House Slipper Distance Community
Oct 19th, 2008 by terry
Bring a crow bar if you want to pry me out of my neighborhood, once I finally get there. Many of us yearn to come home to a social life within house slipper distance. Now that I’m divorced and in my 50′s creating an active social life takes far more effort than I care to expend. Hanging out with friends and neighbors, enjoying home-cooked food, in comfortable homes is a prescription for a contented life. If your life does not meet these criteria, consider transforming your neighborhood into a cooperative community.
This affordable socializing promotes mutual support, the camaraderie of inter-generational friendships, and good health. The environmental impact couldn’t be better. You get to stay out of the car and off the bus. Eating home cooked food is far more healthful and economical. When you regularly socialize with your neighbors, you will naturally forge resources to borrow odd items, trade skills, look after children or pets. The way to prime the pump of cooperative communities is to gather casually and often. Where this becomes common, neighborhoods will become oases of tolerance, trust, safety and mutual support.
Jump start your cooperative community by organizing monthly gatherings to socialize and to brainstorm for solutions for a positive impact on your life. This link Simplify Your Life With Cooperatives has more information.
The phrasing is fabulous. House-slipper distance instantly conjures a vivid image of a warm, comfortable, safe and fulfilling community life. I’m 34, single and an only child whose independence creates a mixed blessing. When I discovered cohousing and injected myself into researching this socially and environmentally sustainable lifestyle I started to yearn more for it in my own neighborhood. I too wanted to life within house-slipper distance to borrow a pot or pan, find a reliable pet sitter, find a neighbor to watch a film with. Together a community’s denizens can achieve far more than they ever could as a loose band of individuals. Cooperative (and cohousing) communities don’t prevent individualism, actually it’s the converse: these alternative residential lifestyles enhance one’s individualism in recognition that every person has unique talents. Meanwhile the create an obvious sense of connection because of the return to a more traditional relationship and involvement with one’s neighbors.