Snow Shovels, Downsize Piles & Everyone’s Opinions

Hi, I'm Matthew Greger, and I'm Nancy Greger.

We have this podcast called We Should Probably Edit This, but we won't.

Our podcast is about us, our relationship, our 37 years of being married, raising 3 children, And hopefully we can share something that would be inspiring, honest, truthful, as our tagline says, unfiltered, unscripted, and unapologetically us. There you go.

We should probably edit this, but we won't. Okay. It's the counter's going, so it seems like it's recording.

It seems like it's recording.

Hi.

Hi.

Nothing like technical difficulties getting the show off the ground today.

I know. And it's been a while since we did a show.

Only one week. We missed one week. That's all. And why did we miss that week?

We went down to sunny Florida.

Yeah.

And watched our grandchildren.

Yeah. 80 degrees when we left and 16 when we returned. And I don't know if you can see out the window a little bit. That's not sun glare. That's snow glare that you see back behind us right now.

It's snowing.

We got our workout this morning before church.

Nothing like shoveling snow before you have to get your act together to go out.

Yeah, it was good. We should probably edit this.

But we won't.

I'm Matthew Greger.

And I'm Nancy Greger.

All right. Welcome to the special holiday edition of We Should Edit This.

It's not the only edition. We still got a couple of weekends to go.

I know, but I mean, it's holiday season.

I should say holiday season.

It's one of the additions of the holiday season.

Yes, it's one. Okay, I'll let you go with that one.

All right.

So after, I think, the last episode, we made the announcement that we were selling our house.

Yeah, it was an episode or two ago.

Yeah. And boy, oh boy, did we get a lot of feedback from people regarding that decision we made. Um, some good, some not so good. And it was kind of like a little, uh, off-putting, I think, when, um, people were telling you, you, what are you doing? Why are you doing it? It doesn't make any sense. Having a home is the American dream, and nobody should be selling their home. And you don't want to live like a gypsy.

And are we going broke? Are we in financial distress? Oh my God.

Yeah. Like, are we going to lose our house? And hence we want to sell the house. And let's just say that it's no different than when we did a lifestyle change to help improve our physical bodies.

And the internal one too.

Well, we did. Yeah, we did a lot of things. Um, but most people would say to us, oh, you guys are on a diet.

And we would say, no, we're not on a diet, we're changing the way we—

it's a lifestyle change. It's a lifestyle change. And selling our house is kind of like in that same line. It's a— it's definitely a lifestyle change. But if you were around in the beginning, we rented in the beginning for the first few, what, almost 7 years, 8 years of our marriage, we lived in Manhattan.

Yeah, yeah, of our marriage. Yes, yes, yes.

We rented, we didn't own. And in all honesty, I don't know if it ever came into our mind that we would purchase. We just were living in the city, in the New York tri-state area, and in Manhattan at one point. And so really owning didn't come up until I think our oldest was born and he was still pretty young. And we looked initially and staying in Manhattan, which would have been real interesting now.

Well, it would have been nice to have bought some of the places that we saw.

Oh yeah.

Yeah, but of course even back then it was— Out of our price point. It was a lot of money for—

It was a lot of money for—

In that beginning stages.

For a one-income family. Anyways, so I don't look at this as, um, it is definitely a money exchange that we're doing, but we're capitalizing on the market and where it is right now for us on the East Coast. Um, and we made a wise investment when we purchased, um, and it's giving us an opportunity to do something else. It's also going to give us the opportunity to be 100% debt-free. And that's something that we never— we've come really close, but never 100% complete. And this, this will make it 100% complete and give us cash and give us some cash that we can then start banking on.

And some of it would be a fair amount to many people.

So, correct, correct. But for us, it's, it's it's just going to help set the tone to where we want to be. And I will say that after shoveling today, there is something to be said about not having that type of responsibility of having to go outside and shovel.

I mean, I guess we could always hire the guy that does our lawn to do the snow plowing.

And once again, another expense. Yeah, um, yeah, maintaining a home is great, and I love the freedom that a home brings, that a house brings, a house and property, a house and property, house and property. Because if you— even if you look at what people talk about as far as like what your diversification should really be, having a home is one of those assets. It's a long-term asset, though. It's not a short-term thing. It's a long-term deal. And you really have to be looking at it from that perspective. But in any case, I was surprised in some cases and in other cases not. But be that as it may, we have our heads intact. We haven't lost memory. We are still capable human beings. And we are working. And we know what we want to do.

What'd you have for breakfast this morning?

I know what I have for breakfast. Okay, try not to be funny when I'm trying to be serious.

All right, all right, all right.

So I think we're doing the right thing, and I feel comfortable in, in moving on to do the right thing. Are there some hesitations? There's always hesitation.

Yeah, I mean, you sometimes, you, you second-guess yourself. Are you making the right decision? But then at the same time, as we go through and we purge things, um, and we get ready to downsize and move into a smaller space that has less storage, that doesn't have— I mean, it's like all my tools, all my gardening stuff, I won't need where we're going. And, um, and all the things, even though we wasn't that long ago that we moved here and we got rid of a lot of stuff when we moved here, it's still amazing as amazes me how much stuff you end up accumulating. Um, and it feels good to get rid of that. Sometimes it really does feel good to like just release things, get rid of things. Especially, we move stuff and we haven't even opened some of those boxes since we moved here.

Um, let's, let's reel that back a little.

Oh, so you're blaming it on me? Okay, I know where it's coming from. There's really only one person, but there were a lot of, there were a lot of boxes of of memorabilia stuff.

Which for all intents and purposes, if you go back down there, you'll still see maybe 2 or 3 boxes that says—

We just consolidated.

Momento.

We just consolidated that.

The amount of photos we have is astonishing.

Yes.

I did not understand how many photos we actually have. And I think we have like 8 sets of our wedding.

I have just as many digital photos now. I have thousands times more because it's just one click and you don't have to get it developed.

Oh my goodness.

And you shoot 3 different shots thinking you want to get the first one. You want to make sure you get a good shot. Now you don't ever delete them either. So you just got—

So you have them. So we did do that and going through all of those boxes to get through what we had because we literally have all the photos in their frames and we had stored them and taking apart the photos out of the frames and getting rid of the frames because we've decided we're gonna, what, try doing Legacy, one of those, one of those, um, services that will actually scan all your and digitize everything, all your photos.

And that's the way we can share it with the rest of the family, right?

And we'll have— and then we'll be able to give But that's another project for a different time because you really have to go through the photos and kind of sort each child.

Well, we do have to go through them one more time to determine which ones we're going to send off to get archived.

Correct.

And then we're going to set aside ones that we're not going to, but we're going to store. We don't necessarily need to have around. And so someday, maybe when our kids go through our stuff, we'll say, these have not been digitized, and let them go through it.

The funny thing is, is that if my mother is watching, I know that my mother has photo albums of family, me, my brother, just all kinds of things. So I know what I can look forward to. But, you know, the, the best part about it is when we used to do estate sales, um, and you had the people that were moving and were downsizing and they realized the magnitude of stuff that they had, which was sometimes very overwhelming. Um, and I know that because going through it ourselves to get ready for a sale this Saturday coming. Um, we'll see how that goes because the weather right now is really cold.

We're just doing it. We're doing it. If you have to come in with snow boots, that's all. Hey, it's more focused on a man sale anyway. So they don't, they don't care.

Right. And why is it primarily a man sale? Mr. Greger, is it because—

I've got nuts and bolts and nails and screws and things for, you know, you never know when you have that project that you need. The biggest problem is by that is that when you do need that thing, you know, good luck finding it in your stash of stuff. Just like the wood. Like I've got, it's amazing. Maybe I'll do some B-rolls and put in some shots, but I know we don't edit this. But it'd be interesting to see just the stack of wood that I have, just the stack, odds and ends and pieces and stuff. Yeah. Thinking that someday I'm gonna need that. But after I went through it, I think, you know, if I really needed something for a project, am I gonna actually shuffle through all the pieces of wood to try to find the right one to go for the project? Or am I just gonna go out and buy the piece of wood that I need for the project?

You can go out and buy the piece of wood.

You know, and it's like, and, and I think that's the, the one thing that I really come to realizes that unless I'm like always using wood and working woodworking all the time, then what's the point of storing it? Because you can never find it when you need it.

So yep, and there's a lot of it. So much so that we are renting a 12-yard dumpster that will be here on Friday because there was a— there's always been a rule when we used to do estate sales. We either sell it we donated, or it gets thrown away, right? Because it does not go back in the house. It cannot go back in the house. So it fits— has to fit into those 3 categories. Now, I have been systematically putting things on Facebook Marketplace and trying to unload some of the larger items, right? And we've been kind of successful. We, we got rid of the exercise equipment.

Yeah, the home gym, which is—

thank goodness that we did, because I looked and it was like, oh man, this gonna be a pain. But we got rid of it, and that was a good thing. And we got rid of a few, a few, uh, yeah, we got rid of, we got rid of big items. The teak outdoor table, you know, we got rid of that pretty, pretty quickly. But there is something to be said about going through that whole process.

It's much different cleaning it down. It is, it is much different when you, when we would process a home, you know, we don't have the emotional attachment, so we quickly decide, does this have value or not? And price it accordingly and move on.

Let's rephrase that. I don't have the emotional attachment, but somebody else does. Because when I decided to go through some portfolio cases, boy did I get tongue lashing.

Here we go.

You can't go through any of that stuff. I have to do it myself. It's all my stuff. I said, you are 100% right, buddy. This is your stuff.

Okay, well, it's—

So here you go. It's artwork. Just like I moved from Danbury to Norwalk. What did we move, Matthew? It's right on up there with all the wood that we needed to keep.

Are you gonna get on my case about the windows?

Okay. And what were the windows intended for?

The windows were intended for a greenhouse. And if I was staying here, I would build a greenhouse. I would be, unless the windows—

We'd be hiring somebody to build it.

No, I would have done it. I would have done it. I've got slate, I've got brick, I've got windows, I've got, I've got all the makings to make it really nice.

That's right. We could actually, what do they call it? Like they, they, it's like a tiny shack that we could have built out of all parts and pieces. We're probably every little scrap of wood you have.

We probably could have built it. We would make it.

It would be a He-Man shed. It would not have been a—

Maybe it would have, yeah, yes. It would have been a nice greenhouse, but that's okay. That's okay, 'cause who knows, it might have been that someday situation.

Someday.

Someday never happens.

I don't like the word someday. That's like maybe.

Yeah.

It's either a yes or a no. You're either gonna do it or you're not.

Someday I was gonna do it.

You know you weren't. You were never gonna do it. It's the same thing with the storing of the wood. Someday I might need that piece. I might need it.

And every now and then, every now and then I would use a piece.

I, I could probably count on one hand when that actually came in handy.

I don't, I don't disagree with you.

Good.

You know, because going through this makes me realize that when I do have my own space again, as far as creating a shop or woodworking space or doing things like that, The real question is, what do I really need? Um, and, and it will definitely be slimmed down. I mean, like, right now I'm slimming everything down into a small Craftsman toolbox that I have, and whatever can fit in that is what I get to keep. And everything else, I mean, I don't need 10 different pliers. I don't need 20 different screwdriver Phillips heads that are there. You know, some different sizes are fine. Um, and that's, you know, it's— yes, it takes me longer to process because I have to decide, okay, which one am I going to keep, which one am I going to sell. But I think I've done pretty good.

It takes, takes way, just way too long.

Yeah, well, it takes way too long for my head to process. You're right.

I don't understand that. All those brain pills are just not functioning correctly.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Oh, when I went through my artwork, part of it was like, wow, look at all the stuff that I used to do. You know, and, and some of the things I did and picking out some key pieces that I want to keep. And again, I'm digitizing those also, you know, so that I can, that I don't need to keep that stuff, the hard copies.

But look, I know I'm ragging on you, but you're not the only person. There are lots of things and I'm looking at them right now.

How many longer breaker baskets do you have now?

Come on.

I know you're selling them, but how many do you have?

I have more than 20, but I don't know what's upstairs. I know what's down here and what I'm selling. And I'll get rid of them all. Maybe.

And how many chickens do you have?

No, the chickens are off limits. There's not a discussion. Even though I don't— use them. They're not meant really to be used. They're more decorative than anything else. So there's a lot of decoration.

Okay.

I have a lot of decoration.

That's okay.

And moving into a new place, the one main requirement out of everything is that there's one cabinet in the front that's a huge Ethan Allen, like, 3-piece. It was— it's a bookcase, but it's a display case.

And there's 3 pieces.

No, that's, that's how they called it. It's a, it's a library piece, and that is going with us wherever we go.

Okay, we'll see.

No, we, we are taking it.

It may not be all 3 pieces, but all 3 pieces, okay, are coming. Okay, I know one place that it would fit in.

Uh, so far, all the places that we've been to, it will fit in. So, but that's been, that, that's been probably, um, one of the things that we noticed. And there's still a lot of artwork on our walls, by the way, that we're still taking with us, um, that we won't get rid of. I don't think we'll ever get rid of it.

So it's Christmas time.

Yeah.

Yep, yep.

So it is Christmas time, and I will tell you, I did not put up a Christmas Christmas tree this year, and that raised a lot of, uh, well, we were planning to—

come on, let's, let's— we were planning to— yeah, we were, but they didn't have any. Meaning, because we want to— we want a live tree. We, we want an actual tree that we could then plant back outside. I mean, it won't matter too much this, this year, but we have at least 3 of, of the Green Giants that are in our yard are previous former Christmas trees.

Yeah.

And so, um, we couldn't find any.

No. Well, we only went to one place really.

We went to two, two places, and they—

and they wouldn't call them places that I would have normally—

well, we've got— we've gotten from them— we've gotten the trees from there before, and we've had good luck with it. But this year, but this year, I don't know why. So, so instead of keep looking, we just decided not to. We did buy two new trees for the front Yeah, but that's just—

that's gonna stay there.

No, I know they'll stay with the house, but they're not really— but they would have been— they would have been— they would have made a cool Christmas tree.

It would be a different kind of Christmas tree for sure. But in any case, we didn't do that. Um, we have decorated a little bit throughout. Not like what—

that says something behind you there too. It says Believe. Yep.

So there, there have been a few things that we took out, and I am going to put a couple of our stockings in the front fireplace.

Um, but, but it's still, it's still the season to really be grateful, to be, um, to do what you can for others, you know. And, and we've been fortunate enough to be able to donate and do some things. I mean, the church this morning had a, had a large turnout for the donations.

Yeah, I'm so glad because I was really worried. It was such bad weather and people don't like to drive when it's really really bad, but I was quite surprised.

Um, service was really good this morning too.

I hope that they got more than what they expected, right?

That's really what I hope because I know they extended it till Tuesday because of the—

well, they did.

Yeah, I just got the email earlier. So that's good.

So that was, that was a, um, a good thing. So, uh, and then Christmas Day for us is probably going to be super quiet. And the next day, um, one of our son come home. He'll be home with the grandchildren, but they won't be staying with us this time around. They're going to be staying with, um, her side of the family, um, because that's where all the kids are. That's where all the cousins are.

Yeah, I don't blame them. Who wants to be around a bunch of old people that don't have much for them to do or play with?

Yeah.

You know, we used to have a nice big toy, toy chest thing for them, but it's been pretty much picked through and beat up.

But yeah, they're going to be upset when it's not here anymore, when it's not here.

But especially Theo, when the race car track is—

I just said we just have to tell him that we donated it to a little boy who won't get too much for Christmas, and he's gonna really love playing with that track. So maybe that will smooth until you get them something else. And yeah, we're not gonna—

we're not gonna get them something else to take back home, but we'll definitely get them something at home. So yeah, and well, you'll have plenty of stuff to play with.

We ship things down, so we, we have it down there already. But when he comes up, I'll have the stocking stuffers, so I'll have stocking stuffers for them.

To open up and to open up.

But in any case, so we didn't— it's going to be a light.

Yeah, we'll go to Christmas Eve service, um, and then, um, that Christmas Day it'll just kind of just be chilled out, just between you and I.

And then what we'll end up doing is that weekend, maybe we might be able to get all the family together. Family together.

If we can just convince them all to come together, you know, it's very few and far between these days, the planning, the, the putting it all together.

Yeah. Um, so yeah, so hopefully that will happen and, and we can all get together because it is very true what they say: when your children get older, you see, after 18 years of age, you you see them less and less and less.

Yeah.

Each year.

I don't think that's the case for everybody. I think there are certain circumstances where some people either have older adult children that have moved back in or they live just a few miles from each other. You know, and unfortunately, we only have one that lives a few miles from us. And the others have moved, moved on, settled in other, other parts.

Yeah.

Of the country. So, yeah.

But if, if we, if we look back on what it was like when we were their age, we did the same thing.

Yeah. We wanted to be around mom and dad. I mean, well, I think it's a little bit different during our time, you know, come 18 or 19, if you weren't going. To college, um, you were— you had a job and you wanted to get out. You— I, I was fiercely independent. I wanted to be on— I wanted to prove that I could do it on myself, do it myself.

That's true for me too. I mean, the minute I turned 18, I moved out, and, uh, I think I did come back for a little bit, and then I moved right back out again, and I moved to New York the, the second time I moved out. But there is a different a different feeling when you and I were, you know, in that period of time. We were fiercely independent, and I think we were raised to be fiercely independent.

Just to figure out— I thought we did that with our children too.

I mean, we did. Hence they're all gone, right? I mean, nobody's living with us.

You know, the two boys came back after college for a little bit, um, with their girlfriends. Right. But overall, they pretty much wanted their own, their own space in their own life. I mean, who—

who—

it's, it's like that 4-day rule when we, when we go visit, you know, it's like it's 4 days, you know. And I think it's true for, for whether you're visiting or whether you're, you're hosting, because there's something about the disruption that happens. The disruption is good, but there's only so much that you can handle, right? Right. And, and we all do different things. We, we, um, are different, you know.

Well, we've, we've evolved differently, right? We're all at different stages.

But you and I, you know, we chose to be together and to make it together. And so we, we either tolerate each other or we enjoy being around each other. One of the two. And, you know, when you mix in the other parts of the— our kids and their family, they still enjoy being around us, but they have their own way of doing things, just like we have our own way of doing things.

I think everybody can suck up a couple of hours.

Yeah, yeah.

Or 4 days.

Yeah.

You know, 4 days tops. I think we can all manage to bring our better selves to those scenarios.

And I think if you went on a destination trip, that would be a little different because now you're not in anybody else's environment.

You're right. You're in somewhere else.

Yeah. Or you're in a vacation mode. Okay. Yes, a vacation mode. And so therefore it's not your house or their house.

We never did that. Not as adults.

No, no. It would be— I would like to. Maybe.

Maybe. We'll see. It's too difficult, I think, when your kids get older to navigate the logistics of everybody's life.

Well, it might be okay for one of the kids and their family, but not all three.

Not all three.

It's just too hard to coordinate the timing.

Very good. There's really theoretically only one time that you might be able to pull that all off.

Around Christmas time?

That's it.

Yeah.

That'd be the only time.

Because everybody focuses on getting some time off around that time.

Correct.

Right.

Correct. So you can, you, if you were going to make something happen, that would have been the week you could do it.

Or you got to plan it years in advance and lock in a date and everybody has to agree that's what they want to do because then they can adjust their schedules to do it.

Accordingly.

Right.

Yeah. But who knows? Maybe, maybe not.

Maybe not.

Who knows? It's okay either way. It's okay.

Well, I'm looking forward to, um, to this move. I'm looking forward to downsizing, to getting rid of stuff, to making that next transition and seeing what's next for us.

Yeah, so far not 100% finding the right place to move into. There's some certain things are okay here but not okay, and That's probably been a bigger challenge.

Well, you're more challenging than I am on that requirement. So, so—

Well, I am not moving into a basement apartment of some old lady's house.

Well, neither am I. I mean, but we didn't look at any of those. Those are not on our radar.

No, what I meant is our standards are completely different. But I'm wondering at what point out of being married for 37+ years, do you think My standards have changed so much so that it'd be more difficult. You wouldn't think that at this stage in the game you would understand.

I understand.

No, you don't.

Yes, I do. But I'm willing to give up some of those things and you're not.

It's a standard.

So that's okay.

It's a standard.

It's your—

You have a standard of where you want.

Okay. I would like to have both cars in a covered space. That would be one of my requirements. Like a garage. I can deal with a carport, but I don't want to have to clean the car off.

After a big snowstorm.

Yep.

Mm-hmm. Exactly. And I would like a gas stove, not electric.

That might be really challenging. No, I think we found one place. Was that all gas? Yeah, it was. Okay.

And covered parking. Just saying it was places, but it's—

well, you can call her. Let's go back and look again.

I'm not gonna call that. I feel sorry for some people because we've called them and harassed them so many times.

I think we should go back to there.

We'll see. We'll see. I'm not worried about it right now. Um, right now the house goes on the market on January 15th. Uh, we met with— we saw our realtor Friday. Yeah, we saw Joe on Friday. He showed us an apartment and I said, hey, so Joe, when are you going to come by to take pictures? Oh, I'm thinking like January 6th or 7th. And I'm like, oh, okay.

I was thinking the 10th.

I was thinking, oh, the 10th. So I was like, okay, that bumps up the timeline a little bit.

I only have one real major thing I have to get done before we have the photos in.

What's the major thing?

The side of the, the, the box.

No, I'm looking—

yeah, it's not like it—

the boxes have to get done, the radiators have to get painted, the closets upstairs have to get redone.

You mean cleaned out?

Cleaned out and redone to some extent. Um, and then, and then after, after this, after this Saturday, it's going to be focusing on, well, depersonalizing and decluttering the rest of the house and packing, just packing a few of those things.

Yeah.

And then I have to actually reach out and call some movers.

I've already done that. Well, I mean, I don't, I don't know if I need, we need to schedule that yet, but yeah, we'll have to, we have to have it lined up for who it's going to be.

Correct.

So on that note, since we have We have to process the stuff for the sale next weekend. We should probably edit this, but we won't. So until next time, make sure you guys like us. Send us some suggestions on what you'd like us to talk about, or if you have questions, let us know.

Let us know.

Have a great holiday season and talk to you soon. Bye.

Bye.