SHOULD YOU INSTALL A STAIRLIFT?

Soon after you retire, your children begin to give you advice.  And if you live in a two story house, they’re apt to say you ought to move.  At that point, unless you’ve worked past the age of 70, you’re feeling pretty spry.  The very idea of trading in your double decker home for a one level seems ridiculous. But as the years go by, and your knees begin to give out, you see their point.  And yet,  the longer you’ve lived in the house you love, the more difficult it is to move.  The very idea of all that upheaval stresses you out.  Finally, you have to make a decision. Should you downsize,  or  install a stairlift?

My husband and I have always had arthritic knees—his much worse than mine.  But somehow, we managed.  After all, we knew there were benefits to a house with stairs.  More exercise, stronger leg muscles, and maybe even a longer life.

And then, around five years ago, after a very bad rainy season, our defenses weakened and we called a stairlift salesman.    We liked the company rep who called on us.  He measured, evaluated our situation, and gave us an estimate.  We were sold—even gave him a deposit which he said was refundable if we changed our minds right away.

Then, the weather got better.  Our joints didn’t hurt so much.  We worried that our house would look cluttered and depressing with all this handicapped paraphernalia.  My husband got some shots in his knees, and decided he really could handle the stairs just fine.  We got our deposit back.

Should you install a stairlift? Yes, if it helps you stay in your own home.
Should you install a stairlift? The cost is far less than the expense of moving.

Fast forward five years later to the present time.  My husband suffered a major fall.  Lucky his bones are strong.  Nothing was broken, but he had a knot on his head and bruises all over his body. Time to face reality.  Before even telling our kids about the fall, we’d already called the stairlift company.  Believe it or not, they still had the original estimate on file.  Even though prices had increased, they honored the quote they had given us. The cost of the product was far less than the expense of  moving to another place.

The stairlift is in, and it looks fine.  We didn’t have to take down any pictures or lock up a closet door. The house looks pretty much the same, and he  feels better, gliding smoothly up and down the stairs with no pain in his knees..   Should you invest in a stairlift?  If it helps you stay in your own home awhile longer, I would say yes.

DECLUTTERING DIARY; DAY 93

When  I posted DeCluttering Diary: Day One,  last July on my first blog, EightyGo,  I had no idea that it would go viral, or that our decluttering project would continue for so long. I thought we had gotten rid of most of the junk in our house.  Oh, how foolish I was! Yes, I had cleaned out  drawers and closets, upstairs and down, in our two story house, but I hadn’t begun to think about the basement.

Declutterng is hard if you've lived in a house for 50 years.
Everything gets hauled away in a truck

Cleaning out the basement of a house that has been lived in by the same person for 50 years is an overwhelming project.  My husband had two separate careers during that time,  and there were boxes of newsletters awards, pictures, reports from all those years.  But the majority of the shelves full of boxes were there before I arrived 30 years ago.

In yellowed, rotting cardboard boxes—unopened once they were sealed with masking tape a half century ago, were baby clothes, toys, scrapbooks, notebooks accumulated by my husband’s  three children who are now in their fifties and sixties. His first wife had carefully boxed up invitations, wrappings and bows from wedding  and baby showers through the years.  We found boxes of tablecloths, ceramics, trip brochures, towels.  Numerous fans, half empty paint cans, electrical cords—the list could go on forever.  You wonder why anyone would have kept all that stuff. But, I, too came with some baggage—old yearbooks, awards, memorabilia from the 26 years I served as Director of Food Service at an acute care hospital.  And of course, pictures of my three children from babyhood to parenthood.

You can see the truckload that emerged from our basement today.  That’s in addition to another truckload last month.  But we aren’t done yet.  There are still odds and ends that we have to think about.  Like the two oxcarts we purchased in Costa Rica 20 years ago.  Maybe we can sell some of these things on E Bay. This winter, we’ll bring up the boxes of pictures and decide which ones to keep.

We thought we would be finished with all of this purging by Thanksgiving, but it looks like it will go on until spring.

Read  DeCluttering Diary: Day One   https://eightygo.blogspot.com/2018/07/decluttering-dairy-day-one.htmln  EightyGo