<p>I don’t understand it either. But that is the world she lives in. She is a spender. When she told me what her heating bill was and I suggested she turn down the heat she tells me she doesn’t want to live that way. Ditto electric bill. She has no concept of living on a budget. </p>
<p>We (my H, parents, cousins) thought she was out of her mind hiring that architect, especially for a very ordinary house (1920’s Dutch Colonial.) And we told her many times that spending that kind of money on a kitchen was nuts. </p>
<p>She spent $40K just to do the teeny bathroom (not even big enough for a bathtub) off her bedroom at least 15 years ago. She is crazy.</p>
<p>soozievt – I think I’d have at least twice as much stuff if we’d been here 36 years!</p>
<p>We’ve been doing this clearing out pretty much every weekend for the past month. At first, it was kind of fun, finding old drawings the kids did or their old skates, etc. And I took the time to find someone who needed S’s old baseball mitts and bag or D’s collection of beanies. </p>
<p>Now I feel like just renting a dumpster and throwing out everything they don’t claim.</p>
<p>For little more than 400K, really, you might be able to rebuild the whole house and expand it a little, without redo the foundation and basement. That is what we are doing here in Ca. Now, I am not sure if construction cost in Scarsdale is much higher than say, in Hillsborough, but that is manageable by selecting contractors.</p>
<p>Near my uncle’s house, in Bedford, some one even put a modular home on a vacant land and it is still worth a lot of money these days.</p>
<p>Remodeling anything in Scarsdale to any home is expensive and a huge PITA. They have approval down to the look of the window you want to put in and are extremely arbitrary. It wouldn’t surprise if modular homes are not allowed.</p>
<p>There is no way that house would cost 17K to operate. Mortgage and tax payment would be about 5300, so how is she spending the other 12K? Are you sure she is not including other unrelated expenses? </p>
<p>About 4 years ago we spent around 125K for a fairly large kitchen. H got a Wolfe stove, fancy fridge and refridge drawers, top of the line cabinets, farmer’s sink, etc. He didn’t replace the floor. But guess what, when we sold the house 2 years ago the buyer said they wanted to replace the kitchen because it wasn’t their liking. I really couldn’t figure out what was offensive about our kitchen.</p>
<p>It can be done! I took Hillsborough as a comparison, but that town is PITA to work with as well, nevertheless, plenty of construction is going on. </p>
<p>There must be some thing wrong with the monthly 17K cost of running that house. I have a lot of friends live in that area and their cost is no where near the 17K mark.</p>
<p>A few years ago a tree fell and almost cracked the house in half.</p>
<p>They had to gut the entire house down to the studs, take off the roof, fix the structural problems and rebuild everything. It took 18 months…</p>
<p>Total cost about $850,000.</p>
<p>Their house is is slightly larger than the one in question according to Zillow, although they have a finished 3rd floor which I don’t think Zillow is counting.</p>
<p>Oldfort - her taxes are $17K a year. It costs her $15K a month to run her house (I know, not a big difference.) </p>
<p>I don’t think so. Just most of the stuff I mentioned already. But she spends money on things most of us wouldn’t think are necessary that add to her costs. It’s one thing to pay for someone to mow your lawn once a week but she has her landscaper plant all her flowers and do the weeding, too. She pays a cleaning lady $300 a week to clean her house and it’s just her and her H at home! </p>
<p>Believe me, I was shocked when she told me so I added up what it costs me and it’s not even $3K/month.</p>
<p>Remodeling and additions are usually much more expensive per sq. foot than building from scratch. </p>
<p>She didn’t want to build a whole new house. She only wanted to add a kitchen. She couldn’t even build a much bigger house since her lot is so teeny.</p>
<p>It is a true story, my prior monthly cleaning lady told me she has a client who hired her to clean the house Everyday for about $100/day. They have to clean everything with a tooth brush and a swab. Everything must be spotless. For that kind of money and if that is what your sister wants, it is possible that her cost of upkeep could be 15K/mo. Does it include catering? since she does not cook.</p>
<p>soozievt: Do NOT just move the stuff to the basement. When you touch it for the first time, you must move it to its final resting place – either a box to move, or a box to get out of the house. If you have a Goodwill or Salvation Army in your town, that’s where it should go. Every time you get in your car, take a bag or a box to them. You should be spending about a third of your time decluttering. Tackle one room at a time. </p>
<p>When I did this in the spring of 2012, I got rid of things like tablecloths, napkins, placemats that had been my mother’s; towels, blankets and sheets that I never used; lots of my clothes that I hadn’t worn in years; books that I was never going to read again and, if I did, I’d get them from the library. My husband joked that I considered clutter anything that belonged to him. (He wasn’t really too far off!) </p>
<p>With your children, let them handle it in small bites. Both my boys are far away, so I wound up doing things like taking a photo of all their shoes and emailing it to them: “Tell me which ones to keep and which ones to get rid of.” Or, even worse, “Do you want me to keep your Pokemon cards?”</p>
<p>I could not imagine to sell that house will result a lower monthly upkeep cost. Manhattan would cost lot more to buy and maintain. And a smaller house in a lower neighborhood will not fit her personality. Besides, the $300/week cleaning bill will not be that much different. Unless move to Phoenix is in the plan.</p>
<p>“Does it include catering? since she does not cook.”</p>
<p>No, they eat out almost every night or she brings home from Balducci’s. Which is where she buys whatever little food she buys to have in the house. </p>
<p>She also has monthly alarm company bills, garbage pick up (she pays extra because the come all the way up the driveway to pick it up) exterminator, snowplow guy…</p>
<p>They are planning on a townhouse in Ct. It should be cheaper.</p>
<p>^^I’m surprised that for those taxes the town doesn’t do the garbage pick up. Or has she hired someone to move it from the garage to the curb? ;)</p>
<p>^ I think the town does pick it up but charge if you want them to go down the driveway to get it. </p>
<p>I am sure almost everyone in Scarsdale pays the extra charge. I have never seen any garbage cans on the curbs ever and I have been visiting my sister there for over 30 years.</p>
<p>I agree. You are going to have to do this when you move anyway. Waiting until you move will just add stress onto an already tough situation. </p>
<p>We did this before we put our house on the market last fall. It was a huge undertaking, but it felt so good when it was all done, and believe you me, the move about did me in. I cannot imagine having to deal with all of that at the same time.</p>
<p>emilybee, obviously rural VT (where I live) is not Scarsdale. But it is astounding to me that her 2100 sq. ft. home and small lot (and I saw the photos) is worth $900,000. My home is bigger and on 5.5 acres and I’ll be happy to get half of that. </p>
<p>Classof2015, yes, it is 36 years’ worth of stuff, but we have only lived in this house which we had built 21 years ago. </p>
<p>VeryHappy and Nrdsb4…I should clarify that I am not simply just moving stuff to the basement. My basement is already full of stuff. But as I go through certain things, for instance, years and years worth of clothing, it is temporarily going into the basement where there is even far more years worth of clothing, so then we’ll tackle the basement at one time as the last step. But there has been a lot of sorting, like cataloguing photos and home videos and what not. The getting rid of phase is still to come. I have boxes of the kids’ schoolwork by year, and lots of things like that! Books galore back to our college days. Sports equipment, skis, bikes. Entire childhoods’ toys. Did someone say Beanie Babies? Oh, those too…those are still in the kids’ rooms. But I have bags and bags of stuffed animals now too. I even have years worth of teaching materials as I was once teacher with lots of hands-on materials. Kids’ college furnishings and the like. And so on and on and on and on!</p>
<p>My kids’ lives are so full that they have no time to travel home to help. Right now, trying to get it in order to be able to put the house on the market, but not yet move. It should be easier to move eventually when the house is sold once things are organized and more stuff in the basement is gotten rid of (now, I mean).</p>
<p>By the way, where i live, I have to pay for plowing, trash pick up and lawn mowing.</p>