In my last post Holiday Road, I alluded to some of the big changes happening in our family’s life, but Susie and I just wanted to spell out the big change that we will soon experience, so everyone understands.

After a lifetime of wishing for it, on January 28th, 2005 we were able to live out our dream and buy our beach house in Ocean City, NJ. Just 500 feet from the beach, with an incredible summer front porch, we knew at the time it was the perfect beach house…what we didn’t know, however, was that we had landed in the perfect spot, on the perfect street, and were surrounded by great people who would soon become friends, and ultimately become our family! The plan in the beginning was that we’d use it and rent out this house for a couple of years, then flip it to something else, and continue on that progression till we had the ultimate house! Well, within the first couple of years, the bottom dropped out of the housing bubble, and houses in OC stopped appreciating at 20% a year, and from a financial point of view, that plan would no longer work. From an emotional point of view, that plan would also not work, because Susie and I are convinced that fate landed us exactly where we were meant to spend the rest of our life, so the plan changed.

Although we hated doing it, we continued to rent out the house for a portion of the summer, but spent as much time possible the rest of the year on Pennlyn Place. Over the years, our summertime spent in Ocean City grew, we looked forward to the day we would no longer rent the house out, and it would become ours, and ours alone. Since we happen to live on a great street with lots of full time residents, eventually we hatched a plan that the house on Pennlyn Place would become our full-time home, once we both retired. Well we are both retired, our time is our own, and last summer was the last time we will rent out our house in Ocean City!

That brings us to the second half of the D’Elia Housing Equation…the house in Mineola! Susie, Billy, and I moved into this house in August of 1986. At that time, Susie was pregnant with Krissi and Kenny, and Billy was a 3 year old. The Mineola house was built in 1928, and over the years we have discovered evidence of it’s original DC electric wiring, of the original coal fired boiler that kept it warm, and of a history of close to 90 years of one resident after another patching things together. We’ve replaced roofs, windows, furnaces, porches, fences, flooring, appliances, radiators, central air conditioning, a bathroom, and too many other things over the years to even enumerate. Frankly, every time we turn around, something is breaking or signaling it’s eminent doom to us. The house is old and it shows it, and since our life here is nothing like our life in Ocean City, this is really not where our hearts are.

Now we factor in the third part of the equation, the financial aspects of our retirement. Between Susie and my pensions, and our Social Security, and our 401Ks, we have the well being to live a nice life in retirement. What we don’t have is the ability to pay for two houses on our retirement income, without going to the bank too many times in the process. Susie added up everything it costs for us to keep the Mineola house, and the number was right around $40,000 a year, and that doesn’t factor in having to fix things.

I’m sure you see where this is going, and it’s as evident to you as it was to us, that making Ocean City our only house was both emotionally and financially the smart thing to do. But, that means cleaning out a house that we have lived in for almost 31 years. A house full of not only our “stuff”, but the “stuff” of raising 3 children. That was indeed a daunting task, but once we got into it, it’s amazing how easy it is to divorce yourself from items you thought were important, when you realize what’s really important! Susie has always loved the OC house, because unlike Mineola it’s not cluttered and full of “stuff”. We realize that we want to keep it that way, so our mission has been to eliminate and to transport only the most important things to the shore. For months we have been replacing “just good enough” things at the shore, with “the good stuff” we’ve had at home, and that’s great. Having two houses for 12 years, we have had duplicates of lots of things, so now it’s our time to save only the best. It’s also time to get rid of things that you may have had for years, but when you ask yourself, “will I miss this?”, the answer is “no!” (I mean, how often have I ever looked at my high school year books?). So the process goes on, and we are really getting to the point where we see the end in sight. Kenny went a long way in making his decisions when he was packing last week for his move to California, and Billy came over Monday and spent 3 hours going through his “history”. Amazing how unimportant those things seem now, that seemed so important when there was a convenient place to stash them….in Mom and Dad’s attic!

So we hope that before summer hits, we will be at a place where we can put this house up for sale. It’s old, and frankly needs things done to it, and since the mode on our street the last couple of years has been to knock down old houses and build new, we think we will probably investigate that direction. Our friend has names of multiple builders that do that kind of thing in Mineola, and if we can get the number we have in our head for the house, not having to deal with a real estate agent, and a buyer who needs this and that fixed, sounds like a good thing. Of course, first we have to empty the house out!

It’s kind of a sad thing to leave a house you’ve lived in for 30+ years, and frankly a state Susie and I have lived in all our lives, but it’s not the end of us and Long Island. While Kenny will be in LA, and Billy and his family will be in North Carolina, Krissi will still be in Astoria and Susie’s Mom will still be in a nursing home in Great Neck, not to mention her sister and brother who will still be Long Islanders. And let’s face it, could we survive without Nail Night every 2 weeks, and our visits to the St. James? Or how about a burger or Rough Rider Wrap at TR’s in Williston Park, or Chicken Zingarella at our favorite, Piccolos. No, we are not done with Long Island, but without the Mineola housing costs, we have lots of freedom to come and go as we choose. Hell, even if we came back every 2 weeks for a whole year, and paid to stay at the Homewood Suites on Westbury Avenue, it would only cost us about $7000 a year! That’s $33,000 less that keeping a house we really don’t want to call home anymore!

Over the next couple of months, the garbage piles in front of 40 Fairfield Avenue will be big every trash day, and there will be lots of trips with loaded cars down to OC as we enter the home stretch of our Big Change. There will be decisions to make, and items to be packed, and somewhere along the way, even New Jersey license plates to get for the cars. Change is never easy, even if it’s a good change!