Two years ago on March 31, 2017, I wrote a blog post from Spokane, WA, just before my husband and I moved lock, stock & barrel to the fine state of Georgia. I might have called that Things in Wrong Places, because we were between houses and living in a small apartment, with room in the kitchen for only pots, pans, dishes, glasses and silverware, and no food.  A friend asked ~ after we found places for the silverware, the crockpot and the electric skillet I insisted I needed ~ “Where are you going to put your food?”  I think I said something like, “Shut up,” and if I didn’t, I was sure thinking it. The realization hit me about the time she asked.  The food? Where was I going to put the food?

We had numerous things in wrong places in that small apartment for 5 months, including the food, which ended up living in the china cabinet in the small dining area of the living room. We’d go to the hutch for cereal, soups, pastas, and more. We had baking things in the drawer and the family booze in the lower part of the china cabinet. It worked.  Awkward, but it worked.

Now, here in our small retirement house in Georgia, only 12 minutes from my daughter, hubby and grandson, we have found places for everything we need. Maybe not everything we want, but definitely everything we need.

In fact, we pared down so many things in Spokane that we now know exactly where everything lives in this house. There is usually only one place to put any given thing – whether dinner plates, salad plates and bowls (on the shelf underneath the glasses); coffee cups (on hooks that are under the ‘odd things’ cabinet – gravy boat, corn on the cob holders, butter dish and the family booze; everything else is either in mine or his offices (spare bedrooms), the bathrooms (two). or the hall linen closet that we cherish.

As I live here now, knowing where everything lives in this small house – a place for everything and everything in its place, I realize that I am also finally in the place where I am supposed to be. For once, since leaving college oh, so many years ago, I now live exactly where I am supposed to live. I have come home, to the right place ~ a patch of land in Colbert, GA, miles from any grocery store, shopping center, cleaners, movie or restaurant, but close to the post office, drugstore, bank, church, gas station, Dollar Store and Ace Hardware. Trade offs, I call them.

Life is pretty simple here, which happens, I now know, with the realization that we are also two of the pared down things that seem to be exactly where we need to be. I can truthfully say this Florida girl feels like she’s come home, and it seems my husband, an Iowa boy born and raised, has come home to Georgia, as well. This is our retirement and it is fitting us well.