When I first heard about cohousing I assumed it was for weirdos- like people who wore clothing made of hemp, wanted to live in a commune, and were ‘one’ with nature. Or I assumed they were like retirement communities.

I was wrong.

First, there’s tons of cohousing communities across the country from Brooklyn to the islands off of Washington state. Typically these communities have 20-40 residences and the residents eat many meals together, take care of common resources, and have an emphasis on sustainability. From the cohousing.org site:

Cohousing communities are old-fashioned neighborhoods created with a little ingenuity. They bring together the value of private homes with the benefits of more sustainable living. That means common facilities and good connections with neighbors. All in all, they stand as innovative answers to today’s environmental and social problems.

In a cohousing community, you know who lives six houses down because you eat common meals with them, decide how to allocate homeowners dues and gratefully accept a ride from them when your car’s in the shop. You begin to trust them enough to leave your 4-year-old with them. You listen to what they have to say, even if you don’t agree with them at first, and you sense that you, too, are being heard.

I discovered there are 18 cohousing communities in Washington alone! I had no clue and one of them is right down the street from my house.

It’s one of those ideas that gives me the ‘warm-fuzzies’, ya know? I don’t know my neighbors and I live in a great neighborhood. If I needed help with something, I certainly wouldn’t go knocking on their doors and that’s kinda sad.

I started researching coworking spaces after Aaron mentioned them as being a great candidate for Divvy. These communities have to share common amenities (like the kitchen or common great room) and responsibilities (weeding the garden, fixing meals, watching kids, carpooling) and Divvy can help them schedule all of this.

So as I go about my work and check out these communities, I wanted to share the concept with you. If you live in a cohousing community, let me know. I’d like to learn more.

Jenny

Aaron wrote a “2-pager” for Divvy over the weekend and also created this Wordle- pretty cool looking, huh? (Click to see the closeup. I couldn’t figure out how to get it into the blog in a larger size….so if I do, I’ll update.)

This has been out for a while, but it’s well worth it to watch it again from time to time.

At Divvy, we’re trying to change our patterns of  consumption. Do we really need a new lawn mower? Another bike? A new car?

I like the whole Story of Stuff, but if you have to watch one chapter, watch this one on disposal of our stuff. This is where I think Divvy can have the largest impact- share your things instead of throwing them away, curtailing new purchases and also avoiding sending things to the dump where they can’t be useful to anyone else.

i haven’t blogged in awhile; i’ve been letting jenny take the lead on doing so. recent events, however, have motivated me to join the conversation.

first, the rant: among my most favorite meals is a filet of fish (extra sauce and extra cheese) with two milks and one apple pie. ONE apple pie. i mean ONE APPLE PIE. every single time, without fail, i get pushback from the fast food technician behind the counter. ‘but two apple pies are cheaper than one apple pie,’ they protest. ‘i don’t care. i want one’. ‘but two apple pies are cheaper than one apple pie,’ they repeat, astonished that i haven’t caught the clue. ‘i don’t care,’ i say again. ‘i only want one.’. ‘but…’. i actually have to argue. each and every time. each time that i think that i’ve prevailed with the order taker, i’m soon shocked (welll, less and less) to find that the person dispensing the food has placed TWO APPLE PIES on my try. it’s astounding to me that mcdonald’s is so hell bent on supersizing america that they price two apples pies cheaper than one. and, to boot, that they train their employees to push it. it’s freakonomics, and it’s time that someone blew the lid off of this one. i hope that i just did. stop the insanity.

next, the rave. at a cristalla board meeting last week, a homeowner complained that the carpets on the 17th floor were dirty. a conversation ensued during which it was ascertained that carpets are cleaned annually, under contract. this begged the question of how to handle stains in the interim. the board president suggested that the association acquire a steam cleaning vacuum cleaner and then, unsolicited, suggested that (and i quote), “we divvy it”.

music to my ears.

My grandmother has way too much food in her house. She lives alone yet she has a fridge and pantry that look like they’re stocked for a houseful of teenage boys. Why? Because she grew up around the depression and didn’t have much so when she could stock her fridge, she did. And now food goes bad and she keeps buying more…but that’s how she was shaped by the depression.

My generation and younger are being shaped by this recession. Instead of the crazy spending I experienced a few years ago, we’re more moderate about our purchases. Where many of my friends used to scoff at the idea of a budget, we now all have one and are addicted to sites like Mint.com (which by the way, I was alerted I went over my gas, shopping, food, restaurant and personal care budgets this month…whoopsies.)

This is a great article on how our generation is being shaped by the recession and I believe Divvy will play an important role in shaping how we share assets and time.

Enjoy!

If you want to know more about why we’re passionate about what Divvy does, check out this excellent video on “Rentalism.”

http://abclocal.go.com/wjrt/story?section=news/consumer&id=6878205

PS- I really hope you see the Sam Bernstein commercial before the start of the video and laugh as much as I did.

Katy Perry is a lyrical genius and her song Hot and Cold or whatever it’s called sums up our day here in the Divvy office.

Aaron and I both felt like crap this morning- both tired; not “feeling” it. So after a great meeting with an insurance provider who might be able to help out with insurance for divvied cars (cross your fingers) we gorged ourselves at the Cheesecake Factory. Then we lamented on how fat we felt and how hot we thought the office was so we went to Home Depot and bought an air conditioner. We also went through the McDonalds drive through and (even after complaining about how chubby we felt) we bought McFlurries.

Now we’re back in the office, setting up our R2D2 looking air conditioner unit and watched our site go offline (now back online), hopefully avoiding bad food for the rest of the day and getting back to making magic happen at the Divvy HQ.

And on that note, I’ll leave you with one of our favorite SNL videos.

enjoy

Long title, but bear with me…

Aaron and I have some really fun routines during the week- one of them is “workout Wednesdays” where we hit up Xplore Fitness and workout with Tommy, my friend and trainer of 2 1/2 years. Tommy really works us over…I mean REALLY works us over. It’s not abnormal to want to vomit, pass out and/or cry during one of his workouts, but it’s worth it. 

While we’re in the middle of the torture, we tell ourselves “pain is weakness leaving the body” and we need to “make it look good in the shower.” Both of these things are difficult- no one wants to deal with pain. No one wants to put the effort in to make your body look good in the shower. 

But we do.

Really, it’s a great metaphor for working at a startup. We put a lot into it. It’s difficult. It hurts at times. We want to quit, pass out, cry, complain. But we endure because the results are worth it. 

Since our relaunch of the site, we have seen some amazing people and companies join Divvy to divvy out things like….

• Their Pilates class at the YMCA
• Their family sailboat
• Their dating coach services
• Their employee schedules
• Their summer camps
• Their hair styling services
• Their inflatable artwork displays 

It’s pretty cool and really rewarding! We still have a lot left to do, but it’s nice to see some results for the work we’ve put in.

If you’re using Divvy and want to tell us what you think, email us at jenny@ or aaron@ divvy.com. 

-Jenny

Aw, this makes my marketing heart so happy. ClickCEO wrote a review of Divvy. Here’s a clip:

Here at Click Engineering we do a lot of our troubleshooting and maintenance work remotely, i.e. from our desk in our office.  We subscribe to a service that makes it easy to create a remote connections to any computer with Internet access.  The only problem, only one technician can use the service at a time.  While conflicts are rare, there are occaisions when two of us will schedule a remote session with a client at the same time.

I’m sure you can think of similar resoures in your business that need to be shared and periodically lead to a conflict.  It may be a conference room, an office laptop, or perhaps even a staff member with specific skills.  Whatever the resource, you may be able to prevent scheduling collisions using Divvy.com.

Check the whole thing out here!

Thanks, David!

Check out the new Divvy.com! Email us with your feedback jenny@ or aaron@divvy.com