After our kids moved out, my husband and I downsized our living area.

We no longer needed a five-bedroom home since it was just he and I.

We started talking about getting one of those small condominiums. We thought it would be perfect to have just two bedrooms. We wanted a spare room in case one of our granddaughters wanted to visit, but that was all the visitors we planned for. We no longer had a formal dining room, we didn’t have a large yard to tend to, and we no longer had to worry about cleaning basements, attics, or garages. We had a parking space in a covered parking lot. We didn’t tell anyone about our plans until we had all of our plans in the works. My husband and I had grown tired of tending to HVAC systems. In the condo, we had a ductless HVAC system. The HVAC maintenance crew that was part of our HOA did all the care of the heating and air conditioning. When our daughter and sons found out, they were livid. They couldn’t believe we would decide to move without first consulting them. They thought we should have told them because they were worried about where they would stay when they visited. I smiled and told them there were plenty of hotels in the hotel and their HVAC was almost as good as ours. I made sure they knew the girls had a room if they wanted to visit, but we wanted privacy without the worry of HVAC maintenance or tending to a larger-than-life house.

climate control