…is a key to a longer, healthier life.
I’m not surprised. If it’s less than four or five flights, I’ll always take stairs, rather than an elevator, if I can, both because it’s better for me, and I don’t like waiting for elevators. I occasionally beat the people in the elevator.
But more importantly, given my relative lack of opportunities for elevator versus stairs, our house is built upside down. That is, the living area is upstairs, and bedrooms are upstairs. The front door is at the top of a long outside staircase, and the first thing we do in the morning, generally, is to go upstairs to the kitchen. We probably do those stairs dozens of times a day, given that my office is downstairs, and we are both retired/working from home.
The house design has the additional benefit that it’s better for sleeping, because the downstairs bedrooms are cooler than upstairs, even when we have skylights open in the living room.
Stairs + Gravity
I’m old enough to be deathly afraid of my stairs. Front door to the ground below.
Two sprained ankles and a sprained wrist in the past two years. Gravity was always involved.
I thank the stairs every time for helping my leg strength while ascending. If I do a Biden maneuver, I fail upward.
Descending, gravity will kick my ass.
I consciously choose to live with stairs. My legs/feet need the exercise.
Gravity kinda sucks. Hand rails don’t.
I suspect the ability to take stairs is an indicator of being healthy.
That is, the living area is upstairs, and bedrooms are upstairs. The front door is at the top of a long outside staircase, and the first thing we do in the morning, generally, is to go upstairs to the kitchen.
“Oh you think you had it tough? I had to go upstairs to go to bed at night, then upstairs again in the morning to eat breakfast and another flight of stairs upstairs out the front door! Then I had to walk to school 5 miles in three foot deep snow, 20 below zero, UPHILL BOTH WAYS. The when I got home it was upstairs to the living room to study and then upstairs to bed! All in a cardboard box in the middle of the street!” – Simberg of Yorkshire
I was trying to figure out how to tell him, but your way is better than anything I came up with. 🙂
I always figured it would be difficult to live in a house that had a floorplan laid down by M.C. Escher.
You ‘ad a ‘ouse! Luxury! We lived in in the middle of the road without a shoebox for protection. And all we ‘ad for breakfast was road gravel.