron). If I didn’t have people around me who knew a lot more than me or were at least interested in helping me out, I would’ve been too intimidated to dive in all by myself.

In this photo: Scott teaches me the basic life skill of changing my tires.

Me being super proud of myself after changing my spark plugs without having anything explode.

Jake was my expert brake-pedal pusher when I changed my brake fluid.

I thought my brake pads were bad until I saw Aaron’s… — I thought my brake pads were bad until I saw Aaron's...

Besides cars, I also learned more about cooking (I’m still terrible, though). In a community setting, the kitchen is one of the best places because you get to cook together, learn from what others have made, and share your latest experiments. I picked up meal prepping after being inspired by some of my housemates, and it was great having people try out stuff I made and give me notes on what they liked and what could be better. You never have to worry about making too much food because there are always people down to eat it.

A typical meal prep — carb + protein + veggies

I love tofu, so a lot of my meals had variations of baked or fried tofu.

Made vegan banana bread for the first time. Making desserts is typically risky because of the temptation to eat it all, but you don’t need to worry about that when you’re surrounded by people eager to gobble it up. — Made vegan banana bread for the first time. Making desserts is typically risky because of the temptation to eat it all, but you don't need to worry about that when you're surrounded by people eager to gobble it up.

Pets without the poop

One day, our community manager showed up with two kittens and said that they were for the house. They grew to be the friendliest and most affectionate cats ever, which probably has something to do with the fact that they constantly had people petting and loving them. I loved having Chile and Arya come into my room and hang out while I was working or going to sleep. The best part was that since they were the house’s cats, the community manager took care of all the not-so-fun parts like cleaning up after them (although I did end up trimming their claws fairly regularly so that they wouldn’t slice me up).

They’re siblings and look very similar, but Arya has a little white streak on her forehead that you can see here. — They're siblings and look very similar, but Arya has a little white streak on her forehead that you can see here.

They love napping under the fridge where the warm air is released.

The Bad Parts

Living with so many people does come with some serious downsides though. As with the upsides, some of these are particular to the community I was in. Here were some of the not-so-great aspects:

Noise

The walls might as well have been nonexistent. From my room, I was able to hear everything from people talking outside to someone taking a dump in the bathroom next to my room. I often had trouble sleeping because of the noise, and this was one of the hardest parts about living here for me because I quickly become dysfunctional without proper sleep.

The house itself (which used to be an old folks home back in the day) also hadn’t been maintained well, which meant that almost every night, I was serenaded by the music of mice squeaking and scurrying about above my ceiling.

Cleanliness

I like keeping my environment clean, and in a group living situation, I think it makes the most sense to wash cookware and dishes as soon they’re used so that dirty dishes don’t pile up in the sink. Unfortunately, not everyone agrees so this meant it was often a struggle to find clean utensils and it wasn’t uncommon to find stale food bits in a pot you wanted to use because someone just hadn’t bothered to clean it properly.

Heartbreak

After 6 months, I was one of the oldest residents of the community house because the turnover was so high. I loved meeting so many different people, but it was also sad having to say bye after growing fond of them.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed living in this kind of environment, and I think more people should give it a try. In my new place in New York, I’ll be living in a similar environment with around 20 people this time, and I hope I can continue finding opportunities to have home be a place of community wherever I go.

Before I left Austin, I organized a goodbye picnic where I invited people from my house as well as others I’d met during my time in Austin (I had also met some really rad people at Austin Bouldering Project). Here’s a fun photo piece I made at the picnic, where a new person had to take a selfie containing the expanding group until everyone had a turn:

Thanks to everyone who made my time in Austin so special. Love you all, and hope to see you again soon!