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| Kitchen, Dining Room, and Living Room in the RV. This picture was taken while setting up dinner seating for ten one cold January day. Happy times! |
When I retired and began to explore what I
needed to be happy in retirement I began to look differently at all the stuff I
had accumulated during my “career” life.
All of a sudden I was no longer in a collecting mode, but in a utilizing
mode. And I realized that to be happy I
really did not need to utilize nearly all I had collected.
At retirement, my wife and I decided to become
RV'ers. We are not “full-timers” like
some of our friends because we still have a home base house. We are more what could be referred to as
“anytimers”. But when we are on the road
it has pleasantly suprised me how happy we are in the approximately 300 square feet of
space we have in our fifth wheel RV. And
I am not talking about being in the 300 square feet just for a weekend. Sometime we travel for weeks at a time. If it doesn't fit in that space we really do
not seem to need it to be happy. But
what about all the other stuff we have collected in the other forty many years
(actually we are closer to fifty years than to forty) of our marriage? It turns out it is just stuff.
All of that stuff seemed like essential stuff
at one time, and it may have been, but it is certainly no longer essential for
our day to day happiness. We are not
ready to get rid of it, but we don't have to have it to be happy.
Let me
illustrate with an entry dated October 5 from a diary kept on a trip that began
on September 1 of last year –
“We started this
trip with a freezer full of food prepared at home: soups, casseroles, etc. We are now down to a chicken casserole, taco
meat and a one pound package of hamburger meat. Tonight was jambalaya - so good
on a cold night! We have also been using an RV size refrigerator. Have done
fine with it. Makes you wonder why we feel we need a huge one at home…. “
These diary entry thoughts were recorded while happily sitting in a recliner in the RV that evening watching
"Xtreme RV's" on HGTV!
I've got the biggest freezer I've ever had, but last week while John Ryan and his family were here, I was wishing for a bigger one. Don't know if that makes me still 'collecting' but I'm still having fun.
ReplyDeleteThere is never enough space in our freezer at our house, but strangely when we are not at the house it doesn't seem to matter.
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