SWEDISH DEATH CLEANING MAY KILL ME

By Suzanne Sparrow Watson

Procrastination is a wonderful thing. Living in suspended reality allows you to blissfully go about your daily life in joyful ignorance. But eventually that “long arm of the law”, reality, catches up. For me, reality hit home last week. I have been giving some thought to moving within the next two to three years. My house and yard have become more burdensome, the people moving into my community are young enough to be my children, and frankly, I know I need some new horizons. But first, my current horizon needs some clearing out. Mind you, I am the furthest thing from a hoarder you could find. I like clear countertops and alphabetized spice racks. My filing cabinet is color-coded and sorted by subject . Some might call me obsessive/compulsive. I prefer to think of myself as extremely organized. But still, I’ve lived in this house for almost 26 years and things do accumulate. So, my New Year’s resolution was to pretend I’m moving next month and then go through all of my belongings and discard accordingly. Sounded easy. It’s not.

To gain some inspiration I re-read The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning, by Margareta Magnusson. In essence, she encourages people to clean out their crap before their kids have to after they die. She extols the virtues of embracing minimalism and doing it with humor along the way. Okay, I can get on board with the minimalism, but I found the process to be anything but humorous. Except for the photos of my brothers and me from over 50 years ago. That brought a good chuckle. Especially my outfit which, in retrospect, resembles a cheap shag rug. Anyway, I started in my craft closet, which may sound like a weak place to start but I assure you it was the most over-crowded, full-of-junk, space in the house. I was motivated to start there because it hadn’t been painted in 26 years. Through five major remodels I always managed to avoid clearing out that closet because it was too daunting. It is a rather large walk-in space where I threw things in with abandon. I used to work in a yarn store where I got yarn at wholesale prices. I took advantage of that. Maybe too much advantage. Although the yarn and notions were all in bins that were sorted and labeled, it was still overwhelming. Add to that I had a huge table for my sewing machine, stacks of fabric, and a long shelf of crafting books. I kept a big box of photos and other memorabilia in there, including my second runner-up trophy from the 1968 Junior Miss Contest. And, oh yeah, it also contained all of the exercise equipment that I was certain I would use every day. Somehow that never worked out. And neither did I. In any event, I finally scheduled painters to come this week to spruce it up.

But last Friday morning my contractor called and said the painters had a cancellation and would be coming to my house in two hours. I know better than to turn down a contractor when they’re available, so I rushed into my craft closet and began to work. I harkened back on my lessons from Swedish Death Cleaning. I had to get very realistic about what I would keep and what I would donate. After all, when I do move it will be into a much smaller space, so I resolved to start downsizing now. I put more than half of my crafting materials into the “donate” pile. I did not let myself get stuck in sentiment – yarn that I bought on my magical trip to Ireland eight years ago will now be magical in someone else’s stash. My trophy from 1968 is finally where it belongs – in the trash pile. I took pictures of pictures and then discarded the originals. With steely resolve, I got it all cleared out and sorted before the painters arrived.

It’s amazing what you can get done with a figurative gun at your head. I think Margareta exaggerated the “joyful” part of this, but I will say it feels good to have this major task behind me. I’m thinking that I need to schedule some sort of work to be done in my office and the kitchen. But first I have to recuperate – this death cleaning may be the death of me…or my back.