I’m not technically there yet. Still 14 months to go. But I did it! I made the hard call to the boss Thursday.

The day job was really wearing me down, like to the point of fearing I might not make it to the finish line. The thought of commuting through another hard winter was wearing me down. Not being able to focus more on my passion was wearing me down.

So… I retired early!! I need to shout it out and celebrate! Going out before my pension kicks in is still retirement, right? Even if it is scarier?

Lot’s of changes in our lifestyle ahead, which means… It’s Time to Simplify!

I’m already going through my accumulated junk (aka, treasures). Here are a few precious things I’m memorializing before I toss them out.

Living in the same place for 25 years can make anyone a hoarder, right? (That’s my excuse, and I’m sticking to it.) We’ve purged things every time we made a big move, but this is the longest stretch between bouts of purging. One of those moves included living in a travel trailer for half a year, which meant I really had to purge. Still, I managed to hold onto things from my childhood, high school, starting out in life…

Each decade in this home I became obsessed with a new hobby. My craft room is brimming with stuff from my mixed media art days, knitting and crochet days, scrapbooking days, journaling days, and cross stitching days. Did I really think I would use up all that stuff? I never gave a thought to what I would do if I had to clean it out. It’s oddly both exhilarating and deflating.

Getting rid of favorite books and LPs, hordes of yarn, and other precious stashes is really hard. The labor to sort through it all (without loosening precarious piles on top of my head or flooding my floor space) is hard.

After a summer of all that bittersweet labor, you might find me like this by next winter.

I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.