HELP! How do we make to cost fair when sharing a house?

[ElizaB39]

We are renting a house in OBX this summer. Thankfully it's 3 families all w/ 2 kids and 6 bedrooms. Ech family gets 2 bedrooms. One for the parents and one for their kids.

I don't want to hijack this thread but other than the cost of the house how do you divide up other expenses? How do you plan meals together?

In the past, mom assigned each of her 6 kids a meal to buy for and prepare. With 24 of us this time, I told mom it would be way too much to try and do that, with all different dietary restrictions and eating habits, lets all just try to eat dinner on our own. We will all be together pretty much each day anyway. She agreed (and so did everyone else) but mom has now stated that she is going to do turkey one night, and dad will do a fish fry one night (yummy), one night we will all eat out together, and the other nights are all on our own. Each family will buy their own food and drinks and keep in their cabin. The last time we did this, we ordered groceries online all together, but each of us ordered our own items, does that make sense? We opened one account and then each of us had the password. One paid via cc and the others reimbursed. Now, we all have our own cabins (well 4 families do, the others will share), the sharers will work something out I suppose.