Our Story: How We Got Into This Crazy Mess/Wonderland of Fun and Rainbows and Glittery Unicorns (Part One)
This post is part of Multi Family Living Mondays, a series of articles on co-housing and multi-family living.
Our Story, Part 1:
After posting the first few articles about co-housing in general, I thought it might be good to step back and share a little more about our particular situation and how we ended up here, living with my sister-in-law, brother-in-law and nephew.
A few years ago, when Jesse and I were still dating, I remember sitting in Tim and Sara’s (then my friends, now also my in-laws and housemates) living room one night listening to Jesse and Sara talk about building a house/houses someday on shared property. At this point, our dating relationship was pretty serious, but still young, so I felt hesitant about the implication that I would be a part of all of this, and wasn’t really sure how forward I should be about my opinions. Eventually I decided not to worry too much about it and jumped into the discussion with both feet. That first conversation was really more for entertainment than anything else, but the seed had been planted.
A year and a half later we were married and expecting our first baby, as were Tim and Sara. They were hoping to move out of their apartment, and so were we, but neither family was anywhere near being able to buy a home. We thought this might be the perfect opportunity to try living together in a rental, to test the waters and hopefully find a better arrangement than our apartments were.
We got together to talk seriously about our budget and timeline, and realized things were tight. Between school and work schedules and babies on the horizon, we needed to move fast or choose to stay put for a while. Jesse and I had already asked our apartment manager about moving into a larger unit that was opening up, and Sara was in the final month of pregnancy – not a great time to move!
I didn't hold out much hope, to be honest. A quick glance through the classifieds indicated that finding a rental that would actually save money was going to be difficult, and would probably mean moving quite a bit farther out of the city than I really wanted to. But we decided that we would at least look at the ads and check a few places out, just to see if the perfect place turned up…
Our Story, Part 1:
After posting the first few articles about co-housing in general, I thought it might be good to step back and share a little more about our particular situation and how we ended up here, living with my sister-in-law, brother-in-law and nephew.
A few years ago, when Jesse and I were still dating, I remember sitting in Tim and Sara’s (then my friends, now also my in-laws and housemates) living room one night listening to Jesse and Sara talk about building a house/houses someday on shared property. At this point, our dating relationship was pretty serious, but still young, so I felt hesitant about the implication that I would be a part of all of this, and wasn’t really sure how forward I should be about my opinions. Eventually I decided not to worry too much about it and jumped into the discussion with both feet. That first conversation was really more for entertainment than anything else, but the seed had been planted.
A year and a half later we were married and expecting our first baby, as were Tim and Sara. They were hoping to move out of their apartment, and so were we, but neither family was anywhere near being able to buy a home. We thought this might be the perfect opportunity to try living together in a rental, to test the waters and hopefully find a better arrangement than our apartments were.
We got together to talk seriously about our budget and timeline, and realized things were tight. Between school and work schedules and babies on the horizon, we needed to move fast or choose to stay put for a while. Jesse and I had already asked our apartment manager about moving into a larger unit that was opening up, and Sara was in the final month of pregnancy – not a great time to move!
I didn't hold out much hope, to be honest. A quick glance through the classifieds indicated that finding a rental that would actually save money was going to be difficult, and would probably mean moving quite a bit farther out of the city than I really wanted to. But we decided that we would at least look at the ads and check a few places out, just to see if the perfect place turned up…
Comments