Elevators! A 13.5'x6' balcony! An office staff that takes in packages! A box for outgoing mail! A big, clean laundry room with machines that work! Trash disposal just down the hall! A maintenance crew available five days a week! Free frozen pizza!
At my age, amenities matter, and after spending more than two years on a waiting list hoping to make a nest in an apartment building in San Francisco for people 62 and older, I finally got in. How? People on the waiting list ahead of me chose not to look at available units, much less relocate, during a global pandemic. I decided the opportunity was too good to pass up, and I moved in one month ago today.
Wait – frozen pizza?
Residents here put unwanted items on a table in the lobby. I’ve seen fresh peaches, a box of hair coloring, table placemats, books and packaged granola bars on it. One day, a boxed frozen pizza sat there, slowly defrosting. A member of the maintenance crew and I laughed about it. He said, “People put whatever they don’t want on the corner of that table, and somebody always takes it.”
The 13-story building has 120 units, ranging from small studios to 650-square-foot, one-bedroom apartments. I live on the top floor in a unit that measures just 500 square feet, but that alluring balcony I mentioned faces west, my favorite direction. I’m a longtime sunset aficionado, and I also can see the south tower of the Golden Gate Bridge and the headlands beyond. The building even has a two-room guest apartment, available for a very reasonable fee. (Remember when people traveled?)
Right now, we residents have a lot of rules. We must wear masks when moving about the building. The elevators are limited to two passengers, and only one person is permitted in the laundry room at a time. Social distancing is required in the lobby, and inviting guests over is discouraged. The lounge with the big-screen TV where Giants fans gather to watch games together is closed just now, so I haven’t met many of my neighbors. Those I have encountered have been warm and welcoming, and I look forward to making new friends here.
Though for much of my life, I owned single-family homes, this is not my first experience living with a lot of other people. Before moving to San Francisco from St. Louis a decade ago, I enjoyed sharing a four-story building with 32 other condo dwellers. There, I became close friends with several women, all 10 or 15 years older than me, and I learned much from them about how to age gracefully.
That condo was spacious – 1,700 square feet – and moving to a 720-square-foot apartment in San Francisco required a considerable adjustment. I wrote about it (https://www.nextavenue.org/how-lose-1000-square-feet--and-keep-it/) for Next Avenue, the PBS-sponsored site for people 50 and older. A few months ago, one evening when I expressed concerns about the challenges of moving again, my daughter-in-law said, “It won’t be as hard as your last move, because you’re only going a couple of miles.” Remembering that helped as I pondered downsizing once again.
Every time I move, I vacillate between wanting to take what I already own and wanting all new stuff. (“Just take your purse,” one friend always insists.) The new apartment boasts a new fridge, stove, sink and countertop, plus new flooring throughout, and all that eased much of my desire to start all over completely. Plus, I bought a new-to-me floor lamp, a small side table and a TV stand, and that has kept the new place from looking exactly like the old one.
As a birthday gift, my son and daughter-in-law gave me a beautiful desk that takes up far less space than my old one, so that's new, too. Gift cards from friends paid for balcony furniture, a coat rack, a bathroom shelf unit, purple placemats and a red kitchen clock. Two friends who live in the new building left a beautiful jade plant at my door, and another friend is nurturing a pot of geraniums for my balcony.
In preparation for the move, over a two-month period, I accustomed myself to living without a dishwasher. I donated at least 15 bags to Goodwill. I sold a desk, a futon and a big TV cabinet on Craigslist, and sent two pieces of furniture and a lamp to a consignment shop. Friends took two end tables and two rugs. And I gave two rugs and the microwave oven to the movers. One mover was tempted by two lamps I hoped to get rid of, but resisted. “No more lamps, my wife says,” he confessed, laughing. Another of the other movers said his wife would be thrilled to have them, and took them out to the truck.
When I first moved to California, I found good homes for 46 boxes of books, telling myself that by removing them from my shelves and putting them in circulation, the books would find new readers ready to be entertained, enlightened or educated. This time, I had just two book cases, but I knew I could take only one with me, and the smaller one at that. I wrote about the process, (https://www.nextavenue.org/parting-with-treasured-books/) in the hope of inspiring others still holding on to hefty book collections.
Well before moving day, the head of the company I’d chosen did a virtual walk-through of my apartment and sent me information outlining all the protective health measures the movers would take while packing up in my place during a pandemic. I could have opted not to be there that day, but where would I go? I stayed, and we all wore masks and kept our distance. The movers wore gloves while packing, but said their hands would slip on the packing tape while carrying boxes and furniture to and from the truck. I made peace with that, and soon enough the job got done.
One month in, and what do I think? I’m delighted! The building is clean and quiet, with none of the unsettling drama present in my former building. (A sad domestic situation in one of the units had affected all of us for well over a year.) Of course, the pandemic is still with us, and the threat of exposure to the virus while I run any errand is an issue. Plus, right now, some 500 wildfires are burning in the state, and the Bay Area is experiencing alarming levels of dangerous air pollution due to the smoke.
Still, I moved before the fires started, before flu season and before the uptick in virus cases predicted for this fall. And each week, the management company has informed us that so far, no one in the building has been diagnosed with Covid-19. I’m aware that I took a risk – but I believe it was worth it. I love my new home!
Posts
.jpg)