It has been argued that lifecourse transitions are transformative moments for individuals when lifestyles, habits and behaviours are potentially open to contemplation and change. Within sustainability research such ‘moments of change’ are regarded as offering potential to encourage less environmentally damaging consumption patterns. Research on consumption indicates that orientations to material goods and their affective significance are complex. Whilst sociological work understands attachment to things as integral to maintaining kinship relations, this is hard to reconcile with long-standing moral concerns about materialism and psychological research which indicates a negative relationship between the acquisition of material objects and wellbeing, and the environmental implications of acquiring and divesting ‘stuff’. Yet there has been little engagement with how older people orient to their material possessions and divestment, the implications of this for later-life wellbeing and for environmental sustainability. In this paper, we draw these different strands of work together to understand how retirees relate to their material possessions and their divestment. Drawing on serial interviews with individuals in the United Kingdom, we explore how the transition to retirement highlights the complexity of participants’ attachment to things. While some items had profound relational significance, others were experienced as troublesome. Decisions on what to divest were shaped by pragmatic considerations and levels of attachment, whilst modes of divestment were aligned with values of thrift.

有人认为，当生活方式，习惯和行为可能容易引起人们的思考和改变时，人生历程的过渡对于个人而言是变革性的时刻。在可持续性研究中，这种“变革时刻”被视为提供了鼓励减少对环境造成破坏的消费方式的潜力。对消费的研究表明，对物质商品的取向及其情感意义是复杂的。社会学工作将对事物的依恋理解为维持亲属关系所不可或缺的，但这很难与长期存在的对唯物主义和心理学研究的道德关注相调和，这表明获取物质和福祉之间的负相关关系以及获取对环境的影响并剥离“东西”。然而，人们对老年人如何处理自己的物质财产和资产剥离，这对以后的生活和环境可持续性的影响几乎没有参与。在本文中，我们将这些不同的工作融合在一起，以了解退休人员与他们的财产和撤资之间的关系。通过对英国个人的连续采访，我们探索了向退休过渡的过程如何突出参与者对事物的依恋的复杂性。尽管有些项目具有深远的关系意义，但另一些却遇到麻烦。关于撤资的决定是由务实的考虑因素和依恋程度决定的，而撤资的方式则与节俭的价值观保持一致。