An Eavesdropped Story

Overheard while looking at cards in the store the other day:

Couple in their 80s: How are you? I haven’t seen you in ages!

Woman around 70: I’m fine. I’m moving in two weeks. Have you heard?

Couple in their 80s: No. Where are you moving to?

Woman around 70: Oh, we’re staying in town but we’re downsizing to a much smaller place. I think we’ll be really happy once this is over and we’re settled in.

Couple in their 80s: I’m sure you will be. I’ve heard it’s a lot of work, going through everything.

Woman around 70: Oh yes. So much stuff from 40 years. But it had to go, and we’re even down to just one car and one truck. Our son finally took his motorcycles!

Couple in their 80s: We’ve had friends who downsized and they’re very happy they did.

Woman around 70: I’m already feeling better without all that stuff around me. I can’t wait to get into our new place.

Couple in their 80s: Who did you hire to move everything?

And the conversation went on in that vein, while I kept looking at cards. Then my antenna went back up when I heard the wife in the elderly couple say:

“You’re so wise to downsize. We’re thinking about doing it someday.”

Right. They’re already in their 80s. I’m thinking that line really means “We’ll let our kids worry about it after we’re gone.”

That’s not a very nice thing to do to their kids, who are clearly gonna need How to Clean Out Your Parent’s House (Without Filling Up Your Own).

Life on the Road? Not for Me

I’m still fascinated by women who are spending their retirement years hitting the road in a van or RV, or living in a tiny house with only the minimum of necessities. But I could never be one of them.

Why? I have too many interests. One of them is cooking and baking. I’ve been unable to break the habit of preparing large quantities of food after many years of feeding a large family. But I’ve found that cooking or baking in quantity lets me freeze things so I don’t have to cook or bake as often. However, it requires every bit of the small counter space I have to use my giant mixing bowl, my 11” X 15” baking pan, or my big crockpot; if I’m using two of those three, I could never live with less counter space than I have now. I couldn’t do what I do in a tiny home, much less an RV. No way!

I also love to sew and quilt. I have two sewing areas; the upstairs room is for sewing and serging, and for piecing quilts. The basement, with two large tables pushed together, is where I quilt my quilts, and also cut out clothes. How would I do that in an RV or tiny house? Not happening. There are some women who vacation in their RVs and also sew in them, but they prepare their projects ahead of time at home and just bring the cut pieces, a small iron and a sewing machine along. Waiting back home are their large stashes of fabric along with the areas where they cut everything out ahead of time.

Just about the only interest I have that would work with life on the road is reading. I can imagine filling my tablet with eBooks, which would hardly take up any space. But I’d get bored reading all day. I like a variety of activities each day, not just one.

Could you spend your life on the road, or in a tiny house? If you’ve wondered about it, check out YouTube for some fascinating stories of people who do just that.

How to Avoid Becoming an Involuntary Van Dweller

Last time I mentioned imagining that you’re one of the many women following the trend of living in a van and making it their own little home as a way to become motivated to declutter. That exercise is also useful even if you don’t think you’ll ever have to downsize, because you never know what kind of curve ball life might throw at you down the road.

Many women will reach retirement age with very little in terms of support, but they don’t realize it now. Unless they’ve had a great job with wonderful benefits and managed to save up a sizeable retirement account (and/or will receive an impressive pension), they may find themselves on a very tight budget if their husband dies first (statistically likely).

Many women have been disappointed to learn that because their husband didn’t earn an above-average wage, they’re only receiving a small monthly stipend from Social Security, not enough to live on unless they’re debt-free and live very frugally.

One of my friends lost her husband to cancer when they were in their mid-50s. She had been a stay-at-home mom and still had one teenage child at home. She was shocked to learn that she couldn’t even get widow’s benefits from Social Security because she wasn’t 60 yet. Financial aid from one of her older kids is the only reason she’s not homeless now. Today she’s in her mid-60s and living on Social Security; her husband’s job didn’t offer a pension, and they never had any spare money to save for retirement because they spent it all raising kids.

So unless you have plenty of money waiting for you in retirement, now’s the time to reduce your expenses so that you don’t end up living in a van in your old age. Cash out everything you own that you don’t really need anymore. Find a more inexpensive place to live. If your car isn’t paid off, sell it and buy something less expensive.  Then take the money you save each month and sock it away for your retirement years. You’ll be glad you did.

One Hazard of a Small House

An elderly couple I know has lived in the same little house for over 50 years. They raised their kids there and it has served them very well, until now.

The problem is that there’s not a lot of room to move around in their house, and they both use walkers. So “traffic jams” are not unusual.

There is one solution: remove some of their furniture to make more room for them to get around. But they’re very attached to their belongings and don’t want to allow any changes to be made (their offspring are willing to do the heavy work).

This actually reflects a common problem that keeps people of all ages from decluttering: they hate change, so they would rather live with belongings that no longer serve them than to give them up. That’s how they end up living in cluttered houses.

In a large house this might not be such a problem (unless even the hallways are full of clutter). But in a small house, it takes very little for the halls and traffic patterns to become blocked. Only someone who is committed to keeping their home livable would be willing to get rid of possessions if that’s what it would take to keep them in their home.

I’ve thought that about my own small house. The living areas have some spare space, but the bedrooms do not. They’re pretty small. If we live here until we’re elderly, we’ll have to get rid of some furniture in order to move around safely if one or both of us end up using walkers. We have several tall bookshelves that are full of our treasured books and hobby materials. They would probably be the first to go.