There’s a lot to know about retirement. From bucket lists to pensions, whether in the midst of retirement or you’re concerned about a loved one, you want to have all the boxes checked. But there may be one step you’re missing. The rightsizing step.
So, what is rightsizing? Rightsizing is ensuring your home environment fits your season of life. It’s the idea that your home, and the things inside it, should work for you, not against you.
We rightsize often in our lives. We buy new pants when we lose a few pounds. We invest in jar openers when the pickle lids seem tighter than they used to. We find a larger home to accommodate a growing family. Rightsizing comes in all shapes and sizes.
For seniors, rightsizing has never been more important.
The transition to retirement comes with it excitement and opportunities to create the life you want, but it also sheds light on health concerns, physical limitations. And for many seniors, large homes with even larger yards may work against goals for retirement and health.
Houses require a lot of work. Between pushing snow in the winter to mowing in the summer to carrying laundry up stairs all year long, sometimes the day-to-day maintenance of a home isn’t the retirement vision we dreamt about. For seniors, rightsizing often includes a move to retirement living.
Is it time to rightsize?
How much time does you or your loved one spend maintaining the house? An easy way to visualize this is by looking at the yard. How much time, expense and physical effort does it take to maintain a yard?
The list may include fertilizing, setting up sprinklers, pruning trees and bushes, weeding, planting, weekly mowing, landscaping maintenance, snow removal in the winter, de-icing, holiday decorating. It can be overwhelming, and that’s just the yard!
Rightsizing means making sure your home environment fits your goals. For the yard, it’s weighing the costs (time, monetary and physical) against the benefits.
How much time do you enjoy the yard? Has the mowing become physically demanding? Are there other ways that you would rather spend the money you invest in the yard? Start with the yard and move to other areas of the home. From cleaning to maintenance to big household purchases, carefully weigh the benefits against the drawbacks.
Overcoming hesitations
When you start to think about senior living for yourself or for a loved one, the logistics can be overwhelming. A move isn’t easy. It comes with a lot of emotions and steps, logistics to figure out. We know it’s hard, we’ve been there, helping families for decades rightsize. We know that you need the decision to be right, every box checked.
We also know that most of the seniors who have moved into an Immanuel Community tell us that they wish they had started the rightsizing process sooner. For them, making their home environment work for their retirement goals instead of against them meant a huge burden was lifted.
If you’re curious about rightsizing, give us a call or download our retirement planning guide at https://www.immanuel.com/retirement.