A few days ago we had the idea of reorganizing our common areas in a “better way” looking for improvement but against privacy in our Coliving… The intention was good but the community stopped us straight away…
Let’s move this coach to that place and that table to this other place… I said
Why are you doing that?
I said, “We will improve the space to work and bla, bla, bla”
Somebody answered me, some of us like that corner for a quiet dinner or stay with ourselves sometimes when the kitchen is full of people…
What do you think we did?
Coliving is a community experience, but…
Coliving is mainly about community, you book a coliving for belonging, to share unforgettable moments, meet people, grow your network, learn, help others, etc…
Common areas are quite big in most colivings, with many different options to change during the day, while working or having a break…
Community also means sharing different activities, from dinners to skillshares, masterminds, hiking, and going for a drink… At the end of the day, you spent a good amount of time with other community members…
So far so good, this is the main reason to be part of a coliving community, but do we have to spend all day long with other people? do we have privacy? do we have time for ourselves?
Time for yourself
I made the mistake of concentrating all our communication on the community proposition of EcoIsleta Coliving, for obvious reasons…
But without understanding that sometimes we need time for ourselves, time to be alone for a few hours or during a full day, for whatever reason, the community experience can be unsustainable for many members…
Could be something personal, could be something related to our work, but while living in a Coliving you should be able to have the possibility to stay with yourself whenever you need it, as long as you need it…
How and when can I be with myself…
In our Coliving each member has their own room, to stay alone, do some deep work, make a call, recharge, have a nap, or count sheep…
At any time during the day or night, any of our Colivers can go to the room, of course… so far so good…
But what happened in the common areas, you share the kitchen, the coworking, and other common spaces, like the terrace…
In our case, we have two different terraces, one near the kitchen, more busy during the day, and another far from the kitchen, near the street of the house. On this, “not-busy”, second terrace, we have a good table and a chill-out, you can use it to be with yourself, have dinner, watch Netflix or work…
Community Life
Colivings usually fill the days with a good calendar of different activities, workshops, dinners, hiking, etc…
In our case, we don´t do activities every day, and if you are looking for an intense-busy week full of things to do, we will disappoint you… Most of our colivers work more than 40 hours a week… and stay for more than a month…
We do one activity a week, a dinner, hike, movie, or whatever the community feels is suitable for that week, without a close calendar or something very scheduled, this activity helps to increase connections between the community.
Together with this activity, colivers normally rent a car to visit the island for the weekend or go out to drink something some other days, that’s self-organized…
But do you have to go to the dinners or hikes? uhhhh… we work hard to see all members in the activities, we would like to have as much participation as possible, but I´ll be honest, not everybody goes to our dinners or activities.
Why? We are in a busy city, people made other plans, have to work, or sometimes you just simply want to stay with yourself, it is fair, and we respect that…
Conclusion
Now the terrace furniture placement has been done by the colivers themselves, they move the furniture how they thought is more convenient…
We didn’t make the “improvements” we wanted, but they did it in a better way…
Now we have spaces to be together and share our time in common and spaces to be alone, and we respect that…
Would you like to see the improvements?
We are an open community, you can have dinner with us, visit the house, or keep talking about these topics with a cup of tea…
