“Retirement is when having a good time is your only job.” – Author Unknown
The 12 days of Christmas celebrations have come to an end and Epiphany is behind us for another year, it is time to get my stuff organized. Of course, all the decorations are coming down and getting packed away, but in our neighborhood the outside lights stay on in the evenings well until March. Might seem a strange custom, but one resident said, “it makes us feel happy to see all the lights”. I agree, and due to the cold gripping, us at the moment, maybe the lights stay on because of the weather too!
This is a perfect moment to take stock of all kinds of stuff, not just the Christmas decorations. Normally, I would try to get everything down and tucked away in the shortest amount of time. After all this part of de-Christmas-ing is not pleasant. It’s funny how much ‘family help’ there always is for decorating the tree, but very little participation for the taking down tradition. It’s just as well. I always found that when my kids were not interested in an activity the quality of their help was suspect.
As I prepare for putting away Christmas, I’m thinking about another project and that is taking a household inventory. Eventually this will turn into a proper detailed and itemized inventory, but for now I’m thinking more broadly about retirement planning inventory. I’m curious to see a list of all the treasures I have tucked into little corners around the house which will feature more prominently in retirement than they do now.
For example, the physical necessities of life are not that much when you consider moving oversees. We went through the process of selecting what we really needed to have with us when we moved to the UK. In so doing, everything else we wanted to keep, went into storage. While it has been so much fun to unpack all those things, the reality is, much of it is for retirement. I still don’t use or need most of it on a daily basis. This is a sad statement of fact to be examined at another time. For now, I’m excited to get a handle on what I am working with!
I’m a hopeful person. I like to think about the glass being half full. I am endlessly curious, ask lots of questions and easily ponder how to make things better in life. I have also been known to bite off more than I can chew when it comes to taking on new projects. Because this is my nature, I’ve tried so many things, discovering what I like and don’t like along the way. But, we have moved a lot in the last decade and I quite honestly don’t know what I have kept and what I have given away. It’s time to solve that mystery.
I remember a moment of ‘downsizing’ when I looked forlornly at my stamp collection. This was started when I was just a teenager and I have since watched the changing global structure through postage stamps. In the early days of corporate business travel I used to collect stamps from every country I went to. Particularly in Asia the hotels used to give you a courtesy postage stamp for mailing a postcard home. Those days are long gone both for me and the way hotels treat guests. Decades later as I contemplated my stamp collection, I considered getting rid of it for lack of usefulness. My husband said no, “you will want that when you retire.” And so there became a space in my thoughts for these retirement projects.
The objective now is to create an architecture around my interests, beginning with what I already have in my possession. This is going to be like following a trail of clues. Much of what I own is in a very small form, unlike my childhood stamp collection. I might have a book or a magazine clipping as the single source of my interest. It might be a small thing inside a larger box of items, tucked away under the guest room bed. This will be something of a treasure hunt, exciting!
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