What makes me the angriest about getting older is losing strength. Not that I was a female Charles Atlas, but lifting a 25-pound bag of potatoes or flour wasn’t an impossible task.

Last week, I had to cave in to old age and buy a sponge mop. I always hated them, as in my mind they don’t really get a floor clean. Scrubbing the floor on hands and knees was my routine for many years, but eventually it became difficult to do. It took me at least six months to give that up and get an old-fashioned clamp mop, one that needed to be wrung out by hand. I got the first one at an old general store in South Windham – and it was the only one left because most people preferred the easy to use (and almost disposable) sponge mops.

The day came when even that old clamp mop wore out. It wasn’t an easy thing to replace, since manufacturers had pretty much cut down on making them and hardware stores carried only a couple. I lucked out and got one, but didn’t notice the length of the handle. Perfect fit for a 6-footer, but a little awkward for a woman who had lost a couple inches in height – and was never that tall to start with. I thought about sawing two feet off the handle, but a saw wasn’t in my kitchen inventory. So I made do, and maneuvered it around like changing the direction of a sail. The floor got clean.

Every time I washed the floor was an occasion of cursing and my wondering why I hadn’t gone with my original plans for life: to run a literary salon in Paris and be a kept woman.

Last week, after wringing out the mop head (quite a task), and wiping the kitchen floor, I sat down for a rest. After a couple glasses of ice water and some deep breathing, I made the tough decision to give up and not worry about those little corners that will always be unclean,

So, I got an easy-to-use mop, plain and simple. There are some that have attachments and a cupboard full of fancy cleaning liquids and throwaway cloths for cleaning – but a mop investment shouldn’t equal the amount of a phone bill or electricity for the month. I opted for a regular, old-fashioned (?) cellulose sponge thing. It works OK. Requires hardly any strength!

I remember after open-heart surgery, I was advised to “go easy” and not to lift anything that weighed more than 5 pounds. What a joke, I thought, that’s a bag of sugar. But I did as the experts advised and soon enough, I got my strength back.

In the 15 years since then, little by little, muscles once in use all the time now become less used. Endurance diminishes – it’s a good thing I don’t have to hang up long clotheslines full of heavy, wet clothes. I find myself not able to lift a really full grocery tote with one hand and set it in the bed of a pickup. Nowadays, it takes two hands and good “heave” upward.

My giving in to the reality of age means getting easier-to-use tools. And yet, if I had some of those pads football players wear on their knees, I’d be right in that corner, digging out that dark spot I can see but cannot reach.

Kay Soldier welcomes reader ideas for column topics of interest to seniors. She can be reached by email at kso48@aol.com, or write to 114 Tandberg Trail, Windham, ME 04062.