Five's Company
In a Mt. Pleasant Group House, Companionship And Chores Are All Part of the Bargain

By Monica Hesse
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 20, 2007

The laundry closet in the group house on Park Road has five detergents, in a row: Arm & Hammer, Ivory, 365, Trader Joe's Next to Godliness, Seventh Generation, and an economy-size bottle of Giant's generic brand.

The cruelty-free 365 belongs to Jorge, who is a vegetarian. The Giant brand is Teresa's, who wants the thermostat at optimum cost-saving temperatures. Joe buys the Arm & Hammer.

At one point, after a rash of detergent thefts-by-the-cupful, the residents safeguarded their individual laundry detergents in their rooms. But now the detergents are back on the rack above the washing machine, alongside the dryer sheets and the balled-up towels. Peace, reinstated. Resolution didn't even require a family meeting, says Jorge.

Not that the roommates are family. As a group they've known each other less than a year. The first to move in was Teresa Svart, 25, then Jorge Silva-Bañuelos, 26, and then in quick succession Susie Armitage, 25, Joe Cardosi, 23, and 23-year-old Elizabeth Ody, who arrived in D.C. from California last August.

But in a work-obsessed city, group houses are the pit stops on the way to more stable relationships, places to find companionship, moral support and mismatched furniture.

The decor in this one, in the 1700 block of Park Road NW, is typical: A semi-dilapidated sofa sits in a living room carpeted with gray remnants. Dining room walls are decorated with posters of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and "The Godfather." A well-stocked kitchen contains a shelf for each housemate, plus date-unspecified items including petrified brown sugar that has been in the house since before Teresa.

There aren't enough beer stains for this to be a frat house. The kitchen counters look recently wiped. Joe weed-whacked the lawn this morning. But there are enough awkwardly youthful touches -- the absence of hand towels -- to make the space feel less than grown-up.

Still, Teresa says that she's had several living situations since moving away from her family in Oregon, but "this is the only place that feels like home."

Yearning to Belong

How do you make a home in D.C.?

Where half of the people you meet are recovering valedictorians whose plans to save the world don't allow time for coffee? Where the other half have lived in D.C. for so long that they are suspicious of you, the newbie, who does not get the jokes about Marion Barry, about the Soviet Safeway, about the delays on the Green Line? How do you join that community?

First, you find a house.

It's not hard to find a house here. Unlike skyscrapered Manhattan, there are a lot of them. Rambling five-bedroom Federals, Victorians and Richardsonian Romanesques line the streets of Woodley and Cleveland Parks, Eastern Market and Capitol Hill. They have yards. They have decks. They have back patios with rusty grills. The very houseness of the District is comforting, because it shows that community is possible, that there are families who live here.

You find your house on Craigslist, under a posting that says, "$595 -- Large bedroom in house with four fun professionals (Mt. Pleasant)." You go to an open house, with 30 or 40 other house-seekers, and you try to make an impression without seeming too desperate. The obviously desperate make wild, unkeepable promises, like "I love cleaning bathrooms and making lasagna for my roommates." So you try not to do that.

And then, despite the fact that you were, in fact, a little desperate, the roommates pick you. And now you live in a group house.

Constant Divvying

This is what it's like to live at Park Road:

8:51 p.m.: TV channel begins on the Republican presidential debate, at the request of a houseguest.

8:53: Teresa requests a score check for the D.C. United soccer match. They're losing.

8:54: Back to CNN.

8:57: Elizabeth asks if anyone wants a beer. The choices are fancy or cheap. Sean, the houseguest, requests a fancy beer.

8:59: Elizabeth returns and reminds everyone to pay Susie, because the fancy beers are technically hers.

9:00: Elizabeth announces that "Grey's Anatomy" is beginning.

9:02: Score check.

9:02.30: CNN.

9:05: "Grey's Anatomy."

9:08: "McSteamy looks like George Michael," one of the women says.

9:10: Susie gets home, corroborates that McSteamy looks like George Michael.

9:12: Teresa announces that her sister will be appearing on "The Colbert Report." TV volume is muted to discuss this development.

Living in a group house is like living in a TV dinner. You try to keep your life contained to your room, to your compartment of the microwaveable tray. But spillover is unavoidable. Other people's spillover is also unavoidable. "Grey's Anatomy" comes with a dollop of soccer. Your Netflix night comes with a dash of someone else's house party. It's separate togetherness -- knowing the most intimate details of someone else's life.

Like sex.

Park Road had a recent subletter

who had a lot of it, very loudly. "It was

like THUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMP," says Elizabeth.

"What can you do?" says Teresa. "The walls are thin."

So you deal with thin walls, and you negotiate personal space creatively. You take a sick day when you're not sick, to see what it feels like to make toast in your underwear. You keep your Oreos in your room, so you don't feel guilty about not offering any to your roommates.

You develop a shower schedule: bathroom time begins at 6:50 and goes in 20-minute increments until 8:10, because Joe takes showers in the evenings. You develop a chore chart.

The chore chart at Park Road is particularly elaborate. In May, for instance, Teresa had yard duty. The next month she moved to trash patrol, followed by "Living/Dining D" (differentiated from A, B, and C because it includes dusting).

There is something touching about the chore chart's detail. It is as though the house might be tottering on the brink of catastrophe, saved only by a spreadsheet and a row of sturdy X marks.

Life's Arithmetic

Homemaking-by-the-numbers at Park Road:

550-600: Approximate rent, in dollars, paid per person, depending on the size of the room.

68: Temperature to which the thermostat is set in the winter, negotiated after a few minor battles.

3: Number of bicycles parked in the foyer.

8: Number of e-mails required to arrange for all housemates to be at home at the same time.

2: Pies baked in one week -- a blueberry by Teresa and a Key lime by Elizabeth.

0: Residents who are only children.

5: Number of times Joe is teased, in one evening, for being a Republican.

365, Mr.: What Jorge's housemates refer to him as because of his love for Whole Foods.

3: Number of times Elizabeth is questioned, in one evening, about her new, sort-of boyfriend.

2: Number of times the "If it's on my shelf in the fridge, I get to eat it" rule is invoked, in one evening.

14: Approximate number of days the house went without dishwashing soap due to a systemic breakdown: Jorge, scheduled for shopping duty, was house-sitting for a friend and unaware of the shortage.

1: Spats that have occurred via e-mail over someone making a mess in a recently cleaned bathroom.

1: Times Joe has gotten mad at Elizabeth and Susie for making too much noise late at night.

1: Showers shared by five people.

House Roles

Park Road is the type of street where couples sit on the stoops of their three-story brick houses. Living in this neighborhood has allowed Joe, Teresa, Jorge, Elizabeth and Susie to inhabit this world in a way that living in an apartment would not. "Living in this house," says Joe, "makes us belong to the neighborhood."

Living in this house has also made them belong to each other. Jorge, his housemates have decided, is the Dad of Park Road. He does the chore chart and manages the family's finances. Teresa, who worries about keeping doors locked and who talked the group out of buying a puppy, is "Mom," and Elizabeth, who wanted the dog to begin with and who pelted a visitor with a Super Soaker the first time she visited, might be the resident 14-year-old. Joe, decides Elizabeth, is "the grandfather who never raises his voice, so you want to work really hard to please him, because if he did get angry, that would be awful." Adds Teresa, "He's like Gandhi."

This is the type of conversation that happens at Park Road, on a rare night when all five housemates manage to get together. They also might talk about Susie's recent trip to Japan, Teresa's new promotion, Jorge's house-sitting gig, and the art of grilling out:

"There are a lot of crusties on the grill!"

"Uh, that's a bad thing."

"Really? It's not, like, flavor?"

"No, it's like, dirt."

" Hey, won't these skewer things burn up on the grill?"

" Maybe soak them in water?"

"Good call."

When do people learn to grill, after all? In college, they're still eating cafeteria food. So grilling is learned in group houses, as is the importance of regularly cleaning out a refrigerator.

As is how to become the grown-ups in a family.

The residents of Park Road wouldn't put it this way, though. They moved into the house because they sort of thought it would be nice to have someone to come home to. Because, says Susie, it's nice to walk in the foyer and see all those bicycles. They're not even friends, really. They hang out from time to time, but they have their own social spheres, seeing one another only at the beginning or end of the day.

If you ask them what benefits they get from living in a group house, this is what they'll tell you:

If one of them came home and the house had flooded, they could call Joe, and he would know what to do.

Jorge is a good listener, and he always gets the utility bills in on time.

Teresa gives the group a social conscience, sending e-mails to the other four that prompt long and hilarious debates, which devolve into Jorge criticizing Joe's punctuation.

Elizabeth deals with the landlord, when the landlord needs to be dealt with.

"I guess that this house is sort of like a microcosm of what it's like to live and work with other people," says Susie. "You're all invested in this space. You're learning about human interaction and human nature. Is that cheesy?"

A pause. The other housemates consider Susie's statement.

Joe breaks the silence:

"I just like the cheap rent."

But Joe decided the cheap rent was not enough to keep him on Park Road. He just left the group house for a two-bedroom apartment in Alexandria, and the next stage of life.