[egypturnash]

You want rules, trust me you want rules.

I have lived in something really close to this situation – seven furries, one four-bedroom house in Seattle’s suburbs, one person with a high-paying IT job – and it fell apart. And a big part of why this fell apart is because we never even talked about things like “maybe we should set up a chore rota”.

This also sounds a lot like “fraternities” and “sororities”, which certainly have rules. Or maybe “a commune” depending on how far outside of the city is, and those certainly have rules too. If you want to actually try to make this happen I would recommend looking at rules for those sorts of organizations, and asking yourself “what horrible mess happened that lead to this rule being enacted”, because I can guarantee that somewhere in the history of the organization, there was something that happened for every single rule that threatened the continuing survival of the organization.

[slv77]

There is a lot of help and experience in setting up intentional communities. A good place to start is https://www.ic.org/.

[Racing0461]

What if the 6 others also had high paying it jobs. Outsource all non essential tasks ala taskrabbit? Money sounds like the issue here.

[civilitty]

I think money is largely the issue. I lived in several different 5-7 bedroom communal houses in SF with a bunch of founders/engineers and if everyone (or even half the people) have high paying jobs then it's a very different experience. The group can easily absorb months of another resident's rent if they have volatile income which greatly reduces the pressure on relationships.

It only costs a few hundred bucks a week to have cleaners come over and take care of the house so most chores are a none issue. Dishes and trash were the only rotating chores IIRC since those couldn't be put off between weekly cleanings. There was a fridge for personal food and a separate communal fridge with a group food budget so all staples were always taken care of. Internet, insurance, water, power, were all split equally. There were no problems concerning the money even though some people were messier, some ate at home more, some worked from home entirely, etc. etc.

That's a far flung situation from the one described in TFA though. We lived together to build a community as adults, not for survival. That changes the dynamics.

[opportune]

Not to be a dick but there is a pretty apparent correlation between being able to hold down high paying jobs and interpersonal/emotional skills as well. Which is not to say that all people with low paying jobs are unreasonable assholes, nor that all high income people are saints.

But in my experience highly difficult people who complicate living situations tend to struggle to keep jobs for the same reasons that make them bad roommates.

[ajkjk]

Well it depends on preferences. I find the idea of paying someone to do basic tasks degrading, even though I could in principle afford it. So you would need "7 people who have similar opinions about the ethics of doing housework".

Related to the reason why I always avoid roommate ads if they advertise paying for housecleaning once a month, because I can only really imagine living with, um, adults.

(this gripe does not apply to people who are working around childcare)