Overview

A coliving community is its own micro-organization with various components that make up the whole. The foundation of any community is often the most intangible part – the house purpose, vision, culture, and identity. On that foundation sits the core processes and structures of the community, including the house agreements, governance processes, meeting structure and communications tools. Finally, at the top sits the most tangible and functional components of the home – the core house systems – which include the chore / contribution system, the shared food system, and the house fund. These systems, and their associate resident roles, are vital to the basic functioning of the home.

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House Roles

Overview

Assigning dedicated roles to key functional areas of the household is essential for the healthy functioning of a coliving home. Most roles are not necessarily a lot of work, but more about having someone who clearly owns / takes responsibility for key areas of the house. Below is a list of typical house roles, including some that are required and others that are optional:

OpenDoor Roles

OpenDoor Community Coordinator:
This resident is the primary point person for OpenDoor in each community. They take a leadership role in new member selection, new resident onboarding, and act as a liaison between OpenDoor and the community. This is the only compensated role in the house, receiving a small monthly stipend off their rent and is the only role chosen directly by OpenDoor. The rest of the roles are volunteer-based within the community and chosen by the residents themselves.

Required House Roles

Chore System Manager (a.k.a. Mother/Father Hen, House Marm, House Taskmaster):
This role is all about supporting the house chore / contributions systems, which includes making sure key chores are defined, managing the chore chart and/or other chore-related systems, equitably distributing chores amongst members, and gently holding members accountable to their chores through reminders and other nudges.

Food Manager (a.k.a. Nourishment Fairy, Sustenance Supervisor):
This role is about coordinating the shared food program, which includes coordinating grocery sourcing & ordering, community dinners & cooking shifts, and budget. Often, we have seen this role split between two people, and is often combined with the House Fund Manager role, though doesn’t have to be. 

House Fund Manager (a.k.a Bean Counter, Treasurer, Money Man/Woman):
This role is about managing the house fund and shared house finances. This is primarily focused around food and supplies purchasing, but may also include other collective purchases the house wishes to make. The role itself includes setting up a Chime Card for the house account, coordinating with OpenDoor on monthly transfers, managing the overall budget, and managing purchases and reimbursements with residents.

Optional House Roles

Events Planner (a.k.a. Party Planner, The Host):
Most communities host regular events beyond just the community dinners. This can include house parties, house concerts, salon dinners, and more. There is usually at least one person who is passionate about coordinating these types of activities, and having a dedicated person to deal with booking and scheduling can help make events happen on a regular basis. See our Events Guide for additional information on hosting events. 

Handy (Wo)man (a.k.a. MacGyver, Mr/Mrs Fixit):
We have found that there is usually at least one person in each community that has a particular knack for being handy. While major repairs and maintenance issues are handled by OpenDoor, we’ve found it useful to have a dedicated resident for the physical needs of the house such as minor fixes and improvements. 

Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Roles – The sky’s the limit in terms of creating dedicated roles within your community. We invite you to create additional roles if you think it will serve. For inspiration, here are some ideas for other roles we’ve seen: Garden / Yard Keeper, Wellness Maven, Decorator / Chief of Coziness, and Sustainability Captain.

Choosing House Roles

Other than the OpenDoor Community Coordinator, the community is responsible for selecting which residents will take on which house roles. In addition, the community can choose to create additional house roles beyond the required ones. Roles are a great opportunity for different members of the house to step into leadership positions and contribute to the house in a specific way. Roles can fit within the overall governance process, as often the house role becomes one-in-the-same as the task force dedicated to that area. Below are some recommendations and tips for how to go about selecting house roles: 

• Discuss first which house roles you’d like to create, beyond the required ones.
• Discuss the exact scope of those roles (i.e. what’s expected of that person). Often, it’s less about them doing all the work, and more about them taking a leadership position and being a point-person for a specific area
• Typically, certain people have a particular passion for specific areas of the house. To the extent possible, match people’s passion with the role (e.g. if someone is a foodie, they may have a lot of excitement to lead up the food program)
• Consider making the name something more fun or playful (e.g. House Marm). This is a home, not a company or workplace! Naming can be a powerful tool to alter the energetics of how it feels to take on a leadership role with your friends and fellow community members. 
• It’s a good practice to time-box any commitment to roles (e.g. I’m going to be the Food Manager for the next 3 months). This can often make it less scary to commit to a role, especially if you’re not sure of the exact scope and time commitment. This follows our “treating everything as a prototype” maxim. Alternatively, you can build it into your house meeting process to check in on roles every 3 or 6 months, and provide an opportunity to reallocate roles and/or adjust responsibility from time-to-time.

The Chore System

Overview

In a shared household, a well-designed chore system is vital for coordinating important household tasks amongst the many members. Alternatively called the Contribution System (because let’s be honest, nobody likes chores), a good system accomplishes the following: 

• Maintains a clean, tidy, and well-functioning home
• Aligns expectations around cleanliness
• Saves time through the economies of scale of the community
• Makes sure chores are equitably distributed
• Avoids potential points for friction or conflict between members

What is a Chore in a Coliving Home?

Certain chores are a personal responsibility, many of which should be covered in your house agreements. These include items like removing your personal items from the common areas, cleaning up after yourself in the kitchen, washing and drying your dishes, cleaning your own room, and so forth. But there is a group of collective responsibility that must be allocated amongst residents. This typically includes deep cleaning of common areas (sweeping, mopping, wiping counters, etc), vacuuming of carpets, cleaning of bathrooms, taking trash/recycling/compost out to the bins, sorting mail, washing dishes & hand towels, and more (note: any chores related to the Food Program are covered in the next section of this guide). While in some OpenDoor properties, we do hire professional cleaners to periodically clean the common areas, this is never a replacement for a self-managed resident chore system, as residents at all times need to be responsible for the cleanliness and basic functioning of their space.

Setting up Your Chore System

Below are instructions, suggestions and resources for setting up your Chore System. We hope this guide will provide a clear starting point, but ultimately you will need to create a system that works for your community. Make these your own and iterate it over time as your learn what works and what doesn’t. And please share with us what you create – we love sharing great solutions with the other OpenDoor communities!

Defining the Chores

• Define what all of the chores are, breaking them into somewhat equally-sized chunks (see our sample Chore Charts below as a good starting point).
• Define the exact scope of each chore. “Clean” does not mean the same thing to different people, so it helps to be specific – e.g. “clean kitchen” vs “sweep and mop floor, wipe counter tops, wipe down stove, and scrub sink”
• Define the frequency for each chore – e.g. “clean kitchen once per week,” “wash bathroom every other week”

Allocating the Chores

• Fixed Chores – our recommended approach, this way of allocating chores means assigning specific chores to people. This reduces brain damage with managing chores, as each member does the same chore. We recommend divvying up chores based on people’s schedules and personal preference. We also recommend a periodic process for checking-in on the workload and reallocating chores as necessary (e.g. quarterly, biannually, and/or when rooms turnover).
• Rotating Chores – this approach means rotating chores every week or month. It has the benefit of sharing the workload more equitably over time, but typically adds a lot of complexity to the coordination efforts. This system is commonly associated with a “Chore Wheel.”

Creating Systems for Accountability

• Assigning a “Mother Hen” Role – as described in the House Roles section, the Mother Hen is a required resident role for managing the chore system and making sure fellow housemates are doing their chore. We recommend taking a respectful, loving, and playful approach to reminding people when they forget to do their chores. 
• Creating a Chore Chart – It’s vital to have a system to capture chores and chore assignments. This can be physical, digital, or both. Below are some templates and examples to adapt to your home. We recommend printing out a physical copy so that these are publicly visible somewhere. 
  • Template: Euclid Manor Chore Chart
  • Template: Farmhouse Chores Description and Weekly Chores Checklist 
  • For inspiration, here is a Pinterest Board with other ideas for how to design chore charts. If you go the chore wheel route, here is an example from Pinterest.
• Collective Accountability Agreements – it is not the Mother Hen’s job alone to hold housemates to account. We find it useful to have clear agreements around how to communicate with your fellow housemate if they aren’t performing their chores:
  • Communicate directly with the person and not in a public forum to avoid shaming, and be respectful in your reminder for them to do their chore.
  • Use the #breakdowns Slack channel and use this to share breakdowns if you do not know who the person is (e.g. finding dishes left in the sink). 
  • Have a fun “safe word” that is a gentle reminder to people. Example: “Hey Jeff, just wanted to let you know cacao with regards to your bathroom cleaning chore.” Saying it with a wink and/or smile always helps =)
  • Defining Carrots or Sticks – some communities choose to add some incentives and/or penalties for chores to up the collective accountability.
    • Carrot Examples – contributor-of-the-month award; if everyone does all of their chores this month, the house fund will buy everyone a pizza dinner. 
    • Stick Examples – if you fail to do your chore, you have to do someone else’s chore the following week in addition to your own; you have to video record yourself doing 20 push-ups and sharing it with the house via Slack; you have to put $5 into house fund.