This Week in Communal Connections

Two ways I tended to my communal connections and two very cool apps that help others do the same

It’s easy to talk about connections in the abstract. The connections themselves that we’re talking about are physically intangible - I cannot physically touch the connections with my colleagues or my community. I can feel them, sure, but the connections themselves do not have a physical form. So I thought it would be fun this week to talk about some very tangible ways that these intangible connections can show up in every day life.

Free clothes from your friends!

ONE: I held a clothing swap this past weekend. A clothing swap is when you gather a group of people together and they all bring clothes they no longer need (and sometimes other items like accessories, books, or kitchen items), creating a little mini-store that everyone gets to “shop”, however no money is exchanged- it’s all free ninety-nine! I am a huge fan of clothing swaps and have been attending and hosting them for close to 15 years. There are so many benefits: Clothing swaps are excellent ways to help protect the environment - not only are you saving clothes from ending up in a landfill (regardless of your donation practices, it is highly likely some of these discarded items will end up in the trash, or worse, in a low-income country where it will likely disrupt a local economy or end up in one of their landfills), but you are also contributing to the reduction of CO2 emissions by not buying something new.

Clothing swaps are lovely ways to disconnect a few of your connective threads to capitalism and reconnect them with your community. By sharing clothes and other items with each other, you’re strengthening these threads of interdependency that help us all show up for each other a little more. I am engaging in communal aid by giving my community things I no longer need (dresses I no longer wear) and receiving from my community other things that I do need (more flannels, obviously). These acts of providing for each other instead of relying on crumbling infrastructures or late stage capitalism help strengthen our connections with each other. Today it’s trading sweaters and pants, tomorrow it’s helping out in someone’s garden, and next week it’s setting up a weekly supper club with some of your friends to share food and community.

TWO: My next act of communal connection building was attending a preparedness workshop on water and sanitation hosted by MakeWithPDX. This extremely cool organization offers workshops and classes with the purpose of building community resilience through individual skill building. In this workshop, we all spoke about wanting to be better prepared for the unexpected (whether that be a natural disaster, a temporary disruption in services, or a longer term removal of relied-on public works), but not just for ourselves and our immediate household, rather for our entire community. If I know how to best store emergency water, not only can I share that information with my community and help protect them, but should an urgent need for safe water come up unexpectedly, I can help meet that need for others in my community. Maybe I store more water than I know I need for my household in case friends or neighbors need it. By showing up for my community in this way, I am strengthening my web of connections with them. Additionally, this workshop was very community-based in that we didn’t just all sit and listen to an expert lecture us about this topic; we all shared our experiences and knowledge with each other (with the help of one extra knowledgeable facilitator!), strengthening our connections with each other by sharing our lived experiences.

APPS: Lastly, a dear friend sent me this amazing interview with Phil Levin, the creator of the Live Near Friends app. Many of you know that I am low-key obsessed with the idea of communal living and will talk about it with anyone willing to listen (certainly there will be more posts about this in the future!). The idea of sharing responsibilities and resources with more than just my immediate household is very aligned with my larger values of communal connection and support. Phil has been living these values for quite some time and recognized a real gap in the resources needed in order to make communal living dreams a reality. Enter Live Near Friends, which helps connect people or groups with actual properties that are suited for communal living. Does this solve the housing affordability crisis we are currently facing in the US? No. But I love that someone is trying to help facilitate communal living in a very tangible way. Another great app along these same lines is the Nuclear Fusion app, which serves as a community board or almost like a dating app that matches people with similar communal living interests/needs with each other. Whether this is someone looking for a little bit of childcare support in exchange for some of their garden space to groups looking to build a communal living space in rural Montana and are looking for land and/or housing, this app will connect you. The possibilities for connection are endless and I love that these apps exist to help people create the communities that work best for them, creating the connections they need with a little help from technology.

How did you tend to your community connections this week?