GRAND Magazine - March/April 2018 - 31

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Even if this lifestyle isn't for your
family, it is a glimpse into the
future for many of us.

31 GRAND

MARCH APRIL 2018

Culturally not a lot had changed since then - young people
left home earlier, older people were aging in their own homes
- until the financial crisis and recession of 2008. Then, for the
first time in decades, the numbers of families living multigenerationally began to rise. And it continues to! Each generation is
adapting to life stage changes, like launching careers later for
young people, taking care of older family members for people
at middle age, and the desire to age in one's own home for
elders.
Lisa M. Cini wrote the book Hive: The Simple Guide to
Multigenerational Living - How Our Family Makes It Work, in
2017 to describe her family's journey to creating their own "hive."
So much more than a howto, Cini takes us on the journey of conceiving, planning,
building, and "doing life" as a
four-generation family. She is an
award-winning designer, with
more than 25 years of experience designing for senior living.
Still, she honestly admits she had
much to learn in this process of
designing their home, especially
as her grandmother developed
dementia early in the process.
The Simple Guide is packed
full of practical tips for making
this lifestyle work - from designing spaces to figuring out how
to control the home's thermostat to keep everyone happy.
It is also filled with plenty of
laugh-out-loud moments, like
her city-bred husband's decision to become a bee-keeper (a
successful experiment) and then

bringing home baby chicks to live in the guest suite.
Even vacations are family affairs, as the Cini's traveled to Japan
together when grandmother was 86. One of the trip's highlights
- the bidet seats on all of the toilets! When the multigenerational
experiment was designed, Cini decided to put these toilet seats in
all of the bathrooms. While the reasons were practical - allowing
her grandmother the dignity of taking care of her toileting and
relieving her mom of that responsibility - the chapter is filled with
anecdotes.
"I remember with absolute clarity (and delight) the first time my
father, a combination of Robert De Niro and Archie Bunker, used
his bidet seat. Since he did not exactly read the manual from cover
to cover, he went in and a moment later
came out screaming he had a 'G.D. tornado up his A.'. . .I can honestly say, I am
not sure why the setting 'Vortex' should
ever be on one of these bidet toilet
seats, but my father was the lucky one to
try it out."
Even if this lifestyle isn't for your
family, it is a glimpse into the future for
many of us.
The humanity and intelligence in the
pages of this guide provide beautiful,
profound lessons of how to live fully at
every age. My favorite - "Overuse I love
you."

About Lisa M. Cini - Lisa is an awardwinning, internationally recognized
designer with twenty-five years of
experience developing interiors for senior
living communities. Her previous work, The
Future is Here: Senior Living Reimagined,
is about technology that will change senior
living. Her firm, Mosaic Design Studio, is
the leading provider of design services for
senior living and healthcare.

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GRAND Magazine - March/April 2018

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