I met up with two of my friends (we’re all in our 50s), and the one was showing the other how to do the line dance to Ed Sheeran’s Shivers. I guess they’re studying ahead. 
Seriously though, I am learning a lot from this thread and getting a bit motivating to do some deep cleaning. No plans to move at this time, but we’ve been in the same place for more than two decades, so we haven’t been forced to do any purging.
Glad to see I’m not the only one thinking that.
Me too. I wanna apt on the same floor so I can cruise down the hall to her place for coffee in my pajamas and slippers.
That would mean moving to Texas, a place I’ve sworn never to set foot in again.
It’s settled then. The Doper Retirement Home is wherever Thelma is living.
Once you get to know your neighbors and their routines, you might want to let the cats check out the hallway. Let them spend ten minutes out there to sniff around, one at a time. The hallway will seem less a land of mystery beyond the door but just a boring hallway.
Aw shucks… youse guys are too much.
I think the Doper Home would be lots of fun. Always assured of good conversation and/or a good argument!
Interesting idea. I’ll give it some thought. There’s a couple on the third floor who sometimes let their cat out into the hallway.
Today one of the Jewish residents held a Rosh Hashanah luncheon after the service. There are a handful of Jewish residents, and we all belong to a synagogue that is a short walk from The Home. Full disclosure: I watched the service on YouTube. Hey, I had COVID week before last and didn’t fancy sitting cheek by jowl (as it were) with several hundred people for a few hours.
The luncheon was spectacular-- salad, brisket, two kugels, a spinach thing, lots of challah (yummy, eggy bread), then apple cake, brownies, and some kind of chocolate chip bark cookies, AND ice cream.
Everyone was so friendly and welcoming to me. I already knew a few people. In fact, one couple from the temple had attended my late husband’s shiva 23 years ago. Good conversation–the sister of one of the women is married to a native-born Israeli and they live in Israel. So some well-informed (and distressing) stories from her (what a mess, eh?). It was an absolutely lovely afternoon and represents a 1,000% uptick in my social life.
I got a lot done today. Pretty much straightened up the office/den. Emptied three ginormous boxes and got two more boxes ready for Goodwill on Monday. Still have my closet to do, and…the kitchen (cue scary music). I hung a bunch of small pictures. There are still quite a few big pictures/mirrors to hang.
But I am definitely making good progress.
That looks like a very good day indeed. Happy New Year! that’s a very good start to it.
– and cats in hallway, eventually, might also be a good idea; though you’d need some way to guard against an unexpected door opening into the stairwell. I’d been thinking that one advantage to the leash idea, if Tikva would take to it, would be that she’d learn what the place looks and smells like from the outside; so that, if she ever did manage to escape, she’d have some idea how to get back in.
When we were an old Perry Mason kick during Covid, I liked seeing the locations. However, watching a lot in a row, we noticed a particular interior that was re-used in literally a dozen or more shows. It had a very distinctive crown molding that was instantly recognizable – regardless of how much they tried to re-dress the set.
I live with my younger sister now, and I worry how either one of us will handle it if one goes before the other. It’s nice to have someone there to shout “hey, did you know this?” to.
That’s probably not an “if” situation. Unless you blow up the house or crash the car off a bluff together.
Aging together is great. Being ready to continue solo is part of that.
I miss that a lot. I miss just sitting in a room with someone and not having to talk. Or just watching TV with someone.
The thing is, you can’t really get ready ahead of time. You just have to cope somehow after it happens. It will be different from what you expected and/or imagined.
Congratulations and sympathies on the move. I have been following along for the emotional and logistical roller coaster.
I posted about this early in the thread; we’re in the process of moving my dad (75) from Texas to something up here in Colorado.
He was up here this last week, and decided on a 62+ active adult coop. I think it is a great decision. Supposedly these coops are active places with lots of social activities. The only catch is that it’s still being built, so move-in won’t be until summer 2024 at the earliest.
I’m really hoping that having made a decision, but having the implications of the decision be a way out, will reduce stress.
I’m so glad you checked in. I was wondering how it was going with your dad. What was his state of mind regarding the move? Is there XX year’s worth of stuff in his current residence that will have to be gone through? How big (sq ft) is the new condo v. the house? At least in Texas he won’t have a basement full of stuff to be sorted. 
Yeah, I know it’s gonna happen for one of us, unless, as you said, our condo collapses in an earthquake or something. But it’s something you can only adjust to when it happens – psychologically, that is. I’ve lived alone before, but it was when I was single and out and about all the time. It’s different.
TL; DR: blah, blah, I vent about my dad’s visit and slow motion move.
Unfortunately his state of mind is constantly changing. He wanted to spend 2.5 days seeing all of the places, but after much research it turns out there are only two active adult apartment buildings available in the entire north metro Denver area.
We spent lots of time looking at things we knew he didn’t want waiting until our appointments at the places that did fit his criteria. Fortunately he liked both of them. One is a rental only apartment setup, and the other is the coop, where you buy in, and then pay expenses. I’m happy to write lots about the details and pros and cons of each arrangement, if anybody cares.
For as much as my dad is stressing over what to do with his stuff, I think he is actually in much better shape than many people. About 20 years ago he moved into his current house with his second wife, which gave her the opportunity to do a full reset on the accumulated stuff of my youth.
What he does have, and will need to deal with, is a 500+ square foot shop full of tools, a bass boat, and cabinets full of fishing gear. (If anybody reading this is in central Texas, and interested, let me know.) My brother and I will be helping him dispose of lots of that. In general it is a high quality and in excellent shape, so it’s mostly a matter of connecting with the right person who wants it. That can be extremely time consuming.
He’s going from about a 2300 square foot house to a 1300 square foot apartment. The two options are move the furniture that fits, or move no furniture. He changes his mind every few days. That is driving my mom crazy. I understand that like me, he is mostly talking through the particular scenarios as a way to eventually reach a decision. There is no reason to become invested in whatever the latest plan is. None of the changes matter until it’s actually time to do something.
The biggest concerns are: will his furniture fit in the new place? (Yes, but might require some creativity); if he does take some of this furniture, will he have enough left for an estate sale? (Nobody can answer this except somebody from an estate sale company).
There are a few things making this extra difficult. First are the issues with short term memory. It isn’t terrible yet, but it does make it very difficult for him to work on detail oriented things that require holding lots of information simultaneously. Like, for example, deciding whether renting or buying is the best option.
Second is his asshole friends. My dad is a liberal anti-religion Jewish atheist. All of his friends are MAGA Christians living in distorted Fox News bubbles. They tell him all kinds of things that upset him. Usually he doesn’t believe them, but it still makes him feel bad. Sometimes he does believe them, and we have to talk him down.
For example, that it will cost $50,000 to move from Texas to Colorado. Best we can tell, a full service move is in the $5-8000 range. A shipping container based move is in the $1-3000 range. Towing a trailer is $500. As above, what is best will depend on how much stuff he finally decides to take, but all of it is affordable.
Or one friend telling him he can easily sell his house for $(unrealistic amount that sets up false expectations), and the other telling him that the economy is in the toilet and he’ll never be able to sell. Of course markets will determine exactly what he gets for his house, but he has a house in perfect condition in a very desirable neighborhood in the fastest growing metro area in the country. It is going to sell.
I’m curious about the pro of buying into a condo situation. I can’t see any offhand.
I think this stuff would be highly in demand in Texas. Also in Colorado.
Ouch.
Exactly. Tell your mom not to listen. He just processing his options.
Correct.
Some will. Probably not all.
This. Talk to them early. If you include the shop stuff you will have no problem engaging a company.
My “full service” move from a 1,100 sq ft place to an 890 sq ft apt one mile away was $5,000, which is WAAAAY too much. And they didn’t do a very good job. When I moved from a 2,200 sq ft house to the 1,100 sq ft place 11 years ago, the cost was $3,000 and they were fantastic and brilliant. The company that moved me badly this time got great reviews both on Yelp and from the people here who were moved by them. I guess I just got an incompetent dud team. 
Yup.
You are all going to be nuts by move-in time a year-ish away. You’re going to wish YOU were suffering from memory deficits…
I wonder if the comparatively low demand for retirement housing in Colorado was a holdover from when the default assumption is that people wanted to retire away from cold weather. There’s been a recent thread about all the people wanting to move to less regulated (presumed to be cheaper) sunny states. But with the climatic changes, those assumptions are probably unhealthy.
Then again, considering the price increases I’ve seen in Colorado over the years, ones that seem to keep increasing, I’m not sure I’d directly advise people working from a fixed income assumption to move here, if it weren’t for some of the crazy issues I see in Texas and Florida especially. New Mexico has it’s own issues of course, but I’m a lot happier with my father and mother in law there, than I am with my mother in the greater Dallas area. If they weren’t homeowners, I’d all but beg my brother, sister in law, mom, niece and nephew to bail sooner than later. At least once niece and nephew are in college.
But that way lies Texas never having a chance to recover, which… well, recent news indicates was a false hope in the first place. 
Probably more appropriate for one of the dormant climate catastrophe threads, but I really don’t want to be holding any real estate in the sunbelt. I think that fresh water access, sea level rise, and heat will make the whole region a disaster area, possibly much sooner than people think. At that point all of the real estate will be worthless (excluding the predicted government bailout).
This is a coop, so it is similar to a condo, but with some fundamental differences. The buy in gets a share of the not for profit coop corporation, not a specific property. This avoids many of the expenses related to property transfer. Instead of you owning your condo, the coop owns the condo (which you have exclusive rights to live in). That means the coop is responsible for all maintenance and repairs (excluding willful damage, etc).
The monthly upkeep bill is about half of the cost of renting an equivalent apartment. When it is time to leave, you sell your coop share, which has appreciated at 3% yearly simple interest. As long as there continues to be a waiting list of people wanting to buy, that won’t be a problem.
Expenses at the coop works out to about $20,000/year less than rent at the equivalent apartment. The downside financially of the coop is the opportunity cost of tying up $220,000 at 3% simple interest. I didn’t do the calculation, but I was told the break even is at 5 years assuming the $220,000 was at 6% compound interest.
The other big advantage of the coop is that the monthly cost is just expenses as determined by the coop board. Nobody is taking profit directly out of the monthly payment. The apartments are owned by a for profit company, that can raise rent as high as the market will tolerate.
The downside of the coop is dealing with a super HOA that would be a nightmare if it gets infested with petty tyrants. Fortunately the day to day operations are run by a professional management company.
It is in demand, but he has passed up good offers for his boat and some of the large tools because he wasn’t ready to sell them for emotional, not practical, reasons. I’m really hoping that having a next step will get him over these hang ups. All of this is stuff he insists he won’t use in the future (and hasn’t used in the recent past), so I don’t know exactly what the problem is.
I do, and in some ways she understands that, but she runs herself ragged trying to solve the problem. We get along well in that I, too, am a solver, but I’ve also learned when to just step back. I absolutely love (no sarcasm) when I’m talking through my problems and venting different scenarios, and someone gives me the solution (not just some random half-solution I’ve already thought of, but, you know, the actual solution).
That’s what I keep saying. He probably has enough in the shop alone to justify a sale. There aren’t any collectibles, art, or jewelry to bother hosting a sale. He and my mom seem to think the furniture is the big draw. A quick search on used sites suggests his giant leather couch is worth $500.
He signed a contract with a realtor who will help him with these things. We should get someone from the estate company out to do a walk through, as that will really help me and my brother figure out what to help him get rid of.
Thank you all for helping me as I talk out my problem (which is mostly using too many parentheticals, and radiating the stress energy I have to absorb from those around me).
Ah, found the thread I was referencing for anyone who wants to rant / look into it!
And now anyone who wants to discuss it further can do so there. (Thread is only a month old, so no zombie issues)
You absolutely should do this. Soon. I thought I had enough for a sale. I did when I moved 11 years ago. The guy this time told me I didn’t. I was really surprised. I wasn’t about to hold a sale on my own.
Update.
I got the house emptied out today. I called this company
and they cleared out the last of the odds and ends in the house and garage. They charged me $600, which was a steal. When I used 1-800-GOT-JUNK to clear out my mother’s one-bedroom apt in San Diego, they charged $400 for about 1/10th of the stuff.
Then I left the keys on the mantel, locked the door, drove away, and that was that. 
I emailed my landlord. If I never have to see his face again, that will be fine. But I need to see the money he owes me appear in my account. This was a pretty emotional event, and I was already on the verge of tears.
When I got back to the apartment, what did I find? My front door was wide open-- PROPPED open-- and the maid was in there cleaning. In the first place, I told the administrator on TWO occasions that I didn’t want the maid service. But more importantly, I have a mat in front of the front door that says, “Keep door closed.” I have a sign on the outside of the front door that says, “Keep door closed.” I have a sign on the inside of the front door that says, “Keep door closed.” When I saw the door PROPPED OPEN, I did hit the ceiling. I was already on tenterhooks over clearing out the house-- but WTF?? How many signs do I need to post??
The maid was upset when I yelled at her. And I did yell. I took her to the front door and pointed out each of the three signs, and she said (and I quote) “I just didn’t see them.” Yes, I made her cry. She said, “I don’t want to get fired.” I said, “You’re not going to get fired. I won’t say anything.” (And I won’t.) But holy fucking shit!! It’s not a language thing-- she’s Hispanic, but I’m sure she reads English perfectly well. It’s just a matter of READING, which people don’t do anymore.
As y’all may remember, this was one of my worries about moving here-- that someone would leave the apartment door open. Which is why (DUH!) I got THREE signs and posted them prominently. But the flaw in my plan was that people still have to READ them.
I finally got my office in some kind of shape. Still have to unpack the kitchen stuff. The dishwasher wasn’t working so texted Saint Mike and he came right over. It wasn’t plugged in. Well, it had been plugged in but he said it looked like someone had shoved the thing back in the aperture roughly and knocked the plug out. Mike is very sharp and so competent. And even-tempered. (Unlike yours truly.)
It’s been a very emotional day. I woke up feeling queasy (no, not pregnant) and not wanting to face the day.
On the upside, lunch was excellent. Chicken with barbecue sauce, baked beans, green beans, hushpuppies, key lime pie.