RETIREMENT REDUCTION: TO TRASH OR NOT TO TRASH

Retirement Reduction is the new code for dumping stuff.

You’ve heard it, I’ve heard it:

“Baby boomers need to downsize and stop hoarding.”

Has anyone figured out what to toss and what to keep?

Discover is here to help, or try to help. It’s as funny as it is helpful.

Following their good advice, throw everything out, sell everything, or set it on fire and walk away.

Don’t do that last one unless you’ve done your ‘research’ on fire control.

Does anyone remember the ‘good dishes’ from childhood? Me neither.

I just remember a bunch of dishes we never used because they were for ‘special occasions.’

How special we never knew.

My dad had a set of arrows, archery arrows, really nice, never been used. Why did he have them?

When his kids found them we took them in the backyard to play and broke them.

I’m not sure what the game was, but I remember the old man looking very disappointed.

His disappointment grew when he brought a dog home and we fed it his prized baseball glove.

The dog didn’t make the starting line-up.

If It’s Trash, Dump It

Easy to say, hard to do, when it comes to culling the collection.

It feels like that commercial with the older guy helping younger people avoid turning into their parents would be helpful.

The Discover article draws a hard line, the sort of line drawn by someone with a superior attitude: “Do what I say and you’ll feel better.”

Will You? Let’s See About That Retirement Reduction

If you’re not currently using your old TV, but you’re holding onto it for a rainy day, this is your permission to go ahead and drop that puppy off at the donation center.

You won’t feel better trying to pack a three hundred pound Trinitron down a flight of stairs if you aren’t ready, more than baby boomer ready. In other words hire someone, or invite a friend over and hand them the same back support you’re wearing.

Retirement is all about you! It’s time to downsize and let go of some of the things that served you well throughout the years…but is becoming more of a burden these days. 

‘Becoming more of a burden’ is a theme on this list. I’m suspicious of someone’s notion of what is and isn’t a burden. We already know we’re a ‘Boomer Burden.’

Every house has one, that drawer full of random things that just happen to pile up there over time. Sometimes that drawer overflows and becomes two junk drawers! 

Two junk drawers? Ha. Good one.

We get so used to having family dinners and feeding the masses, so shopping in bulk becomes a necessity! However, most people find in retirement, there’s no need for all those groceries! Besides, who wants to do all that cooking just to turn around and wash dishes for an hour. 

Who wants the cooking and cleaning? Any hands? I do. Wife and I go on grocery shopping dates and make food. Her’s is colorful and tasty in the moment. Mine is gray and lots of it. And it lasts all week. Mmm, mm.

That’s retirement reduction I like to chew on.

What To Keep? We Have A Choice Untouched By The Courts

Retirement is a time when you can finally be all about yourself. Don’t do anything you don’t want to do, don’t talk to anyone you don’t want to talk to, and don’t be bothered by things that aren’t worth your time. 

This is fine advice for cutting yourself off and then feeling like a neglected victim drowning in a pile of debris. Do you really want to stand up tall and tell those who keep their treasured crap in your storage space to come and get it, or else?

Find a better, less selfish, way for all of it.

Like all little cubbies in our house, after years and years, we can get an absurd amount of medication hoarded before we know it. 

The image included in getting rid of medication shows a ninety pill bottle of Oxy. Ninety? How old is this article. Ninety?

Staying active during retirement is important, but that doesn’t mean you need a fully stocked home gym. 

I don’t think this writer understands the concept of a ‘fully stocked gym,’ or retirement reduction. A fully stocked person who knows what a gym is for understands. And so do their kids who parked a massive squat rack, pull-up bar, and bench press in the garage near a fridge with cold beer.

Thank you, boys

Now comes the part every English major is guilty of:

A bookshelf full of books you know that you’ll probably never read can be more depressing than no books at all. If you haven’t gotten around to Moby Dick by retirement, it’s almost certainly not going to happen now. 

Want to know what’ more depressing? A quitter. And why pick on Moby Dick? What are the odds the list compiler even read the first page of Moby Dick?

Call me Ishmael.

The Discover list continues, and I will too, but for now I’m bookmarking the page to my hoarded list of bookmarks I hardly ever look at. I’m of the boomer generation, what’d you think I’d do. Throw it away?

Come on.

Can you tell us how many emails you keep, ‘just in case?’

Last note: There’s a difference between retirement reduction and assisted living.