Thinking about moving Mom to California has certainly been challenging. We knew once Mom was in Cali she wouldn’t be going back to her home [guilty]. Kinda sad really. So we had to prepare for her permanent stay and figure out how we were going to convince Mom that this was the way it had to be and the best move for her.
We looked into retirement living, assisted living (although we knew from Florida that this probably wasn’t an option), her own apartment, apartments next to each other (1 for her, 1 for us), even a house for all of us to share. We didn’t want her living too far from us because she doesn’t drive, and we didn’t want to spend all our time on the road back and forth, so it was difficult finding something that would work for all of us. My husband and I agreed that living in the same house with Mom was not going to work for us – we absolutely needed our own space.
After countless weeks of looking into our options, we finally found something we thought would work; but we went from our plan of buying a condo so we could have more “us time” to renting a triplex – I’m amazed that we actually found something that would work. The triplex is a 2 bedroom front house, 1 bedroom attached house and a studio apartment above the garage. The front house is the largest and has been recently updated – although old, it’s really quite charming and has all the conveniences one needs (like a refrigerator that beeps when the door is left open – which turns out to be a great feature for Mom).
This honestly works out well for Mom since she will live in the front house and will have the largest space for living. Although she is moving to a much smaller space, it definitely would not be as small as assisted living where you basically get a room.
Our son will live in the apartment above the garage so that will work out great for him.
My husband and I will live in the 1 bedroom attached house, going from a 1200 square foot condo to 700 square feet of living space. It was going to be an adjustment but we are more used to smaller living quarters than Mom and this was our best (maybe only) option for our situation.
Hey, less cleaning, right?
What I Learned: Only make sacrifices that you can live with – and don’t take them lightly.
