“Seriously, they walked seven miles in one day when we were in New York City,” I insisted to my friend, who we were traveling with. She gave me a skeptical look.

Four hours later, my older kid was pulling and my younger kid was pushing a cart that had two of the other kids traveling with us in it, one of them sound asleep. My kids ran / walked the entire length of the boardwalk back to our condo, pushing the cart for most of it.

That was just one example of many conflicting expectations that arose on our recent trip to Ocean City with two other families. With six adults and six kids, there were differences in terms of what to eat, when to eat, bedtime, and screen time. Every family does things differently, but you don’t realize how differently until you live with them for several days. Fortunately, through communication and collaboration, all three families were able to make it work together. It gave us a taste of what it would be like to live more communally.

Personally, I’ve long been interested in collective living. I even considered joining a co-op house in college – although considering the poor decisions college students make around cooking and cleaning, perhaps it’s better than I didn’t. When we were first looking at houses, I looked into co-housing communities, where you have your own house or apartment, but share green space and a large community area. We couldn’t afford a house at our local co-housing community, but the idea of it has always lived in the back of my mind. It came up again when recently read How We Show Up by Mia Birdsong. The book is all about building found family and community that supports each other in large and small ways.

So naturally, these reflections arose on this trip. This trip was all of those ideas put to the practical test. While my husband and I have shared space with others since we’ve been married, this is the first time that I’ve shared living space with non-relatives since we’ve had kids. As we got closer to the date, I started dreading it, worrying about everything that might go wrong. It turned out that while my concerns were legitimate, we were able to solve all of them. The opportunity helped me learn some lessons about community-building among families.

Share responsibility

One of the biggest benefits to living with other families is the opportunity to spread out the caregiving responsibilities. When we were at the beach, a couple of adults were with some kids in the water while one or two others were at the chairs in the sand. We never had to say to the kids, “No, you can’t go in the water right now, there’s no one to watch you.” There was also the chance for the adults to switch off without one single person being responsible for multiple kids (which is really tough near water with small children). When we were at the rides on the boardwalk, if one parent didn’t want to go on a certain ride that required adult accompaniment, someone else could go with them. We also shared cooking responsibilities. When one person wouldn’t have been able to come kayaking because she would have to prep dinner, my husband stepped up to help her so that she would have less work.

Collectively use tools

Being able to share our stuff was a major advantage. We only had to rent one umbrella at the beach. If someone forgot sunscreen, it was likely someone else had it. The kids took turns riding in the aforementioned cart. Just sharing the rented condo was way cheaper than if we had all gotten our own hotel rooms.

Creatively problem solve

There were definitely some challenges. The biggest one revolved around sleeping arrangements. The initial plan was to have the four older kids share one bedroom with two twin beds. The two six-year-olds would sleep in their parents’ rooms. Even before anyone arrived, this plan fell apart. One six year old wanted to sleep with the older kids; then the other did too. That put six kids in a single, small room with two beds. My older son took a look at that idea and said, “There is no way I am sleeping there.” With some creative use of cushions and a very large walk-in closet, we made him his own private space far away from the gaggle of younger kids.

Be willing to split up

There is no rule on vacation or in life that you have to do everything together. One family generally eats a huge breakfast and skips lunch, whereas our family eats a small breakfast and must eat lunch. Although we all went to the beach together, we split off as needed to feed our families.

Honor your own needs

There are two major things I need in my day – some level of predictability and time to myself. Having a “we’ll figure it out when it happens!” attitude sets my teeth on edge. I become a walking ball of stress. Now, Ocean City is a pretty laid-back place. I don’t need a comprehensive schedule there. But just knowing what the loose plan was for the day made a huge difference. To take my time to myself, I went on an epic, boardwalk-spanning run one evening. It was one of the highlights of the trip. Similarly, I knew that being around people all the time was going to be a lot for my older son. When he was getting cranky and tired, we let him stay in the hotel while we went to the beach. (There was one of the adults with him who was working remotely.) Rather than being a punishment, it was a relief to him. He felt much better after some alone time.

Preserve certain personal comforts

As I was packing, I realized that it would make a huge difference in my comfort if I had my electric kettle and tea. I drink black tea in the morning and fruit tea at night and am pretty fussy about it. Bringing that one little luxury made a huge difference in my sense of familiarity and ability to relax.

Overall, it was a really fun experiment! While I don’t think we’ll ever live fully collectively, I think we would go on a group vacation again.

Now I’m considering how we can apply these lessons to our everyday lives. In what ways can we share caregiving responsibilities or tools? How can we problem solve to help bridge gaps between expectations and pool our resources better?

Environmental and social sustainability relies on us better being in community with one another. Living a little more communally can help us move towards that vision.