Okay, let’s start with your first question: “Steve, WTF is Swedish Death Cleaning?”
It’s the hilariously captivating title of a book I just finished, but I’ll leave it to the author, 89-year-old Margareta Magnusson, to explain the concept:
As we call it in Swedish, “döstädning.”
Dö is “death” and städning is “cleaning.”
In Swedish it is a term that means that you remove unnecessary things and make your home nice and orderly when you think the time is coming closer for you to leave the planet.
Although Swedish Death Cleaning sounds morbid – it’s as pragmatic as it is thoughtful.
Getting our house in order now, no matter our age, means that those who love us won’t get stuck dealing with it later. In addition, we get the added benefit of a house that’s less of a disaster, which makes our daily life better.
Here’s an ugly truth I hadn’t considered until reading this book:
Do not ever imagine that anyone will wish – or be able – to schedule time off to take care of what you didn’t bother to take care of yourself. No matter how much they love you, don’t leave this burden to them.
Oooof. Yeah, if we are too busy to deal with our own stuff, it’s selfish to assume others will have the ability or desire to deal with all of it in our absence! It has to get dealt with, so why not deal with it ourselves? Now.
As I read this book…
I finally saw the perpetual list of “to-dos” I copied over to the next week.
I started looking at the shirts in my closet I hadn’t worn for years.
I started noticing the boxes of “stuff” piling up in my basement.
And then I realized I had other parts of my life that required death cleaning too.
So, I want you to join me.
Let’s “Swedish Death Clean” Our Year
We’re coming up on the end of 2023 (holy crap), so it might be a good time for all of us to do some Swedish Death Cleaning about our lives:
- Our basements, closets, attics, and garages.
- Our daily routines, workouts, and diet.
- The mental baggage we keep avoiding.
It’s time to take a pragmatic look at our lives, and realize the stuff we’re conveniently ignoring doesn’t magically disappear. As my mentor Andy once told me: “Your apathy becomes somebody else’s responsibility.”
So let’s do some mental death cleaning and take care of the crap that’s weighing us down.
- Let’s donate a few clothes to the local shelter.
- Let’s get rid of that furniture in our garage we’ll never actually use.
- Let’s have an honest conversation with ourselves or a therapist and start dealing with our baggage.
We can be appreciative of the purpose these things served when we bought them, but they’re no longer serving us and we can get rid of them.
I know this is daunting, but picking ONE thing or ONE room or ONE thought and just getting started can have really important implications for our physical and mental health.
Whether we’re 40 or 90, we can do a bit of death cleaning and end this year a little less cluttered than it started.
I have big thoughts coming your way in January, so let’s clear the deck and start getting rid of the baggage weighing us down.
But for now, let’s remember death, get rid of the crap holding us back, and get ready for a big year ahead.
-Steve
PS: The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning is a great book, and if you’re an adult with aging parents or grandparents, it’s worth a read and conversation.
