Summer is the season for vacation! Kids are out of school, and many offices operate at a more leisurely pace as employees use their hours of pto. Warm temperatures and long days of sunshine inspire people to spend more time outdoors and maintain a more laid-back, slower pace of life. Hopefully you readers are lucky enough to experience some downtime this summer – whether out of town or just in your local neighborhoods.
I am at the beach this week, on the coast of South Carolina. My grandmother grew up in this area. Several generations of my family have spent a portion of the summer here, escaping the oppressive heat and humidity of the southeastern United States.
What I like best about the beach is…
all the time spent with family. Not only my parents and siblings, but many far-flung cousins, aunts and uncles who I see only once each year when they make the trek here during August. Of course, I also like the long walks in the sand, hunting for seashells, swimming in the temperate Atlantic ocean, and relaxing on the screened-in porch reading novels.
It occurs to me that our annual family vacations serve as my earliest experiences in close-knit shared housing. Sure, I shared a house with my parents and three siblings growing up in Maryland but our beach house was always smaller and more crowded than back at home. The high cost of vacation rental houses still encourages fitting as many people into one house as possible, so as to split the cost.
Vacation meant sharing a room or even sometimes a bed with one of my sisters. Depending on how many relatives showed up there could be three or four people in a room. If there weren’t enough beds to go around, someone could claim an air mattress, one of the couches, or opt to sleep in a hammock on the porch. Less-than-luxurious sleeping accommodations were part of the deal, and as a kid I never minded. A big, week-long slumber party with our cousins was enormously fun.
Of course, me and my siblings didn’t always get along. Close quarters sometimes lead to conflict. But hopefully some readers are, like me, fortunate to have mostly pleasant memories of a yearly ritual of slowing down, getting a change of scenery and spending unhurried time with loved ones.
As an adult, I realize not only the pleasures but also the stressors of any beach vacation.
It requires a lot of planning and logistics–namely, securing a rental property and figuring out where each member of the family will sleep. There’s also the travel; summertime brings an influx of cars on roads to desirable recreational areas, and airports are jam-packed. Two of life’s most irksome experiences–gridlock traffic and flight delays–are inevitable. They highlight what a paradox a vacation can be. So much stress and planning, all in order to relax!
Why do I bring up vacation, and summertime?
You may think you have no experience with shared housing, but perhaps you do! Think back to summers when you were a child…
Since school was not in session, did you go to sleepovers at a friend’s house? Or visit out-of-town relatives?
Did your family rent a cabin in the mountains, or pile into the family RV for a road trip? Did you go camping somewhere?
Did you attend an organized summer camp, and bunk up in a log cabin in the woods with tens of fellow campers?
Or as young adult have you ever shared a hostel room while travelling?
These are just some examples that come to mind. And I can think of even more parallels between vacation and shared housing:
Home-mates allow for more leisure time. An extra set of hands to help with household chores, upkeep and yard work can lessen the overwhelming chores in a standard household.
Adjusting to home-mates means establishing new routines and habits. This is especially the case after years of living alone. A break in routine can be difficult, but it’s also positive. When most of us hear the word “vacation,” we think of the latter. How exciting, to break our workaday routines, escape town and go somewhere warm, sunny and exotic!
Finding a compatible house-mate is worth the effort. It does require initial work, and perhaps some stress, but it all pays off once you find a compatible person. Coming home should then have that same relaxed, laid-back, “vibe” as a holiday. Well, at least most of the time.
When you cohabitate with a person…
…even though you both have your private bedrooms and areas of the house, chances are there will be periods of uninterrupted time ideal for long conversations, sitting on the porch in mutual silence watching the world go by, playing gin rummy or putting a jigsaw puzzle together. Leisure activities similar to what you would do on, well, a typical vacation.
Where does this summer find you on your shared housing journey? Leave a comment below!
You might also like this blog post: Travelling Together: A Good Test of Home-mate Compatibility?
images by Freepik
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