You won’t miss it.

The topic of this blog is…You won’t miss it.

My wife and I have had some big homes along the way…up to 8000 square feet for just the two of us. By the way…we found we were happier in a normal size home. Well prior to retirement we moved to a normal sized home and got rid of some stuff.

When we did retire in 2008, we got very serious about getting rid of stuff and started looking for a much smaller home. I found lots of stuff I loved, but had not even looked at in 40 years. Example…the newsletters from my old regional office at Allstate. I had about 100 of those. Stored them…never looked at them again. They took up a lot of space. So, I looked for stuff I wanted to keep, scanned that article or photo and threw away the newsletter. Did the same with my physical photos…found a thousand or so I wanted to keep and sent them to a service to be scanned into digital photos. I got rid of the stuff that takes up space…that I loved…that I never looked at…and that those who will inherit my estate will end up tossing in the trash.

Old newspapers…gone. Old magazines…gone. Receipts on stuff I no longer own…gone. Shoes in great shape that I will never ever wear in Hawaii…gone. And so it went…gone, gone, gone. That was eight years ago. There is not one thing I got rid of that I miss AT ALL. The only thing my wife got rid of that she and I still miss is a Sago Palm that we loved and could not bring to Hawaii. It is the centerpiece of a Mexican restaurant in Chicagoland and very well taken care of.

I still have junk to get rid of. We have boxes we brought to Hawaii in 2010 for our new house that we have never opened…soon to be gone, gone, gone. Shame on us for waiting this long.

Your possessions act as an anchor in your retirement. They cause you to own more space than you would otherwise need, take up your time, they get harder and harder to lift and move around, if you move to the tropics they rust or get moldy and are eventually ruined. And then there comes that day when you and your spouse are goners and your kids (hopefully they are about 90 years old themselves by then) start to open boxes in your garage or basement or attic and just about feel like crying…not from the memories, but from the work ahead.

You will not miss it…ditch it.

Aloha,

Don Hurzeler