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My first “real” job in my life was retail. I worked for Lord & Taylor in the late 70’s in New York. In fact, that is how I landed in Washington, DC in 1979, transferred to ‘the branches’ from the flagship NY store. That was a necessary step for all “executive trainees”. The idea was, you would serve time in the suburbs and return to NY as an assistant buyer who now understood the critical remote tentacles of the business.

I hated retail—-especially in the suburbs. What’s to like, slavish hours, slavish pay? Holidays that friends looked forward to visiting family, time off were your Hell weeks at work. Weekends, fuggedaboudit!

Then came inventory. My despise of retail was magnified 10-fold compared to my dread and distaste for taking inventory. Twice a year, the store would close early—-all hands-on deck behind the closed doors! Inventory was torture. Manually identifying and counting EVERY particle that had value in the store at a moment in time. Prior to point-of-sale registers, digital scanners and systems backed by super computers, sales were hand written and carbon copied. Cash was exchanged and squirreled in individual locked cash drawers.

On top of it all, I had arguably the MOST voluminous category of the store in terms of quantity of items and the most minuscule items on an individual basis—-ACCESSORIES. Accessories included jewelry, fine and costume, hosiery, socks, gloves, scarves, handbags, wallets, keychains, etc. Also, many of the items came in pairs which at inventory count as one although they rarely were together at the time of the count, YIKES.

Details are not my strong suit. To say I didn’t like inventory is such an understatement it is a lie.

I despised, resented, feared and loathed taking inventory and double that for inventory results.

Now, 40+ years later and several career moves away from retail, I still feel my gut rumble when I think back. I also thank my inventory experiences for giving me hours of amusement and belly laughs retelling the stories of my hidden garbage bags of defective returned pantyhose that had to be recounted every inventory because I had not taken the logical step in between to “write them off” and throw them out. Don’t ask why, I can’t answer that. Twice a year I had to come face to face with my ‘shadows” and count them again.

That’s the lesson. I am thanking God, my HP, the Universe, my Higher Self or whatever for hitting me over and over with that baseball bat. Here, I am confessing to you, my witnesses. This was like a dark ugly secret that I kept hidden in a crawlspace until inventory every year! I ran away from the garbage bag of pantyhose AND retail. It was no longer a problem because I ran away.

If I had faced it then, taken the steps to “write it off”, I may still be in retail. I just ran away from it.

I am more mature now. I see the importance of inventory. Inventory was a look in the mirror with bright lights and no makeup. Inventory was a reality check. If every manager had garbage bags of dead inventory hidden or otherwise, it would block the flow of sales. Inventory would give managers a true view of the value of their merchandise and if there was money tied up in something un-salable, this was the time to write it off and free up money to be spent on salable merchandise. Take the loss and move forward.

40+ years later, the lesson is finally sinking in. I am actually implementing an inventory in my life. The beginning of a new year is ideal for that! I am going to look hard, in the bright light of
day at what my inventory situation is. What bags of garbage are hidden in my personal crawlspaces?

I encourage everyone who reads this to do the same. Its even harder than doing inventory in the accessory department at Lord & Taylor! This is not merchandise. Some of it is not even tangible or measurable.

I know when something is a ‘metaphorical garbage bag of old pantyhose’ by a feeling in my gut when I face it. How do “write it off” when it is not tangible or measurable? That is a question I can’t answer, in general. It will be a different answer for each item that causes my gut twinge.

What I discover will naturally be different than what you discover. The idea is, if I can start the new year with a tiny habit of taking a personal inventory every day maybe? I believe, scratch that, I KNOW it will unclog the pipes and encourage flow in my life.

In this life inventory the ‘merchandise’ is things like TIME. How do I spend my time? How much time do I spend doing things that CLOG the pipes? Time is not only spent DO-ing, but time is also spent WORRY-ing, COMPLAIN-ing and doing things I think I SHOULD be doing.

In this case, my write-off will be, play more, dream more, move more, connect more.

Another category of ‘merchandise’ is SPACE. This is HUGE for me. We have accumulated a lot of stuff in 20+ years in our house. We started with a much larger house than 2 of us needed and NOW it’s FULL! I just found a holiday letter I sent 20 years ago when were still newlywed and our house was new. I talked about how empty it was. Clearly, it is full now and a lot is DEAD inventory. This category of inventory is going to take most of the year maybe more for me. I’ve started already by clearing small spaces on a regular basis, weekly at least. I did the junk drawer the other day. This process of clearing has a profound impact on me. I have FAR to go, but i’m moving forward.

There are lots more categories of merchandise and I hope you will get a spark of inspiration to shine a light on your dead inventory. I hope you will share your experience here and maybe someone else will be inspired by you.

Meanwhile, let the inventory message be a blessing. Please share this website with someone you love that you think will grow from it. My goal is to grow to 1000 followers this year. That’s a lofty goal and I believe very achievable. I hope you take even the tiniest nugget of inspiration from Graceing Agefully™ and continue on the path to optimum life in the second half.

This is Graceing Agefully™