FAMILY8 - Our Move to Independent Living

My last blog article was posted on December 17, 2024. That’s quite a down time for posting for me. During that time, Pat and I moved from my home of almost 30 years to a senior independent living community - so we were just a little busier than usual. This blog is the story of that move; a future blog will cover the story of selling the house we moved from.

This article will cover a short description of our large home, our motivation for moving, a description of the senior independent living community we selected and our preferred bungalow accommodation, our extreme good luck in having a bungalow come available in a relatively short time, our considerable downsizing efforts, the move itself, and finally a description of our new bungalow home.

Home for 30 Years

In 1994, I bought a view lot in what was to become the Canyon Ridge gated community in the Catalina Foothills, atop the steep hill on Snyder Road, leading west from Kolb Road. I sketched out ideas for my ideal home; a prime requirement was to accommodate and display my growing Native American and Western art collection. I hired an architect “to make my plan legal,” then hired a builder, and moved into my new home, with 2955 square feet of living space, in December 1995. In 2006, Pat joined me, we combined households, and continued to collect Native and American and Western art in our wonderful home with fantastic views of Tucson and the Catalina Mountains.

My home for almost 30 years, atop a ridge, in the Catalina Foothills.

I designed the house to accommodate and display my art collection.

Motivation

Two issues drove Pat’s and my decision to make this move. First, I was tired of the responsibilities of home ownership and maintenance. Not just the occasional major maintenance or repair projects like plumbing repairs, replacing appliances, painting the house, or refurbishing the roof, but the everyday management of regular services like pest control; pool, landscape, and air conditioning maintenance; handyman services; plus dealing with a homeowner’s association. And then there were the constant costs for property taxes, homeowner’s association fees, Rural Metro services, garbage collection, security monitoring, utilities - on and on.

The more important motivation was our age and current/future health considerations - especially in a three-level home with lots of stairs. We wanted to make this move while both of us were healthy enough to make the inevitable hard choices together, rather than one of us in the future having to carry the entire burden.

The Hacienda at the Canyon

Beginning in 2018, from our home on Canyon Ridge, we watched the luxury senior-living facility, The Hacienda at the Canyon, being built. We had no idea that a few years later, we would be moving to that new retirement community, only two miles south of us along Kolb Road and Sabino Canyon Road - literally in our Santa Catalina Foothills neighborhood.

Opening in December 2019, the main central buildings included 163 independent living units, 68 assisted living units, and 40 memory care units. Since then, the community has expended to include 41 independent-living bungalows and casitas on north and south campuses. Today, the community, featuring attractive Spanish-style architecture, covers 60 acres and houses about 350 residents.

The Town Center complex at The Hacienda at the Canyon.

Emphasizing individual health and wellness, The Hacienda at the Canyon offers a wide range of physical fitness opportunities, specialty workshops, classes, lectures, movies, visits to local attractions, and even shopping excursions. Five food venues range from informal cafes to fine dining.

In the summer of 2024, Pat and I began to think seriously about moving to a retirement community. We talked to former neighbor, Barbara Leonard, who had recently moved to The Hacienda at the Canyon and received glowing reports on the retirement community and good advice on moving companies and realtors.

In late August, we made our first visit to The Hacienda at the Canyon. We quickly decided that it was the place for us - the facilities, the amenities, the helpful and friendly staff, not to mention the location in our familiar Catalina Foothills neighborhood.

We soon officially declared our interest in joining The Hacienda at the Canyon community. Our preferred floorplan was a (one-story) bungalow, with 1650 square feet of living space, and carport.

Our preferred residence type at The Hacienda at the Canyon was a bungalow like this one.

General bungalow floor plan with 1650 square feet of living space.

Unfortunately, we were advised that there was a significant waiting list. Bungalows are popular and the turnover rate is slow; we were told that “there might be some availability within a year.”

Our Good Luck

Appreciating that we were super-interested in becoming members of The Hacienda at the Canyon community as soon as possible, our membership contact person there made us aware of an approach to membership that might get us into a bungalow in much less than a year: pay for a membership, and rent an available, small assisted-living apartment right away, instantly becoming community members (with community privileges), and declaring our future interest in getting a bungalow. In late September, we signed up for this strategy, becoming “place holders,” positioned second on the internal waiting list for a bungalow. The internal waiting list took priority over the much longer external waiting list, so we hoped to secure a bungalow in a few months, rather than in a year or more.

Note: In this period when we were “place holders,” we had access to all the many activities, and discounts at the restaurants; this greatly helped our overall transition to The Hacienda at the Canyon.

As our good luck would have it, in late November, we were advised that a bungalow would soon become available. In December, as the then current occupants completed moving out, and cleaning and minor fix-ups were accomplished, we were able to visit our future new home, Bungalow 21, several times, taking careful measurements and planning our future furniture layout.

Remarkably, well ahead of our original expectations, on January 28, 2025, we moved into our new Bungalow 21 home.

Our new home, Bungalow 21, at The Hacienda at the Canyon.

Downsizing

Even though we started out at the bottom of a long external bungalow waiting list in August 2024, we began downsizing immediately, with (in retrospect) unbelievable confidence that our dreams would come true in a reasonable time period. The challenge was stark: eventually moving from a home of 2955 square feet, filled with furniture and treasures, to a new home of only 1650 square feet.

Note: I include these downsizing details as examples of the hard decisions that must be made when moving into a retirement community, and the importance of Pat and me being able to make these decisions together.

I began with our garage of all places. There were boxes and boxes of detailed paper notes and research materials for the seven books and hundreds of newspaper columns and blog articles that I had written over the last 25 years since I retired from Raytheon. I went through it all, collecting hundreds of paper and binder clips, before repeatedly filling our recycle garbage can.

Next, we began to tackle the job of significantly reducing the art collection assembled over the last 60 years. The house was filled with large Navajo rugs, large pots, and just about every other type of Native American and Western art.

We started with our family, letting them choose what they wanted.

Pat had occasionally sold pieces of art to Mark Sublette, owner of the Medicine Man art gallery near us, so we turned to him for advice. He visited our home, surveyed the collection, and said he would be interested in including our high-end pieces in his gallery’s weekly online auctions. Over two weeks of auctions, he sold a significant part of our collection. It was tough to give up so many of our treasures, but we were glad that they were purchased by people who would appreciate them. We did, however, hang on to some of our prized smaller pieces.

Pat and I are both avid readers and had many books on Arizona history, Native American art, science, knitting, and many other subjects. We looked for places to donate most of the books, wanting to retain only our favorites or potentially useful books. My brother Al Ring, who lives in Tucson, an avid historian, took some of the history books. Mark Sublette’s son took quite a few of the Native American and Arizona history books, and most of the rest, we donated to the Friends of the Library. I donated a copy of the seven books that I had written (some with my brother Al) to The Hacienda at the Canyon.

The other major downsizing driver was an entire adult life of family photo albums - cabinets, and cabinets full. My youngest son Steven graciously accepted responsibility for them. We physically retained only our most recent albums, plus a couple of family history notebooks that my brother Al had prepared. We also kept a complete historical file of family history and photos on our electronic devices.

Beyond that, it was household items and furniture. I can’t tell you how many trips we made to the Goodwill collection center with household items.

By January 2025, we had downsized considerably, except for furniture, which we held off on, pending our work with our full-service mover, Caring Transitions. See below.

The Move

Our friend Barbara had used Caring Transitions for her move and highly recommended them. The staff at The Hacienda at the Canyon also spoke highly of this company that had moved many of their residents. Caring Transitions operates across the country; my son John and his wife Cathleen recently used them to move Cathleen’s mother in San Diego, and said the experience was great, “They do everything!”

I call Caring Transitions a full-service mover. They help plan the move, and then do the packing, moving, unpacking, and item and furniture placement (according to the plan). A few days after the move, they come back and “hang the art.” They also take care of anything the customer doesn’t move for whatever reason (e.g., wouldn’t fit in the new place) by auctioning, donating, or trashing the left-over stuff. The customer can choose to do some of the packing/moving/unpacking/placement themselves (e.g., moving the kitchen).

We signed up with Caring Transitions in mid-December. Their representative visited us in our Foothills home, listened to our requirements and initial move thinking, and took measurements and photos of the furniture and major household items. Because my desk was built-in and couldn’t be moved, and we anticipated the need for additional storage, we bought a new desk and a large media console. Caring Transitions produced a layout plan for Bungalow 21 that identified where our stuff would go and how it would fit. After several iterations, including Caring Transitions convincing us that sofa beds took up too much room (for very infrequent visitors), we finalized the plan.

Caring Transitions produced this floor plan with the numbers showing the after-move position of our furniture. Note that the floor plan of Bungalow 21 is reversed from the general example above.

On January 27, 2025, Caring Transitions packed up our stuff, and the next day moved it to Bungalow 21 at The Hacienda at the Canyon. The move went smoothly, we made a few “placement” adjustments during the move, and were very pleased with the whole experience.

Note: We had moved and “placed” a few things ourselves, including the entire kitchen, refrigerator contents, and a few prized art pieces. Remember, we only lived about two miles and a five-minute drive from the house to the new bungalow.

We kept and moved a considerable number of remaining pieces of Native American and Western art, including Navajo rugs, pots, bronzes, baskets, kachinas, paintings, and prints. We also moved several blow-ups of some our favorite scenic photos printed on cloth. Ten days after the move, Caring Transitions came back to “hang” the art that we had not yet taken care of - a fun and very satisfying experience.

Meanwhile, on February 4^th, Caring Transitions packed and removed the remaining stuff we didn’t move - headed towards auction, donation, or trashing. The auction of remaining appropriate items (including, believe it or not, several more pieces of art) started on February 19^th and continues as I post this article.

Our New Home

We are very satisfied with our new home - very happy with how our furniture fits in, and looks, in the smaller bungalow, and with how the art that we brought looks. (We did such a good job downsizing that we had to go back to the house after the move to retrieve a table and three pots.)

We also love our location on The Hacienda at the Canyon campus, being close to, but shielded from, the main town center buildings and eating places.

After being here just a few weeks, we are really enjoying meeting new people, the food, and the many activities. We particularly appreciate the remarkable friendliness of our fellow residents; we’ve been asked out to dinner more since we moved in, than had dinner out with others in years.

See below a few photos of our new digs: