This past Saturday, my family spent our morning at the Open House for the cooperative community sharing and playspace, Swapnplay, located in the North Portland neighborhood of St. Johns. After my 10 minute tour, I felt so overwhelmed with relief and excitement that I had tears in my eyes.

In short, Swapnplay is a gigantic playspace in the basement of a church, filled with toys and craft supplies, divided into age-appropriate play spaces and rooms. There are also rooms filled with chilren’s clothes, maternity clothes, cloth diapers; there is a library for children’s books and parenting resources; there is a home goods supply closet filled with dehydrators, pressure cookers, canning supplies, ice cream makers, place settings for up to 80 people. And everything is available for loan or swap. Meaning that if your kid keeps gravitating towards the same toy whenever they come there, you can take it home, and either bring it back later or bring in a toy of roughly equivalent value that your child is tired of.

The space is open from 8AM-8PM every weekday and two Saturdays a month, and there are about 15 families there on the average day, but the program is growing, and seeking new members for the fall session.

Okay, so, why am I telling you about this? I’m not trying to brag, believe me! One of the reasons that I was so overcome with emotion while I was there on Saturday is that I felt like this space is the answer to everything I’ve been looking for. I wanted Milo to have a group of kids his age who he saw on a regular basis. I wanted us to have a safe place for him to run out his crazies as the weather turns colder. I desperately wanted to have more parents to talk and compare notes and commiserate with, since very few of my friends have children.

I’m telling you about this because I feel like there are a ton of parents who are in my exact position: hanging around the playgrounds, trying to make awkward small talk with other parents, googling playgroups in their area, joining groups on Meetup.com and Yahoo groups… to no avail. Or maybe you have a really great chat with a mom at the local playground one day and then you never see her again. Being a parent is not unlike dating in this respect, but there isn’t a Match.com for parents.

The Swapnplay program was made possible by loans and grants, but mostly by the hard work of a few families committed to making this happen. The small monthly membership fees are slowly paying back the loan. You see what I’m getting at here, right? I was lucky enough to move to this neighborhood only 9 months after this program was created, or I would have created it myself. If I’d heard about this from a friend in another city, I would be rallying the troops and begging banks for loans within a month’s time.

I’m telling you about this because you can do this. And by “this,” I don’t necessarily mean: you can start your own co-op playspace, I mean that you can be the person who creates the solution to your problems. I know that we’re in a recession, which makes any type of monetary investment seem terrifying, but this might actually be the ideal time to bite the bullet on projects which are community-focused. Hate the health food store in your town with its price gouging and tiny selection? Open a cooperative grocery store. There’s no vegetarian restaurant within 60 miles you? Open one! Or it doesn’t have to be that huge of a life change: if your favorite local coffee shop doesn’t offer any vegan baked goods, ask them to hire you for 2 hours a week to come in and bake some! They might turn you down, but they might not, and if they do, the other coffee shop might not. It’s worth a shot either way, right?