Downsizing

My 78-year-old dad recently downsized from a gigantic house for 2 people into a very comfortable house for one person. It was a complicated ordeal involving high-level talks, precise organization, multi-state transportation, and lots and lots of color-coded stickers.

His new place looks great, and because it's much closer to my house than his old place was, I get to see a lot more of him. I also get to be on the receiving end of all the additional downsizing he does. Which means upsizing for me. Among other things, I now have an extra set of dish and glassware in a basement closet earmarked for my daughter when she moves out and gets a place of her own, a flat screen TV on the floor in my exercise room, and a couch butting up against the desk in my office.

Last week, Dad decided he no longer needed his stash of liqueurs. He used to like to have all sorts of different liqueurs to offer people as after-dinner drinks when they visited, or just so that if anyone were to say, for example, "Can you make me a Fuzzy Navel?" he could say, "Sure!" But he doesn't have many visitors these days. He and his senior friends just hang out at the pub in their retirement community.

So one day, my husband, kids, and I loaded up our car with all the bottles and brought them home. There were fruit and candy flavored vodkas and schnapps, regional specialties from exotic places, creme de this and creme de that. The excitment of our new goodies soon turned into a dilemma over where to store over a dozen bottles. Only one solution, then: drink them. The only questions were when, how, and in what order. Because my main goal is fewer bottles, I decided we should start with the ones that have the least left in them. My husband is more interested in attacking first the ones he is most interested in trying. So, we'll do some of both. Stay tuned.