What is Swedish Death Cleaning?
Perhaps the term immediately conjures up morbid intricacies, but the concept of Swedish Death Cleaning is simply a thorough and effective approach to cleaning out your home before it becomes too much of a burden. The key differences from other similar organizational efforts involve finding new homes for our objects that no longer serve us and staying mindful over who would have to do the work if we don’t de-clutter. Unfortunately, if we don’t sort out our homes, it can just make our lives heavier. Swedish Death Cleaning is an attempt to bring lightness and brevity back into ourselves.
We may need to do this type of organizational work for various reasons: downsizing, loss of a partner, empty nesting after children have left, or because as we age we can see that the clutter of our homes has become harder to manage our lives in. Death cleaning is all about honestly living the life you have now. And taking the time to do the clearing and cleaning at your own pace will allow you to understand and see where your items can be better served.
The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Margareta Magnusson is quintessential reading if you are interested in understanding in greater depth. That book, along with Magnusson’s The Swedish Art of Aging Exuberantly, were key in bringing this Swedish approach of organization to the United States. There is also a show of the same name that is narrated by Amy Poehler. It follows individuals through the Swedish Death Cleaning technique with three Swedish experts: an organizer, a designer, and a psychologist. Below is a trailer for the show.
My aim in my work as a death cleaner has been to be a compassionate and guiding hand throughout the de-cluttering system. I am not there to force my hand or override any of your desires for your home. If you’d like me to push more, I will. But I am much more interested in the collaborative work that we can do together to help bring your home in working order. The responsibility is meant to stay in your hands, but I will be there as a guide and assistant to fill in any gaps that you find yourself incapable of doing. My hope is that by having an informative person there through all the steps, you’ll see how much lighter you can feel throughout what can be an incredibly daunting process.
Within the process you’ll encounter items you haven’t seen in years! With one of my clients, we discovered wedding gifts tucked away in her attic crawl spaces that had gone unused and unseen for decades. Instead of keeping them there, I asked if we could put a few of them up throughout her home and she loved the idea! Seeing the gifts around her home brought out gentle memories of her deceased husband and it was something she cherished.
Life will be more pleasant and comfortable once you’re able to rid yourself of some of the abundance. All of the objects in your home belong to you, but, crucially, making the decisions of where those objects should go should also belong to you.
“The [death cleaning] process is service of two large points: to be less afraid of the idea of death because it comes for all of us. And to remember that after you death cleaned, no matter how ancient you become there are always more discoveries.” — Margareta Magnusson
