Fitness... yes... and there are so many kinds of fitness. There's one I should also acknowledge openly that I've only referred to nebulously before-- declutterung while aging?

In the parishes we've served aa well as in my extended family, I've seen how decluttering and/or poorly-conducted moving can seriously disrupt functional mental status. The disorientation can take a person-- especially an older person-- right off their stride. The cascading effects of that can lead to early demise.

From the outset, I planned our retirement home and process with this knowledge in mind. And (here's the open disclosure) in my case I have a potential Alzheimer's future to plan for. So items that anchor my memory are really, really important. My particular variety of thyroid disease has given me many sporadic glimpses of that future. Fortunately my family history is very late onset dementia, so I look forward to a decade or more of independent living-- and science may come to my rescue at this rate!

But in terms of our topics-- my mental wellbeing is worth shipping these low-value memory items to Ohio, and the process of doing/managing all that keeps my brain active as well.

I still don't know when Hardi's retirement will necessitate The Big Move, but it's a real gift to have had these years to do as much of it as possible, as gradually as possible. At this point, the PA house will look very minimalistic when I pull onto the road April 27, essentially containing a bare LR set and BR set, and the woodshop/garden tools that will be in use to maintain this old wreck until we're gone. About a full cargo-trailer-load, by then.

I've begun conversations with the landlord family regarding the house itself. We've lived in it longer than anyone since it was built, so we have some info about it that the landlord himself does not know-- in addition to details from the 2000 fire here they'll need to know. Like: sure, it's about 5000 square feet. But only one BR and the narrow nursery-sized bed room are actually habitable, due to wiring never fixed after the fire and rotten windows in another "BR" that's still set up as a kitchen. (And I know the exact spot where the post-fire contractor drywalled right over the place where re-wiring would be fished.) They're going to have to decide whether to bring this house up to code, or tear it down.

~S~