Never Waste a Step (Revisited)
I'm reposting this from October 10, 2010 with a little update below (in bold).
My son's great Grandma
Palmer used to say, "Never waste your steps". After now living in a house
with two separate flights of stairs, I think of Grandma Palmer almost every
single day as I run up and down these steps no less than 100 times a day and I
totally get what she meant by those words.
When Gene traveled to Tri-Cities to find a house to buy, it never occurred to me that there was a really important item missing on the "must have" list for buying this house. You see, there is no bathroom on our main floor. One must choose to climb stairs before commencing their business or one can choose to fly down stairs and save the climbing for afterwards. The bedrooms and all the dirty laundry are on the top floor, and the washer/dryer are in the basement. And when the dirty laundry becomes the clean laundry, there's another two flights of stairs for every laundry basket.
I've been thinking a lot about never wasting my steps pretty much ever since I turned 50 ... which was slightly over three years ago. I mean this in a literal sense because my knees started aching ever so much more after we moved here but also in the not-so-literal sense. Sometimes when I'm thinking I should go to the store, my second thought is could I live another day without going to the store? There were times this last summer that we were running so much that I didn't make it to the grocery store for almost 3 weeks at a time. We could pretty much live on the food we've stored away for a few months without having to make a trip to the store. Do I want to live on canned chili and powdered milk? Oh, hell no! But I have to admit that sometimes it's kind of fun to see how long I can put off those things I hate doing so much, like going to the grocery store. I have come up with some pretty funky ideas for dinner and there's always a can of peaches to top it off!
I don't know why this has been on my mind so much lately ... maybe it's the aching knees or maybe it's the change in seasons. Or maybe it's because I should have gone to the store this morning. But I still have about 2 cups of milk left in the gallon jug and plenty of eggs to make it til next week along with grapes & celery and one old head of purple cabbage in the fridge. I think I'll skip the store and use that time to make some home-made bagels today while the laundry is finishing up and I'm bustling between floors in this big, old house. It'll give me a chance to think about Grandma Palmer and my dearly departed mother-in-law, Adelle, who would be so proud of me for making home-made bagels, while I'm doing something useful and not wasting my steps ....
When Gene traveled to Tri-Cities to find a house to buy, it never occurred to me that there was a really important item missing on the "must have" list for buying this house. You see, there is no bathroom on our main floor. One must choose to climb stairs before commencing their business or one can choose to fly down stairs and save the climbing for afterwards. The bedrooms and all the dirty laundry are on the top floor, and the washer/dryer are in the basement. And when the dirty laundry becomes the clean laundry, there's another two flights of stairs for every laundry basket.
I've been thinking a lot about never wasting my steps pretty much ever since I turned 50 ... which was slightly over three years ago. I mean this in a literal sense because my knees started aching ever so much more after we moved here but also in the not-so-literal sense. Sometimes when I'm thinking I should go to the store, my second thought is could I live another day without going to the store? There were times this last summer that we were running so much that I didn't make it to the grocery store for almost 3 weeks at a time. We could pretty much live on the food we've stored away for a few months without having to make a trip to the store. Do I want to live on canned chili and powdered milk? Oh, hell no! But I have to admit that sometimes it's kind of fun to see how long I can put off those things I hate doing so much, like going to the grocery store. I have come up with some pretty funky ideas for dinner and there's always a can of peaches to top it off!
I don't know why this has been on my mind so much lately ... maybe it's the aching knees or maybe it's the change in seasons. Or maybe it's because I should have gone to the store this morning. But I still have about 2 cups of milk left in the gallon jug and plenty of eggs to make it til next week along with grapes & celery and one old head of purple cabbage in the fridge. I think I'll skip the store and use that time to make some home-made bagels today while the laundry is finishing up and I'm bustling between floors in this big, old house. It'll give me a chance to think about Grandma Palmer and my dearly departed mother-in-law, Adelle, who would be so proud of me for making home-made bagels, while I'm doing something useful and not wasting my steps ....
Fast forward to October 2012 .... Never wasting steps has been on my mind a lot lately. Part of it is that I'm becoming a lot more forgetful. You know what I mean. I go downstairs to do something ... and can't remember what it was. My method for remembering has always been to go back to where I started. OMG ... back up those stairs again?
I sometimes forget to not waste my steps. If I go anywhere empty-handed, I've forgotten this wonderful tip. At work, it's a long way to the kitchen and bathroom from my cube. I try to remember to take care of all my business in one trip. It really stinks when I get all the way down to the bathroom and remember that I was going to get a cup of tea.
Do you make the most of your steps?
love, susan
Exercise is good for health, so I rather like the up and down of our house. Read one of those little statistics awhile back that was enlightening. SUPPOSEDLY a person that lives in a two story house lives about 2.3 years longer on average than someone in a single story house.. so I extrapolate that out to 4.6 years longer if you are in an in effect three story house... so Live Long & Prosper... DO NOT DESPAIR THE STAIR!
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