Let's stay together

Co-opted: One TOC staffer finds there's more to communal living than cheap rent and free food.

It’s 10pm on a Monday, and Stone Soup, a former convent–turned–co-op in Uptown, is dark, silent and empty.

“Welcome,” whispers Morgan Nunan, 27, one of the co-op’s members, as he stands in the cavernous building’s doorway and silently closes the door. “Speak softly. People might be sleeping,” he says, as we climb up the shadowy stairwell to the second-floor bedroom where I will be sleeping for the next three days. I clutch the wood railing tightly with both hands, groping with my foot for the edge of each step as I go. “Sorry it’s so dark in here,” he says. “We try to conserve energy any way we can.”

Not that I expect a full-tilt alcohol-fueled bash on a Monday evening, but if I’ve learned anything by watching a decade of The Real World, it’s that whenever more than six people live together, getting wasted is more of a concern than wasted electricity. But as I will learn over the time I spend living in this co-op, the 18 people residing at the Ashland House (the first of three Stone Soup co-ops in the city) have a nobler purpose. “Soupers” (as house members are called) seek community not to party down, but to green up.

SHOE SHRINE When 18 people live in one house, there’s bound to be a footwear pileup.

The co-op started ten years ago when a dozen Chicagoans working in various social justice–focused fields (artists, educators, social workers, affordable-housing advocates) began gathering for a weekly potluck to talk about their projects. The discussions would often veer toward the difficulties of being idealistic and underpaid while struggling to afford rent and healthy food. So, in September 1997, when one potlucker got wind that Our Lady of Lourdes Parish was interested in renting its abandoned 4,400-square-foot, 24-bedroom convent, the group jumped at the chance to start a cooperative. A month later, Stone Soup had six more members, a motto (“Joy and Justice”), and a handbook that laid out how the house would operate: Everything (including bathrooms, chores, computers, living rooms, telephones, TVs and a refrigerator) would be shared, and the house would be as environmentally friendly as possible. 

“Many people come here to decrease their [ecological] footprint,” says 45-year-old Souper Tom Walsh, who has lived in the co-op for eight years. The house’s recycling, composting and conserving systems make going green “easier to do here than if you were living in a traditional apartment or condo,” Walsh says. The house separates all its recyclables, which Walsh then drives to a drop-off site, and most organic waste is composted. Decision making happens only after a house vote, and because most members are in favor of these green systems, eco-ethics continue to be part of Stone Soup’s sensibility.

As I’m realizing on my first morning at Stone Soup, falling into eco-friendly habits can be anything but friendly to the unaccustomed. I am in the kitchen, where throwing away a grapefruit rind suddenly requires decision making. For me, tossing out a fruit rind is usually a single hook shot to the garbage can. Stone Soup, however, has at least six different containers that, to me, look like appropriate places for a grapefruit rind: a “regular” garbage (usually my first and only option), a compost bucket and a handful of random bins. Going with my gut, I drop the rind into the compost bucket. “I know it’s organic, but we don’t put grapefruit into the compost bucket,” one of the housemates tells me almost immediately. “They take too long to break down…. You’ll figure the system out soon enough.”

SUPPER CLUB Stone Soup members chow down during a Tuesday-night potluck dinner; a bulletin board ensures residents get the message (below, left); and the bike room is packed with everyone’s two-wheelers (bottom, right).

Most nights, the housemates sit down for a communal vegetarian meal, which is covered by their rent. The $450 per month payment includes utilities and access to the fridge and community cupboards that are stocked weekly with mostly organic foods, such as pastas, yogurt, and vegetables from Stanley’s, Trader Joe’s and Angelic Organics, a community-supported farm near Rockford. In exchange, all Soupers log four hours of housework per week—everything from buying groceries to tidying up the music and art rooms to cleaning the bathrooms.

Tonight it’s Dylan Sullivan’s job to cook. The soon-to-be student of architecture at Stanford University is making falafel pita with cucumber from the vegetable garden in the front yard. As hippy-dippy as it sounds, the dinner bell’s ring hits me like a Zen koan. Suddenly, Stone Soup’s cooperative green systems coalesce in my mind: The house’s consumption of organic foods begat composting, which begat a fertile garden, which begat these cucumbers, which begat this communal dinner.

Once I shake myself from that thought, I realize the meal had already started and the dinner table was elbow-to-elbow full. I drag an empty chair over and ask no one in particular, “Is there room?”

Replies one Souper: “There’s always room at this table.”

Bring a dish to the Stone Soup potluck (4637 N Ashland Ave, 773-506-2463) Tuesdays at 8pm to get a little taste of cooperative living, or visit stonesoupcoop.org to find out how to become a member.