Swedish Death Cleaning: Day One

A gift to ourselves and our loved ones

My dad’s Stanford memorabilia from the 1930’s.

Isn’t it interesting when random experiences and information begin to have a common thread? I read a lot of articles from a wide variety of sources, so when a topic jumps out and sticks with me, I almost always find it was for a reason. A while back, just such a topic lodged in my mind, and the theme has steadily been popping up in random conversations ever since: Swedish Death Cleaning.

If you haven't heard this phrase before, it was coined by Swedish author Margareta Magnussun in her 2017 best-selling book, The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning: How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter. A practice in Scandinavian countries, “döstädning” translates as “dö” for “death” and “städning” for “cleaning.”

The basic notion is to relieve your loved ones of the burden of all the stuff that you have accumulated over your lifetime so that it doesn’t become their problem upon your death. While the basic concept is similar to decluttering, which is proven to benefit our well-being greatly, it also encompasses all those keepsakes tucked in the back of drawers and boxes for sentimental reasons. It goes beyond simply tidying; this is deciding what kind of order (and legacy) you leave behind.

A stellar example to follow
Admittedly, age is giving me a different perspective on life in general, new priorities are emerging…and this whole notion of Death Cleaning is rising to the top. I’ve journeyed with a couple of people through the end of their lives, and those experiences left me with a heightened awareness of certain aspects of living, which ultimately has a lot to do with dying.

I had a dear friend, Lucille, who was like a grandmother to my husband and me and had a tremendous impact on our lives. Although she passed 15 years before Margareta Magnussun wrote her book, Lucille had been doing her own version of the Swedish Death Cleaning for most of the decade before she died. Over time, she systematically pared down a sprawling estate to a smallish rental home, sold most of her valuables, and disposed of decades of files and paperwork. 

By the time she died at the venerable age of 97, my husband, myself, and her caregiver weren’t burdened wondering what to do with what was left because there wasn’t much at all: just the furniture and other basic necessities. She had already given us what was valuable to her and told us the other things that she wanted us to have, so the little that was left was easily given to charity. In a matter of days, the rental house was empty and ready to return to the owner.

I was so in awe of the wisdom, courage, and fortitude that it took for her to identify and accomplish that ultimate task. I must admit that when she first began the great cleanout, I couldn’t fathom how she could part with keepsakes that seemed so special to her…but she often said she didn’t want anyone burdened with having to clear out her things. My husband and I had dinner with her weekly, and each time we went over, we noted that something new was missing: watches, antiques, paintings, etc., that she deemed unnecessary were methodically purged and sold. Though it seemed heartless at the moment, it was so smart; I was too young and naive to fully grasp her sage plan.

Inevitability
These days, I see my elderly neighbor struggling to start her own version of the clean-out before she sells her home and moves in with her daughter. She estimates it will take about five years, and I’m a little concerned about her doing it primarily by herself, but we will see how she does. We have another friend starting to clean his mom’s house now that she has become incapacitated. His first taste of what is to come is a garage stuffed to the gills with bags of recyclables. I can only imagine that it is the tip of the iceberg. My husband and I feel for him.

I was recently reminiscing with some friends about my mom’s move from Tucson to our home in California. In the months leading up to her relocation, I implored (begged) her to rehome her furniture and only bring the necessities. She had already downsized from our original family home to a small townhouse, so I mistakenly thought she was traveling light, but no…she came with so many extraneous items that we ended up having a yard sale and donating the rest. Ruefully, we realized we paid thousands to move a truckload of stuff from Arizona, only to sell it for pennies.

Aside from the excess nicknacks and QVC kitchen gadgets, there were boxes of papers, records, stacks and stacks of prayer books, and other mementos that were dear to her, which I tucked away for a later time. Over the last year of her life, I tried to sort through the majority of those things, but admittedly, it was a struggle. On the one hand, I wanted to honor her legacy and save what was truly consequential, but frankly, I wasn’t sure what those items were amid such a jumble. 

It took me three passes to whittle down to what I thought was significant enough to keep without dishonoring her intentions. The first pass discarded the obvious 25-year-old electric bills, the second pass was the more guilt-inducing purge of duplicate prayer books and years of greeting cards, and the last was the hardest to discern. I ultimately felt terrible throwing some of her things away and putting the rest in our basement and attic.

It begins
Although I’m planning on a long health span, God willing, and I am quite a ways off from my late nineties, everything that we have accumulated thus far has been weighing on my mind. I don't want our son, Alessio, saddled with the same decisions that I was making with my mom’s things. Lucille’s selfless actions were a gift to all of us who survived her, and I feel obligated to follow her example.

Luckily, I’m not a shopper and favor beauty and simplicity, so we don’t have a lot of superfluous “stuff.” Almost every item on our shelves has history and meaning from our travels and experiences or is a family heirloom. BUT, and it’s a big but, we have boxes upon boxes in our basement and attic of sentimental items that we don’t display but have not yet been able to let go, and I think the time is now to start sifting through them and making hard decisions.

While sorting through my mom’s things, I recall finding that she had prepared a couple of plastic bags of photos and baby clothing, luckily with identifying notes.  I was so grateful for these. I plan to take that a step further for Alessio, consolidating everything we want to pass on in delineated boxes and writing notes about why they are important. We will go over it with him in person so that he knows our thoughts, and considering that he is a huge sentimental romantic like his dad, I’m sure he will appreciate it.

Despite my good intentions, I’m steeling myself for a slog. I’ve already tried once to give away the aluminum cookware from my childhood, and feeling twangs of sentiment, I failed to put it in the “to-go” box. But I keep thinking—what good is it sitting in a box in the attic? Of course, there will be the “absolutely can’t part with items,” such as my mom’s evening dress from Africa that she treasured and my dad’s rag doll from his alma mater, Stanford. Still, I think childhood pots and pans don’t hold the same intrinsic family sentiments…

Right now, I’m not putting a time limit on this intimidating undertaking. I’m going to take it one box, one drawer, one cupboard at a time. But now that this is squarely in my sights, the awareness of how we are leaving things for our son will drive many decisions and spare-time activities. I have the sense that this will set a foundation for the next several decades that will have cascading effects on my health and well-being. In simplifying things for him, I’ll be helping myself to live well, age great.

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