What are some of the more unique housing arrangements you have lived in?

I like my current arrangement, but I guess it’s not that unique. I technically have an apartment I don’t go to very often, so I stay at my partner’s place. He lives with 3 other guys, including his oldest childhood friend, in a big house on the beach. We have a huge garden and a lemon tree in the backyard. I do more dishes than I want to but I never have to take out the trash. We have a lot of fun.

I’ve only ever lived with my parents (and siblings) and with my husband.
I have always lived in an environment where people who need help are permitted to live with us. I’ve had countless friends stay with us for long periods of time when I lived with my parents, and my younger sisters have done the same. So, I guess that is odd. We take people in all the time. My husband and I have let two different people live with us for about a year, each, when they needed a place to stay and get on their feet. That’s about as unusual as it gets, though, for us.

The oddest housing arrangement I ever heard of is my ex-gf’s.
She left her second husband, and moved in with her boyfriend. Her son and daughter stayed with her second husband, even though he was not their dad, and they had no real attachment to him.

I once lived for a year with about 8 or 10 animators in a three story townhouse animation studio who did nothing but draw, drink coffee, draw, smoke cigarettes, draw, drink beer, play cards, draw and oh yeah, eat and then draw.

They were animators but also fine arts pros who sculpts, oil paints or did mixed media. They were a fun crazy bunch of artists!

I lived on a ship. It’s really hard to sleep with the constant whirring of machines, but then you get used to it and actually like it. The same with the rocking of the ship in bad weather; it literally rocks you to sleep. I never did like the small bunk beds, though.

In the morning, you get up, take a shower, work and eat in the same vicinity as where you sleep.

One night my roommate and I discovered our dorm furniture was all stackable. Instead of closets we all had these giant, sturdy wardrobe… things, like movable closets. We put one of the beds on top of a “hill” made out of furniture and put the other bed in a cave underneath. I lived on top of the hill and she lived into the cave, which you could also turn into a fort by hanging a blanket off the upper bed.

I once lived in the master bedroom of a six-bedroom mansion built in the 30s. It was situated on a few acres of forested land and a stone’s throw (or two) from the basketball arena at UNC Chapel Hill. (It was called the Russian House when it housed Russian language students.) For most of that time, I lived with a motley crew of 6 or 7 guys, although a couple of girls moved in shortly before I moved out. The house was built by the head sanitation engineer and featured virgin pine paneling and just the craziest, sturdiest build quality you could imagine. We had a giant back yard with an equally giant moss patch that apparently germinated after a tarp was left over the lawn for a number of days. There was a nice little fish pond on the side and a beautiful Japanese maple out front. Every room had or shared a bathroom which was also kind of cool. My room featured a fireplace, built-in bookshelves (which hid a built-in secret compartment) a couple of regular closets and a lockable gun closet.

Today, I think it is a visitor center or something and the forest was cut down to make room for married student housing.

I also lived for a time in another fairly giant house with a family of four who rented to me and another guy. The house was originally built by an architect for he and his wife and was very much a 70s modernist style and had a bazillion built-in drawers everywhere. It was situated on a steep hillside and the parents had put up a swing that you could ride out over a ravine that lay maybe 50–80 feet below (i.e. scarily far down). There were also eye hooks in the vaulted living room ceiling and occasionally they’d hook up a swing and a trapeze bar for the kids.

Boarding with my bro and his wife when I first left home, my bedroom was their storage closet.