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Indeed, the $700 expenditure is impressive. And the heating situation, too -- I'm in a similar situation, we get enough solar radiation that I rarely need to power up the circulator on the hydronic heating system. Sounds like you're in an all-around better place now, Jerry. Congrats.
Well, the move is complete. The house we bought brand new in 1980 stands empty. We left because I was getting too old and unstable on my feet to go up on the roof to clean the gutters or craw under it in the crawl space, etc. Shoot, I have trouble getting up off the floor. For a fellow who used to run a sub 5 minute mile and never even get winded my leg strength has fallen off considerably.
We sold the house on Oct 7th, and that same day we called our two kids and asked them to come over and claim anything they wanted. If they didn't want it, and my wife didn't want to keep it, then it was going into the trash bags. The next day, after they took what they wanted, we begin pulling stuff out of closets and bookshelves. We held a yard sale and made some good cash. We put a lot of stuff that wouldn't sell out in front with a "FREE" sign on it. ALL of it disappeared! We filled thirty one 55 gallon trash bags with what nobody wanted. We hauled three car loads (the back seats lay down flat) with stuff we took to the good will. It took over two weeks but we finished taking apart what we could and boxing up everything we could. Fortunately, on the days we selected to move the clouds blocked the Sun and the temps were in the upper 50s. Perfect weather ... no sweat.
On Monday the 22nd, we filled up a 10' UHaul truck with the small stuff. $19.95 plus 0.69 cents a mile. The bill came to $54, which included $14 insurance. We hired "2 Men and a Truck" (24 foot truck) and on Tuesday the 23rd they hauled the big and heavy stuff for $102/hour. Total bill: $554. The two guys did an excellent jobs. Also on Tuesday we took three trips with our car to get the final loads. I vacuumed every carpets, lock the door, and my wife and I drove away for the last time. We vowed never to come back to it again. Since Tuesday evening we've been unpacking. Our house was 1640 sq ft. Our apt is 942 sq ft over our 2 car garage. The front stall is were we are storing what we won't unpack unless we need it.
The apt is very nice. Because the living space is on the second floor, with a nice southern view balcony, we've discovered that it gets warm very easily. One of the things that needs to be looked at is the thermostat. From Monday afternoon, the day we took possession, the temp in the living room was a constant 74F, regardless of how low I set the thermostat at. The place is all-electric and I didn't want to pay for keeping it that warm. As an experiment I turned the furnace to off last night at 8 pm. It is now 16 hours later. Last night the outside temp dropped to 34F. The living room dropped to 73.4 by 11AM this morning. The sky is still totally cloudy, but the temp now is at 74.0. The bedroom is at 69.5 and has been at that temp all last night and all of today. The furnace is still off. The garage is unheated but it is warm when I open its door and walk in. I have neighbors on the East, West and North of me, and a roof over our head. The south wall of the living room has a sliding patio double pane gas-filled glass door. There must be enough heat from the diffuse light through the patio door and through the walls of my neighbors that it balances out the heat that leaks out. Free heat! (Just checked. The outside temp is 30F)
Trick that works ... Everytime you set something down (or do something similar), stop, take a few seconds to tell yourself what you set where. But ... that's if you can remember to stop and remind yourself each time. The one that gets me, being obsessively efficient as I am, is while I'm doing something and think of something else I need to do afterwards, finish what I'm doing, intend to start the second task, but forget what it is. Guess I need to keep Post-Its and pen in each room, to be used immediately in such situations. Of course, these tricks may work for 'normal' age-related forgetfulness, but maybe not for true dementia/Alzheimer's.
btw, why isn't the spell checker (the red underlining) working as I type this post (under Post Quick Reply) -- it used to work for me.
I happen to believe that most of America should downsize without provocation or reason or impetus or cause or income-status.
:-)
San Fran -- very interesting, the 150-250 sq ft apt developments there (and elsewhere for that matter, perhaps Japan)--micro's.
But I hear ya, GG. Especially if you have a sloped roof (vs flat). Me, too, small 3 br, 1 3/4 older home, and for now I view all my personal time-and-labor maintainance as 'opportunity to exercise, lift, stretch, bend, and such.' But the day will come ...
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