How to live with other people

And what to do with their napkins

The more I do it, the more I am starting to feel it’s utterly impossible to live with other people.

But, we’re compelled to! By what—biology, circumstance, Rom-Coms—who really knows. We keep plugging away at it, trying to make community out of erratic, singular units (ourselves).

Sometimes we go with our gut on How Things Ought To Be and other times, we invent systems to help us muddle through these improbable groupings. This is a brief suggestion for that second category: Napkin rings.

When I was little, my best friend's kitchen table always had a basket of mismatched napkins at the center. You’d remember which pattern was yours—use it for a dab here and there during dinner—and then, not really, actually dirty, toss it back into the basket for next time. On the spectrum of demonstrating that a thing is yours, one end might be Post-It Note with your name on it, while the other end might be the little trinket that goes around a wine glass. This napkin system is a little more like the latter (“Was I the red stiletto or the Chardon-yay??”), in that remembering which napkin pattern is yours is sometimes hard—at least we in this particular assembly of singletons have found it difficult.

So, we made the little rings pictured here to shove our not-exactly-dirty-yet napkins back in there at the end of each meal—thereby cutting waste and also cutting endless, endless washing and folding of squares. We used this sort of excessively millennial kit, but you can certainly use regular air dry clay and acrylic paint. Polymer clay, like Fimo or Sculpey, is also a nice option, so is having a friend with a kiln! Or if you don’t want to make this a project (why?)—there are plenty of fun ones on the Internet to buy, as it turns out.

Our community is a family of four, but I think these ‘rings could be helpful in any shared living scenario: families, room mates, dorm-humans, group homes, whathaveyou—you know how you live!

Do you have any special advice or ideas about how to make living together easier? Hit reply or leave a comment. I’d love to know.

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Listings

I just finished reading The Woodburner’s Companion: Practical Ways of Heating With Firewood. If you’d love to bore your family/housemates/neighbors with a new deep and passionate knowledge of “clean burns” and the three stages of wood burning—this is the book for you. (LINK; available locally at Shelter Institute)

Houseboats for sale! One in Victoria, BC for someone with deep pockets; another in Alameda, CA for someone with relatively shallower ones; and finally one in Portland, OR that’s a downright steal! (LINK; LINK; LINK)

An A-Frame camp trailer, available here in Maine. (LINK)

Cal Poly’s “architecture graveyard,” where senior thesis projects are rendered at full scale… and then left there. (LINK) via Kalon Studios’ ‘sletter

Would you like to make an announcement in the Listings section of Treehouse? Hit reply and we’ll discuss rates (it will be free, but subject to editorial review 🙃).

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Print/Paid Updates

Things are positively humming here at Treehouse HQ, as I’ve (just about) confirmed the lineup for the first print issue. I’ll share some details soon, but suffice to say I—she who already knows all the details—am personally very excited about what’s in store. Hoping to put up a little preview shortly, keep your eyes out for that.