#SharedLiving The Bonding Power of Inconvenience
What is shared living? Share a living space with people who have common ideas, ambitions, and interests. In a high-tech, low-touch world, the shared-living movement is helping to create great connections and opportunities amid the hustle and grind of city living.
This morning I woke up, used my phone to turn on my fan in the living room, read the news, and ordered my shopping. All without having to get out of bed or talk to another human being. It was definitely really easy. But was it better than the alternatives available? We’ve been sold a narrative of easier is better. The faster you can do something, the less steps it takes, the less people involved, the better it is. But I wonder, is that true?
I did all of these things without interacting with a single person, without experiencing anything different or out of the ordinary, or unexpected or exciting; it’s the same thing that I do every week.
I’m 26 but even within my lifetime I remember a time when that experience would have been vastly different. A few years ago I would have had to get up and manually turn my fan on, in the process maybe bumping into my boyfriend as he was leaving for work. I would have most likely read my news in a newspaper from the local news agents and I would have bought my shopping from the supermarket, which I would have walked or driven to.
Those tasks would have taken longer, involved more people, doing more things, what an inconvenience?! But also, what an experience. What an opportunity to get an extra minute with my boyfriend before he left for the day, to develop a relationship with the woman who works at the news agents and sells me my paper every morning and to perhaps meet someone new or see something interesting on my journey to the shops.
“Those tasks would have taken longer, involved more people, doing more things, what an inconvenience?! But also, what an experience.”
Whilst removing inconvenience from our life can have numerous benefits; increasing accessibility, reducing cost and often speeding things up, I think it’s worth reflecting on where we strike the balance.
This brings me to the topic of shared living, and how we live in our cities. Increasingly convenience seems to lead to isolation, many people who live in cities are lonely and by 2030, just over 10 years from now, it’s commonly predicted that depression will be the leading cause of morbidity (The Urban Developer). On top of this more and more people are moving to cities, interesting people with stories and experiences to share, yet it’s a struggle to find somewhere to live in many of the cities across the world, despite the number of empty homes and empty rooms within homes (London as an example here.)
Sharing your space with someone can be inconvenient sometimes, you might be annoyed when they use the last bit of milk and don’t replace it, they might shower at the exact moment you were about to run to the bathroom and they might have awful taste in TV (who else has experienced the house mate who binge watches Jersey Shore every Sunday?)
But I’d bet that most of us have some of our best memories with the people we’ve lived with. I had never learnt to ride a bike and when I lived in the Netherlands I felt like I was going to miss out on cycling along the canals of Amsterdam. That was until the people I lived with spent hours with me (I was not a fast learner) along the street outside our house and taught me how to. When I moved to London and lived with 2 other people I didn’t know, one of my housemates went out of his way to give me tips on my running and now I’m about to complete a 10K run for the first time in my life.
“When I moved to London and lived with 2 other people I didn’t know, one of my housemates went out of his way to give me tips on my running and now I’m about to complete a 10K run for the first time in my life.”
Shared living isn’t about creating unnecessary inconvenience; you don’t have to put up with someone who doesn’t wash any of the dishes or has a party lifestyle if that’s not your thing. But as Nicole’s mentioned in her blog post of her experience of shared living in Toronto, going out of your way to help someone else, even when that might be a bit of an inconvenience, can have a powerful bonding effect. It’s nice to feel needed, it’s nice to learn something new from the people you live with, and exchange stories and experiences. That’s shared living at its best.
I love technology, innovation and improvements; as someone who has lived abroad I know firsthand the value of google maps and skype! There’s a time and a place to remove inconvenience from our lives. Based on my experiences so far I have come to the conclusion that easier = easier, and in a lot of cases that’s great; it saves time, money and effort. But that easier ≠ better.
Is it convenient to cook a meal for your flatmates instead of that microwave meal? Probably not. Is it convenient to offer to go for a run with your housemate who’s trying to get fit rather than use the gym at work? Nope. But if I have one ask of people today it would be to ditch the easy option and give inconvenience a try, you never know what you might experience.
Ask Liz your #sharedliving questions about life in London on RoomForTea.
