Columnists
Excuse me?
Recently I read an article about Boomers who own, and live in, their “forever home”. The children have grown and flown. According to that article Baby Boomers are considered, by some, to be “a significant contributor to current housing shortages and high prices”. Excuse me? The logic behind this is Boomers, like me, are staying in our forever homes longer. A whole bunch of us are not downsizing and are, apparently, creating a “bottleneck” that “limits the supply for younger buyers”. Well, boo-freakinghoo. The article further went to describe our boomer homes as “full of empty bedrooms”. What? I beg to differ. Before y’all get your skivvies in a wad, let me say this about all of that from a personal perspective, of course. LOML and I spent a lot of years getting into this house that is now full of so-called empty bedrooms. Yeah, we were fortunate to have been born in an economic boom time, but we worked hard to get here. And, for the record, our empty bedrooms aren’t really empty! All of the rooms in our home are utilized by visiting grandkids, visiting kids and one whole room is devoted to crafts, painting, writing, toys for grandkids, books and a comfy chair or two. One room is the grandkids’ sleepover room and the other is for our adult children when they need to stay overnight. We do not have empty or unused space in our home. While it may seem like a lot of house for two old farts, it is our home. We paid for it. It is our investment. It will be part of the inheritance for our children. The end?
No! That’s not the end. This is the part where I get all annoyed and grouchy. Why the H E double hockey sticks should we downsize! I’m tired of being asked about our plan to downsize. Personally, we love this neighbourhood and our neighbours. We love our property. We look forward to “coming home” any time we’ve been away for a day or two or ten. This is our home. We don’t want to live in a smaller place. Of course, there are times when we grouse about the wonky floors or the wavy plaster or the faded siding. But selling this place to move to something smaller and, likely more expensive, isn’t appealing. We aren’t in debt now. Moving to a smaller place or into a retirement community (YIKES!) would probably put a financial strain on our resources. Besides all of that, we have watched as Boomer friends have moved into “smaller places” only to discover it doesn’t feel like home to them. And (stop me if I’m full of Metamucil and early bird specials) most often non-Boomers don’t want to move into places like ours. We don’t have all of the bells and whistles. Our countertops are Formica. Our “new” kitchen floor was installed by Dave B about twenty years ago, it’s vinyl. Most of the walls in our home are lath and plaster. Other than the kitchen and bathroom, we have hardwood floors. The floors were sanded for the very last time the year before we bought the house. We don’t have a chi-chi loft and we don’t have a basement. We don’t have a paved driveway. We don’t have a rainfall shower head and the bathtub is probably over 100 years old. We don’t have a gazebo in the yard, a flagstone patio or a she-shed. Most of our landscaping is what my late friend Marianne referred to as garbage gardening. Our “garden beds” are populated with plants that friends were going to compost because they had too many of them.
Comments (0)