We often hear couples speak about their partner as their “best friend.” There may be a lesson here for the multigenerational household. What if everyone was able to treat everyone else as a friend instead of, or better yet in addition to, them being a relative. Is you grandfather-in-law your friend? Is your niece your..Read the rest…

According to staff reports on this Monday morning there are two new multigenerational pieces of entertainment that have passed the collective Monday morning water cooler test.
On the motion picture front You Again got very good reviews from our staff. The film is carried by veteran actresses Jamie Lee Curtis and Sigourney Weaver. The cast involves..Read the rest…

One of our staff came back to the office from vacation that included a small family reunion. It was the first time in nearly a decade that all four brothers and sisters were in the same place at the same time. She reported one interesting evening when they were trying to tell the story of..Read the rest…

Co-housing is a way to move beyond the limits of the single dwelling model of multigenerational living. Periodically we like to hi-lite some of the successful co-housing ventures we have encountered. Today we take a look at the Sunward Co-Housing project outside of Ann Arbor, Michigan.

“There aren’t enough television shows about real families.”
We agree, but we also acknowledge that shows about “real” anything can be really boring. Reality shows are edited and the participants are manipulated by directors, editors and yes, even writers. But we wondered just how many multigenerational families are portrayed realistically or otherwise on television. Here is..Read the rest…

We were stumped when we saw the ad for a “multigenerational sale.” What could that possibly mean? Sure yard sales and estate sales often have a lot of old stuff being offered, did the multi-gen tag just mean that? Fortunately we had a staffer living within driving distance of the advertised address so we asked..Read the rest…

We have mentioned several times in the past that before you make a decision about a multigenerational house, everyone involved in the new living arrangement should have a say in what are the priorities of the new house. But does everyone involved in such a life-changing decision know what are the important questions to ask?
Here..Read the rest…

Privacy tends to be an issue in the multigenerational household, everyone needs some quiet time. In years past, many homebuilders experimented with the two master suite house floorplan but found few interested buyers. Now, however, there is a resurgence of interest in just this type of home construction.
Generally speaking the two master suites are at..Read the rest…

I’m a grandfather and I love books. So naturally I want my grandkids to love them too. So as soon as they were old enough to read or be read to, my gifts to them were always books.
Now that went OK with my first grandson, we lived close and I often would babysit and I..Read the rest…

Do you remember Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance? Clearly one of the great intergenerational novels. Now we have Bill Warrington’s Last Chance. The setting and story are not remarkable but author James Kings as managed to play the cast of generational characters in ways that are both familiar and yet both plausible and..Read the rest…