those too-genteel boarding-house
women unsparingly fictionalized by
James Joyce, William Trevor and Arthur
Conan Doyle—believe me, I did.
“How’s our Mrs. Hudson?” became a
standard greeting.
It turns out, however, that I am now
on trend: I am progressive and modern
instead of marginalized and batty.
Toronto HomeShare, launched in 2018,
is a city-funded project that takes on
intergenerational home-sharing. It’s a
two-birds, one-stone solution, match-
ing seniors with too much space to
students with too little money.To our south, Nesterly, a startup in
Boston, is betting intergenerational
home-sharing can be a profitable busi-
ness. “Housemates can exchange help
around the house for lower rent.”
I have had three roomers so far, and
chores around the house are not part
of the equation. Like me, they are far
too busy. Rebecca, comedian and
acquaintance in town for a few months
from L.A. where she worked, was my
first toe-dab into the boarding-house
lifestyle. Rebecca would enter my largewooden front door with a lusty “Hel-
oo-oo!” and bang out a couple of tunes
on the piano in the pauses between
her brilliantly paced stories about
shopping for tampons. You knew when
Rebecca was home, in other words.
Yulina, Boarder #2, was so quiet I
could rarely tell whether she was at
home in her room or at school. She
responded to an ad I posted at U of T
housing and checked all of Laura’s
boxes. She was pursuing an under-
graduate degree and has previously
worked in London and Frankfurt.
Originally from South Korea, she has
the not-quite-present look of someone
getting ready to make her next move—
Yulina arrived and departed with the
same compact suitcase. After nine
months, she was slightly chattier, and
to her this was a transformation.
“Cathrin, can you believe how shy I
was when I first came? And how differ-
ent I am now?” She wasn’t the only one
in transition. My hair no longer caught
fire if Yulina was already at the kitchen
table when I came down in the morn-
ing. We even chatted over coffee.
Sara was next. She is perhaps the
least chore-oriented of the three so far,
although not for a lack of willing spirit.
Sara arrived with quite a lot of luggage.
I was not kind about this. “You’re rent-
ing a room, not half a house,” I said,
and grudgingly agreed to let her add a
few of her favourite dishes and pots to
my tightly orchestrated kitchen. Ixnay
to her stacks of Tupperware. This is theONE OF THE PERILS OF
RUNNING A BOARDING
HOUSE: YOU FIND OUT
THE WAYS IN WHICH
YOU ARE A TOOL.reader’s digest
60 april 2020