January 2021

Terry Ballantyne

- Terry Ballantyne

Spirit vs The Body

January 30, 2021Aging has never been easy! Let's recap: Your joints get loose and achy. (gravity and hormones).Your vision is not what it used to be, cue the squint!Food is not as vibrant tasting.Likely your ankles are resisting a fast pivot.Your teeth and gums may be acting up.Skin: too many issues to name. That's the hard physical truth! Then there is the social/emotional side: Putting on makeup (if you do) is not as much fun as on a 20 year old face.You can't scamper up a ladder...

Serenity Stuff Prayer

January 26, 2021Continuing the conversation about “stuff”. A topic that occupies an inordinate amount of my time as a Realtor. What “stuff” am I talking about? George Carlin stuff. Jam-packed storage unit stuff. Ubiquitous garage, basement and attic stuff. Stuffed into the back of your closet stuff. The “stuff” that keeps spawning best-selling books about clutter, the magic of tidying up and zen fantasies about living like a monk. The “stuff ” that has launched an entire cottage industry of packers, organizers and house-whisperers. The “stuff ”...

After Emptying the Rice Bowl

January 18, 2021Checking the mailbag after my recent column “Emptying Your Rice Bowl”, a meditation on the nature of all the “stuff ” people fill their lives and their houses with…. Kudos to the clever reader who sent me the photo-shopped picture of his garage with the door lifted up and a man-made mountain of rice spilling out of it! But the prize goes to another reader who sent me the following: Next time you come snooping around our house looking at all of our “stuff” I’m...

More About Stuff

January 12, 2021Continuing the conversation…. We’ve spent the last three weeks talking about the aging of the culture and the important role homes play as the biggest assets and the centering places in people’s lives. Is there anything that ranks higher on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs than home does for human beings? But how ironic is it that home so often acts as a huge repository for all kinds of junk people can’t quite seem to figure out how to recycle back into the flow of the...

Maps

January 5, 2021Continuing the discussion… about the nature of home and the intimate relationship it has with the challenges of aging. If you are somewhere near 65 years old, it is now officially day 23,725. That’s roughly how long you’ve been on the planet. And it’s also the first day of the rest of the 30 or more years (10,950 + days) you have left to figure things out. There’s no time like the present. Why initiate this discussion in the middle of a real estate section...