Co-opted

Moving out of my apartment and into the Stone Soup Ashland House co-op in Uptown for three days allowed me to meet a bargeload of interesting folks. As I mention in my story about the experience, “Let’s Stay Together,” many of the 18 residents of the house are attracted to co-op living because it requires them to “green up” their lives. But Stone Soup’s systems of recycling, composting, energy conservation and purchasing locally-sourced food aren’t the only reasons people choose to live in intentional community.

Jenni Lisenby, for instance, was just sick and tired of living with strangers. Lisenby, 25, joined Stone Soup in May after previously dwelling in an unhappy home with three frosty roommates who didn’t speak to each other. “One of my roommates was always in his room with the door closed,” Lisenby told me. “It was like living with strangers, and it didn’t feel like home. She told me things finally started looking up when she was accepted into the ranks of Stone Soup. “[Moving in] is kind of like getting an instant family,” Lisenby says. “There’s always someone around you can talk to. And on your birthday you know someone’s going to be there to bake you a cake.”

 As a single mother – of a blond four-year-old son named Avery – and hospice worker in the suburbs, she tells me living in a household with a built-in support network has been life changing. “If I lived alone, I’d have to pick Avery up from daycare, rush home from work and immediately start cooking dinner. But with the way the chores work around here, when Avery and I get home, someone else is cooking, so we have time to read books or play games.”

Proudly displaying the multi-colored macaroni necklace he and some of the other house members made together, Avery looks unmistakably happy. The product of a single-parent household myself, I can’t help but think about how wonderful it would’ve been to have 17 older brothers and sisters to play with and look up to when I was his age.

A social support network is only the start of the benefits of living at Stone Soup. During my residence, I spent a lot of late-night hours (everyone’s usually in bed by 10pm) downstairs in the music room, which is like a music shop where you are encouraged to plunk and pluck anything you want: multiple electric and acoustic guitars, a stand-up bass, numerous percussion instruments, a piano, an electric organ, or a Korg Triton keyboard. Needless to say, if you have any interest in playing music, it’s easy to spend three hours there without realizing it. Stone Soup doesn’t neglect the visual arts, either. I helped Lisenby clean out the third-floor art room on my first night, and discovered it has all the raw materials an aspiring Basquiat could need: oil paints, unstretched canvas, easels and myriad brushes.

Though the former convent’s chapel may still look like the place where nuns used to kneel and pray, the room is now where Stone Soup members pile into pews with blankets and organic popcorn to watch movies—the co-op's version of a Blockbuster night. “We watched Labyrinth in the chapel on my birthday,” Lisenby says. “But that was after we all ate cake and played softball in the park. It was probably the best birthday I’ve ever had.” For Lisenby and her roommates, movie nights are just another reason they'd never go back to apartment living.