At WOW Home in Seattle, the kitchen is political. Particularly, the fridge, which was way back dubbed a “socialist fridge” by the ladies who reside there. Which means any unlabeled meals in it belongs to everybody in the home. Whereas claiming possession over, say, a selected jar of peanut butter isn’t essentially distasteful, doing it on a regular basis alerts you’re not within the communal premise of WOW Home. One former housemate began placing her title on every part; she didn’t final lengthy.
WOW Home—which stands for Wild Older Girls—is only one of many communal residing preparations throughout the US, households the place individuals who aren’t associated or romantically concerned select to reside collectively. However they’re not roommates, emphasizes Davida Wolf, one of many WOW Home residents. Their model of communal residing, or coliving, displays an intentional determination to share a house with others not simply because it makes the hire cheaper, however as a result of they wish to. Residents share areas and meals and handle the family collectively. “Whenever you’re residing communally,” Wolf says, “all people has accountability and energy.”
For a lot of, selecting this lifestyle is a radical reply to bigger social points: meals waste, skyrocketing rents and residential costs, and what the US surgeon common has dubbed a loneliness epidemic. It’s a approach to redefine success in a society through which the traditional thought of “making it” usually means residing alone or in a small household unit—society’s “huge bias on individualism,” as Wolf places it.
In 1970 a New York Occasions investigation into the “commune phenomenon” discovered almost 2,000 teams residing collectively, “in search of financial benefits, social revolution, love, pot, God, or themselves.” Greater than 50 years later these setups could look totally different, however the underlying motivation is identical. For Sony Rane, a 35-year-old who lives with 19 different folks in a Chicago housing cooperative, it simply doesn’t make sense to reside alone: “I get to return residence from work to a home-cooked meal on a regular basis. I wash my plate on the finish of the night time and I’m achieved.”
At this time the Basis for Intentional Group’s database clocks simply over 700 such groupings throughout the nation, which doesn’t embrace extra informal combos, like a number of {couples} sharing a home. Gillian Morris, who runs a weblog about coliving known as Supernuclear and is a cofounder of Casa Chironja in Puerto Rico, has seen a “enormous explosion” of individuals reaching out and asking for recommendation on the way to start residing communally, particularly after COVID. In the course of the pandemic, she says, “Folks had been pressured to confront how troublesome it was to be alone.”
One of many major motivators for residing in these bigger teams, members say, is the meals. “Communal consuming is the beating coronary heart of coliving,” Morris says. She and her housemates in San Juan, together with all 20 members of Bowers Home in Chicago, and the wild ladies of Seattle, invited Bon Appétit to hitch them within the kitchen. We received a behind-the-scenes take a look at these households as they deliberate meals, cooked, and broke bread collectively at their (typically very massive) tables.
WOW Home
Seattle, Washington
