Home Features Every Newly (Un)Retired Couple Needs
My husband has always been an entrepreneur. He loves the thrill of starting a new business, seeing a concept come to fruition, and then after a number of years selling the property and he moves on. (Fortunately for me, he doesn’t think that way about our marriage.)
So over the years, Carl has had many offices. Eight offices in ten years to be exact. Don’t get me wrong, I love my husband’s creativity, drive and work ethic. But recently we decided since he’s cut back on work it would make sense for him to work from…….our home.
“Our” home—as in the one we share every single day.
It took some time, but we both adjusted. At one frustrating point, however, I reconfigured our home in my mind:
Cone of Silence
That’s right, Get Smart style. Just press a button and you can have a sound-proof cone descend down over you, so you can have phone conversations without your partner “interjecting” with helpful opinions.
Padded Room
Not for your partner, but for yourself. Sometimes sharing the home 24/7 is all a bit too much.
The True Divider
This is an actual wall constructed down the middle of your one office that you have to share. Matching shelving on each side for storing YOUR very important mementos and vital personal items that your partner erroneously states are “junk.”
Kitchen Sweeper
Not for your floors, but for your kitchen counters, where your partner has left remnants of lunch, part-time work papers, backpack full of pickleballs and lots of notes written in tiny scribble that not even the cat can decipher.
Private Sanctuary
Uh, a certain partner uses this term for the bathroom. Whatever.
Living Room
This area is actually your new office/sanctuary. As you talk on the phone, you look at the walls and imagine them padded. (See #2 above.)
Sports Viewing Room
It’s actually outside. Well, ok, the man or woman cave in the garage, but please, just outside.
Pet Throne
With all the extra time you two have now, you both spend an inordinate amount of time fawning over the pet(s). Perfect, fluffy, organic, silk pillow for Fido? Yes, Amazon!
Sports equipment room
You probably don’t have one of these now, but you will need a large area of your home to store the stationary bike, yoga mats, rollers, bands, balls and also all of your favorite sports equipment.
Outsized Wine Rack
This feature becomes critical to survival and civility, especially during the adjustment phase.
Sharing your home all day and night in this new phase of life called retirement can have some challenges. But with patience, humor and an open mind, you learn to respect each other’s new schedules and space needs.
When all else fails, keep calm and pickleball on!
Photo credit: Aniko Kiezel
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About the Author
Diana Landau is the Editor of the I Used to be Somebody newsletter. She is also co-author of the Amazon best-seller Pickleball for Dummies.
