Mi Casa Es Tu Casa — 10 Essential Rules for Living with Family, Friends, or Absolute Strangers
When my daughter told me she was finally making the move from the east coast to the west and would be living with me in my 3 bedroom condo, I was ecstatic. Immediately, I started bustling around, shifting furniture, purging from overloaded closets and drawers and prepping for the new arrivals. Yes, plural, because along with my daughter came my darling, cherished then four-year-old grandchild. I pictured a house bursting with fun, love, purpose and companionship. Oh, and I had a 27 year-old Korean housemate in one of those bedrooms. No problem!
In the last year plus, I’ve learned a lot about successful co-habitation — the non-romantic blending of a bunch of people of different generations and life experience living in a limited space. Just to illustrate, the relevant ages in the house are now 73, 40ish, 27, and 5. Couldn’t get much more disparate. When you then add the isolation demanded by Covid-19, the square footage of this formerly spacious condo seemed to shrink.
Overtime, we’ve come up with a few strategies that offer balance, order, and space for all concerned, with one major caveat: the child.