Cooperative Housing and Sharing Space

I've always lived in communal housing in one way or another. I've lived in multiple family apartments and in cohousing, and in college I hope to live in a co-op. In Israel I'm sharing an apartment with three other American girls. None of us knew each other before this, and we were put together almost randomly - considering this, I think we've done a very good job adjusting to live together. There hasn't been any issues with sharing space, even in the bathroom in the morning.

When we first started living together we decided that we wouldn't really assign chores, and that we would all just chip in when needed. It was an ok idea - the house was generally clean, but after coming home one day to a pile of dishes that had spread out from the sink and over our entire countertop, I decided that maybe we should do household chores in a more organized fashion.

So last night, over a lovely dinner, we had a house meeting. We decided that doing the dishes and taking out the trash would have two people on each, and that they would rotate every two days. Our weekly chores are cleaning the bathroom, cleaning the living room, cleaning the kitchen, and doing the communal laundry (not our personal laundry, but stuff like the couch covers and kitchen hand towels.) We will do them on Saturdays, and they rotate every week. We also agreed that wine glasses will not be put in the sink, and neither will food scraps. We also had to decide on a standard shopping list and go over the food budget.

It was an incredibly productive meeting, and it also took me back so much to having Family Meetings at home, and to having little written notes on everything that I find are ubiquitous to communal housing ("water this plant only on Monday!", "the green sponge is only for the floor!", "please take off shoes before entering", etc.) So thank you to my parents, siblings, and everyone else who I've lived with over the years for teaching me how to share living space cooperatively. It's come in handy.