Some kind of estate plan, perhaps a revocable trust?
2 Likes
I would first start with the local town government to make sure what you want to do passes muster. Then, you might try to legally separate the 1.7-acre parcel into two smaller ones, so they are âindependentâ of each other.
5 Likes
I spent 2015-2022 moving twice a year. I sold my house in 2014 and my daughter was hit by a car two weeks later. I moved in with her for a year, helping her recover from a very serious traumatic brain injury. During that year I also had breast cancer.
I basically got rid of all my stuff, except for photos, videos and things I would consider priorities for rescuing from a fire 
, which I put in storage.
For 5 years I did the same winter rental in the town where I raised my kids, a coastal tourist town in the summer. There are no longer any year-round rentals there thanks to airbnb and VRBO. Each summer I went to a different place in Cambridge, where academics leave for the summer. Summer 2022 I could not even find a summer rental. I could not go elsewhere because I was caring for an elderly parent nearby. It was stressful.
So fall 2022 I rented a year round apartment in another coastal town, that is not touristy and has rentals. It is a small one bedroom, two blocks from the ocean. I paid the previous tenant $50 for her furniture: a chaise, two bedside stands, a large round table with 4 chairs and a standing lamp. A friend gave me her Ikea lounge chair and I bought a table lamp. I use small stools from Ikea for books and plants, and found wonderful prints at a museum store for $5 each.
It is nice that I donât have to leave for the summer but in a lot of ways I am still traveling light. I can give up that $50 worth of furnishings easily. My mother died, kids are dispersed, and my options feel entirely open- at age 72! Part of me liked moving, part of me wishes I could buy that winter rental which felt like home. I am conflicted.
It is hard to be displaced at this age, and not feel settled. But it is also hard to commit to new places where I know noone, and start all over making friends and finding things to do. I am not sure what the solution is. I am starting to tour CCRCâs (continuing care retirement communities with independent, assisted living, nursing and memory care levels) because I anticipate loneliness if I become disabled, and I do NOT want my kids to be burdened the way I was with my mother.
This is long and it seems most parents on CC are still married, own a house or two. I am not impoverished. I am just confused! And the pandemic hasnât helped.
I put a positive spin on all that moving around, that it was âfun.â Truth is it is tiring and hurts my back!
6 Likes
Good suggestions but unfortunately, zoning means the property cannot be subdivided. I have read the code and the Town permits ADUs of up to 1000 sq feet, though we will need special permission due to the small size of the main house. Iâm sure it will be a bumpy ride, with lots of snags along the way!
2 Likes
How about a pocket neighborhood? There is a lovely one being built in Ithaca New York called Amabel. There will 30 cottages in all, and many of those there are retirees, so lots of support from close by neighbors. We viewed it and really loved it, and the design of the cottages, but there are mor employment opportunities for DD, DS and his family in our new location. Price wise it is about 350k for the 1090 sq. Foot model.
I forgot to mention that DS, his wife and baby and her parents also plan to move to this NE area. They will attempt a main house and ADU for her parents also. 
7 Likes
Yes another factor is staying free for any kid who has a baby (I would move to Brooklyn in a flat second if my daughter had one) versus living our own lives and living them so our kids can live theirs without worry about us. This kind of old but not yet really elderly age is another sandwich: between giving support to kids and anticipated need for support from them! Iâll look up pocket neighborhoods. There is a cooperative community in Ithaca that looks great but too far from kids.
3 Likes
I feel that way too, if I am able and if my daughter and son-in-law accept the help. But I think thatâs a lot easier for me-myself-I households like yours and mine, @compmom.
1 Like
Oh, boy, do I have feelings about this.
We downsized while our kids were still kids in order to save for retirement and future college costs.
While it is great that our kids wonât have to take on debt to attend undergraduate school, it was a mixed bag. We lived in a condo for over seven years and I will never live in a condo again if I can help it. For me, I didnât like being so close to other people. The noise and the smells were the most difficult to adjust to, but I also didnât like feeling movement-restricted. I never realized how much I could move doing daily tasks indoors until I was in a condo for those same tasks. I had to act with more purpose to get activity. Iâve always been active, so that wasnât a problem, but it felt like it required more effort in the condo. I didnât think of that before we downsized.
We did live in a walkable part of the city. If you like to take walks, thatâs essential for your well being.
If you have to do it for financial reasons, obviously, you adjust, and thatâs what we did. Iâm not sure it was worth the sacrifice, however. We were happy, but it took a lot more effort to be the same amount of happy. Cashflowing more college expenses and having more space would have made us happier.
I know this sounds negative, but itâs just how we felt. Some people might love the convenience and proximity more than we did. Itâs highly personal. For me, the presence of our kids didnât really have an impact on how I felt. I just learned that I am not a city dweller by nature, and thatâs okay.
5 Likes
Thatâs really generous of you. There are several extended families with this arrangement in my parentsâ neighborhood. I might make an offer on one if they ever go up for sale, but thatâs very rare here.
For the ease of inheritance and future transactions, putting the property in your names and your adult childrenâs names would be the most direct. Your adult children would need to talk with their spouses who would be living with them about this arrangement. Make sure that you can afford it without their help in case they have a change in marital status or income. In a NE state, many people rent, so you could always rent out the other home if your adult children moved.
2 Likes
I love the idea of collaborative living/intentional communities (family and/or others). It turns out my son is interested in that too (came to it totally separately) - and has even started discussions w/many of his interested friends on that topic.
Iâm attending a zoom meeting on a co-housing development tonight to learn more about it. My hub and I discussed -the only downside might be âwhat if we donât get along w/someone who has a super strong personality?â Not sure about that one. In an intentional community persumably there is less ability to politely distance than w/the neighbor down the street you donât hit it off with.
compmom - I admire your flexbility and adaptability with all those moves! Our recent overseas trip for almost 2 weeks exhausted me - I can appreciate a bit more the stress of relocation!
SupportiveMom11 - appreciate your feedback on condo-living. Iâm hoping to get a feel for that by trying out some AirBnBs in FL and elsewhere - to see how hub and I feel about the proximity. Our backyard now abuts a big open space with trees, creek, etc. So losing that (and adding more people!) would be a big change. I didnât so much love the city apartments we stayed in, in Italy recently. They were cool but hard to picture being there on the dailyâŠ
1 Like
Our home of 35 years is on a big lot. We still hear neighbors - the guy next door starting his truck at 5:30 in the morning, the kid around the block who is now a drummer, and the mowers all spring, summer, and fall all hours of the day.
We have an apartment now (we are splitting our time), and have found the neighborâs not to really be an issue. It helps that we are the top floor. Yes, there are occasional smells and noise, but it has not bothered us. The mowing is much more infrequent (as it is a service that comes once a week not everybody on the block on a different schedule).
For some reason, other noises outside the apartment (we hear small planes from a local airport, a train line not too far away, and in the summer people in the community pool), donât bother us either.
4 Likes
Houses are closer here in CO than our original NY location, in general (though not the case for us since we were switching from a started home in town.) But sometimes it is nice to be close, when you have neighborly neighbors. Yesterday a neighbor came by, worried that there had been a porch thief at the house. A car had parked in front of her house/camera, and she saw somebody head over to my place and come back with a white bag. In this case it was a NextDoor freebie/giveaway item. But how nice that she took the time to alert me!
7 Likes
What do you successful downsizers do for storage?
I am cleaning out the attic and garage, but find that I will still have several boxes of family photos and keepsake items, holiday decorations, clothing, and linens I want to store long-term, sporting and outdoor equipment, and things like gift wrap and sewing supplies I like to keep on hand.
I also buy certain cleaning supplies and nonperishable food items in bulk for cost savings, but I have the luxury of lots of pantry and storage space now.
Iâve cut my stuff down by about half, but prefer not to pare down the remainder any further.
I find smaller homes around here often have smaller garages and fewer closets. And using a separate storage unit seems inconvenient, plus adds an expense. Anyone have a great strategy that works? Or did you retrain yourself to keep less on hand? And if you did, what happened to the photo albums of deceased family, grandmaâs wedding dress, and the artificial Christmas tree?
We never had a lot of what others seem to keep (not much detritus from the past) mostly because I canât stand clutter and chuck things the minute I no longer need them or find them useful. I hoard nothing, did not stock up on anything during COVID (couldnât understand the TP hoarding at all), so Iâm an example of just having less (and less) on hand. If DH werenât in my life, there would be no shop tools, no Christmas crap, no electronics other than my phone/iPad, and the TV would be gone before the body got cold.
So why am I responding? Because I think the definition of downsizing* precludes needing storage solutions. You move into the footprint that comfortably houses what you immediately need and use and lose the rest. Take pictures of grandmaâs wedding dress and anything else of sentimental value then donate or toss those things you think you âmightâ use (but havenât in the past year). Aim for empty drawers and shelves and closets that have nothing sitting on the floor. IMO, until you can do this (if you even want to), you might not be ready (or really want) to downsize.
*I prefer the term ârightsizeâ to refer to whatever space comfortably houses your life. For some, that may mean a better layout rather than less square footage, but I think it always means a paring down of the many things we seem to uselessly drag with us from place to place that no longer serve a purpose in our lives.
6 Likes
I have items that I keep that will need to be given away (or at least thinned) when/if we downsize. So for now, as I declutter⊠I try hard to group like items together.
For example, there is a corner of the basement where I am starting to gather things from my mother (old dresses, grandfatherâs stamp collection, cross stitch table clothes etc). If my sister comes to town, weâll sort through it more. Under that basement stairs are some old toys that would be nice for grandchildren⊠but someday they will likely get donated.
Now there is still A LOT of stuff around the house. But it is less stuffed than it was a few years ago when I retired. And I find myself mentally earmarking things that someday can be donated/discarded when we have less space.
3 Likes
We got rid of A LOT of stuff when we downsized. Went through photos and tossed duplicates, got rid of books I had kept for years, knick knacks that were gifted to us (that I never really liked), all of the holiday decorations except a small amount of Christmas stuff, duplicate kitchen stuff, stuff we never used but kept for someday. I have one cedar chest for sentimental items and that is it. We bought our new place before putting the old place on the market so we knew we would have less storage space. Dâs stuff went to her place, we have a few (very few) things we are storing for S as he is not permanently settled.
I think @ChoatieMom is spot on. You really can get by very well with a lot less stuff.
6 Likes
We are struggling with this downsize storage issue right now. We are currently living half in an apartment and half in our larger home which we have owned for 35 years. Getting close to selling the home. There are things that will just not fit in the apartment, but which we canât get rid of. Christmas stuff (even though we have so little), old photos (stored nicely in plastic bins), stuff that is my daughters (which she just canât possibly fit in her 1 bedroom apartment but shouldnât have to get rid of), etc. When I ask, almost everybody in the apartment building (over 55 place) has a storage unit (the building does not offer any extra storage).
We are giving those things away NOW because we donât use them. Anything we donât use is leaving this house.
I have an under the bed box for gift wrap things. And another that holds photos, although that one likely will be pitchedâŠbecause no one wants the photosâŠincluding me.
4 Likes
Since you say youâve already pared down and really prefer not to pare down more, I think youâve got to focus on storage solutions (as you DID mention youâre looking for ideas for!)
Recommendations:
Look up - where can you stack higher or get taller shelves. Grandmaâs wedding photos donât need to be something you need your hands on everyday.
Sort and keep like things together - and look online for specific storage solutions for those items - there are SO MANY custom storage pieces out there - for hats, or socks, or photos , etc.
In addition to looking up, look down - can you store things in storage pieces under a bed or furniture (so it is hidden)?
And if youâre really desperate, a storage unit!!
4 Likes
Just donât keep paper or other easily damaged materials on the floor, where water can get to them if you have any kind of flood.
3 Likes