How We Started Simplifying Our Home Before Retirement

By Paul Williams • ChristianBread.com

It started with a closet.

Not a grand plan. Not a system. Not a book I'd read about minimalism. Just my wife standing in the doorway of our guest room closet one Saturday morning, looking at thirty years of accumulated stuff, and saying: "I don't want to move all of this."

We're not moving yet. But retirement is close enough on the horizon that we've started thinking like people who are. And when you think that way, you start seeing your house differently.

You stop seeing what you own. You start seeing what you'd have to pack.

Why We Started Before We Had To

Most people, from what I can tell, deal with stuff when they're forced to. They downsize when the house gets sold. They declutter when a parent passes and they're standing in someone else's lifetime of belongings, overwhelmed and grieving at the same time.

I didn't want that to be us.

There's also something else going on for me — something harder to name. The more I've been thinking about what I want retirement to actually look like, the more I've realized that the life I want doesn't require most of what we own. The slower pace, the land we dream about, the mornings with coffee and no particular agenda — none of that needs a house full of things we haven't touched in a decade.

The stuff isn't neutral. It takes up space. It takes up mental energy. It carries weight you don't always notice until it's gone.

So we started.

What We Actually Did

We didn't hire a professional organizer. We didn't buy matching bins from the Container Store. We just started making decisions, one shelf at a time.

The guest room closet first. Then the garage. Then the kitchen — which took three weekends because my wife and I apparently have very different opinions about how many baking dishes a household needs.

Our rule was simple: if we haven't used it in two years, it goes. If we can't imagine it fitting in the next chapter of our life, it goes. If we only kept it because we felt guilty getting rid of it — it goes, and we say a small prayer of release over the donation box.

That last category turned out to be bigger than I expected.

There was a set of golf clubs I hadn't touched in eight years. A bread maker that came out twice. Boxes of my kids' old schoolwork I'd been saving since they were in elementary school — they're in their thirties now. Sports equipment for sports we no longer play. Clothes that fit the man I was, not the man I am.

It was slow. It was sometimes uncomfortable. And it was genuinely good.

The Thing Nobody Tells You About Letting Go

I expected decluttering to feel like loss. It mostly felt like relief.

Every bag that went to Goodwill, every box that went to the curb, every piece of furniture we sold on Facebook Marketplace — there was a lightness that came with it. Not just in the house. In me.

I think we attach more anxiety to our stuff than we realize. The half-finished projects. The things we bought with good intentions and never used. The objects that represent an older version of ourselves we're still dragging around. Getting rid of them isn't just tidying up. It's a kind of permission to move forward.

My wife put it better than I could. She said: "I feel like we're making room for what's next."

That's exactly it.

A Word on the Faith Side of This

I'll be honest — I didn't start this project thinking of it as a spiritual exercise. But somewhere in the middle of it, it started to feel like one.

Jesus had a lot to say about our relationship with stuff. More than most of us are comfortable with. "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth" isn't a suggestion. "You cannot serve both God and money" is a pretty direct statement. The rich young ruler walked away sad, and it wasn't because he was a bad person — it was because his possessions had a grip on him he hadn't fully reckoned with.

I don't think owning things is a sin. But I do think clinging to them is a symptom of something. A kind of fear, maybe. That we won't have enough. That who we are is bound up in what we have.

Simplifying has been a slow, quiet way of loosening that grip. Of practicing — in a very ordinary, domestic way — what it means to hold things loosely.

Where We Are Now

We're not done. Not even close. The garage still has corners I haven't touched, and there's a storage unit I've been avoiding for two years that I'm going to have to deal with eventually.

But the direction is clear. And the direction feels right.

If you're approaching retirement and you haven't started this yet — I'd gently encourage you to start small. One closet. One Saturday. You don't need a system. You just need to start making decisions and see what happens.

My guess is that what happens will surprise you.

It surprised me.

God bless,
Paul