Döstädning
I first heard about death cleaning years ago. It was part of the wave of Scandinavian ideas to reach the United States, such as hygge. Döstädning is the act of cleaning up your own possessions and papers before death so you don’t leave the task for someone else.
It’s a lovely idea, though not entirely practical unless you have a heads up that death is imminent. There are things that I know others will want to get rid of after I’m gone, but I’d like to hold onto these things until the last possible second. Like all of my VHS tapes. What if they come back into usefulness when I reach 80, but I dumped them at 79?
Can you tell that I like my things? I have a little Bilbo Baggins in me, except I could never be goaded into going on an adventure. That’s what they call me: Zero Adventures Mel.
But I digress. Kottke looped back to this idea recently with a musing on the little chores that take place after someone is gone (canceling subscriptions, etc) and how we can practice kindness by helping others as they go through these tasks. He writes: “Millions of deeply grieving partners and parents and children are dealing with little chores like this, trying to navigate a typically uncaring system while somehow holding it together.”
If we always come from a place of thinking the person may be going through something, it increases the chances that we’ll be kind to the people who need it most.
3 comments
We talk about Swedish death cleaning a lot in the No Kidding/childless community, and it’s become top of mind to a number of us who have gone through cleaning up after elderly relatives have gone.
My mother did this naturally – she didn’t know it was a thing, but as she liked to keep busy, and her house was immaculate, she gradually started getting rid of things. With dementia as well, it was necessary for my sister and I to grab a few things to make sure she didn’t dump them as well! It helped enormously, I will say. My in-laws did NOT do this, and it was very frustrating to my husband and I who had to empty their house of 60 years of collected things. I’m in the in-between stage at the moment – I need to start (or perhaps it could just be called “tidying my house” lol) before it gets too hard, or I get unexpectedly run over by a bus! I know I need to do it. I just haven’t got around to it.
But yes, I agree with this guy’s consideration and his message to us all to be more considerate. I did not get the same consideration from a particular institution when my mother died, and I had to fight to get what I was owed, according to a contract she had signed. And I had someone (not my DH in case anyone thinks that) scoffing at me for trying. It just made everything more difficult and upsetting.
Yes, that is a great idea, but it implies you are fit to do it. Cleaning up my father’s house was tough but since he was leaving in France and i only had one week to take care of those things I chose some things and then paid a company to get rid of the rest.
I was forced to move out of my childhood apartment this year so I did a bit of throwing stuff away but it took me months, because there was stuff from both my parents and my aunt, plus mine.
As soon as I retire (assuming I live that long), I intend to start “death cleaning” my home and belongings. I saw what my mother went through in clearing out my grandmother’s home — my grandmother had lived through the depression and grown up poor, so she was a major pack rat — and I would never want to put my sons through that.
I have been gravitating toward minimalism for the past few years, so I don’t think it will be that difficult for me to part with things, even if I am doing it a few years before I strictly “need to” do it.