So you plan to remain in your own home
You have looked at all the options and the reasonable decision is to stay in your own home. You heave a sigh of relief at having made that decision because it seems so much easier to do this than to have to go through all the upset of moving to a strange place.
Now is not the time to sit back and do nothing.This is when you have to spring into action and take charge of this new phase of your life. Stop considering your home as the dumping ground for all your kid’s stuff and make that clear to them. Invite the family over and ask them to take responsibility for removing all their things from your attic, the basement and the garage, even the spare bedroom. You are doing a purge! You are making space for yourself in a new, improved environment. If they can’t find the time or make the effort to take their junk away, ask them if they know a shelter they prefer where it can be taken. If not, this is the time to select one yourself.
In Palo Alto and Menlo Park we have a fabulous non profit called Shelter Network which helps people who have lost their homes to tragedy, illness or fire. They are assisted in getting established in new housing and they need all the stuff you don’t want, need or can use anymore to help them set up homes for their families. For items that are questionable there is Good Will, Salvation Army etc. If tackling the mountain of stuff ahead of you is too daunting, you can always call Tom Anderson in Palo Alto who has a fabulous operation called Clutterboy. He and an assistant come to your house and inject humour and energy into a dour task and tease you into considering your things from a different perspective. He then hauls things away to either the shelters or the dump then helps you put back in place the stuff you are going to keep.
Now that the house has been lightened you can consider making some repairs. Get a home inspection done. A licensed contractor will go through the house from top to bottom and draw your attention to items that may need immediate or future work. Now is the time to know what’s going on in the house; is the roof getting old and starting to leak? Are the gutters jammed with leaves and need to be cleaned? How is the drainage around the house? Is water collecting underneath causing damp, mold and fungus? Are there ants and termites collecting in the foundation and attic? The home inspector will red flag all the areas that hint of these conditions and recommend a termite inspector, a drainage specialist, a roofer; anyone who will give you a clear picture of what is going on in your house. Then, based on the results you can budget for repairs but you must not ignore them. Your home must be safe and solid.
If you are having trouble with your balance you may want to have bars installed in areas where you need support. If you have been sleeping on the second floor you may consider moving to ground level and eliminate too many stair trips. If you are having trouble walking and are considering a walker or wheelchair, then the time has come for a ramp to be built from your door to the street. And now is when you might consider widening those doorways to make sure you can get from room to room. Take up the carpets and expose the bare floors to make it easier to propel; remove excess furniture that will block your path. As you walk through the house look at it with a new eye to what things you can do to make it easier to live in that space. You don’t have to ‘make do’ anymore with the way things are – you are now living in a new phase of your life presenting new problems and requiring new solutions.
Once the house is organized you can start to look at what you can do for yourself. Make sure you get a complete physical and take all the advice the doctor gives you. Get into an exercise program; walking or swimming, light aerobics or yoga at a senior center. Start to make new friends of all ages to keep abreast of all the things going on in the world. And while you are at it, make sure you read the newspapers each day, including your local paper. Here the Palo Alto Weekly is invaluable as a resource for information on local events, classes, performances, opinion pages, discussions. Make sure you keep up with what’s going on in your town and neighbourhood and stop watching so much television. Get out to the library; get a computer or at least learn to use one at the senior center if you don’t want to own one. Keep your mind as exercised as your body. Make sure your nutrition is good and you remember to eat properly each day.
And best of all, find someone who is not doing as well as you are and try to help them. If you have done any of what I suggest above, you have a lot to share with them.
This reminds me of a lady I heard about. She was a single woman in her 80s who had always lived in the family home here in Palo Alto. She had been alone for years by now and was living in the 3 story home that contained all the detritus of her family dating back 3 generations. She existed on social security and a pension which should have provided her a reasonable life except for one thing: this large, drafty old house was on a large piece of land in the middle of one of the most expensive areas in the country. Her home was probably worth 3 million dollars but that meant nothing to her. She didn’t know where she could move to and she didn’t know how/where to start thinking about it. She got depressed by just walking through the rooms filled with stuff she didn’t use, want or care about but which were all ties to her past.
She felt trapped – and she was. Her needs were pretty simple now and she lived essentially in one room of this large, creaking house and she didn’t know what to do to change this. How I wish I had known about Clutterboy when I heard this story. I don’t know what happened to that poor little woman. She might still be in that sad place, trapped by the things accumulated from three lifetimes of her family. I would like to think that someone came to her rescue, cleared out the house, let the sun and fresh air in and moved her to a place where she had light, laughter and friendship for her final years.