The Balanced Life, Huntsville Alabama

Anyone who knows me well, knows I am not a fan of clutter. I find that keeping things organized and tidy helps me feel calm and relaxed. There’s actually a lot of research to support that living in lots of mess and clutter directly impacts our mental well-being.

I embraced the concept of minimalism a while back because it really made a lot of sense to me. The concept of minimalism conjures up visions of stark white rooms with nothing on the walls and sparse furniture for many. However, if you follow Becoming Minimalist or The Minimalists, you know that they view minimalism as all about being intentional. Keeping things that serve a consistent purpose in your life or have true sentimental value. So, it’s the art form of learning to let go and only surrounding yourself with things that make sense.  

Once I began embracing the concept of Minimalism, I ran across the practice of Swedish Death Cleaning. Originally coined by Margareta Magnussen in her 2017 book “The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning: How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter”, this practice helps the reader thoughtfully consider the loved ones who will be left with all of your belongings once you die and provides suggestions on how to make the experience for these loved ones as easy as possible.

I loved my paternal grandmother so much and was terribly sad when she passed away relatively suddenly at 90 years old about 12 years ago. She didn’t have tons of clutter all around her house, but boy did she like to collect things and her closets….they were like a time capsule for the past 4 decades. In addition to our grief, we spent time going through her house and throwing away so many of her possessions. This is what happens to most people when a loved one dies, especially one who has lived in the same house for a long time. I know she didn’t intentionally burden our family with her belongings, but the result was lots of time spent, when we were very sad, disposing of her things, which was even sadder.

No one wants it to be any harder on their loved ones when they are grieving. So, why don’t people practice Swedish Death Cleaning (SDC)? My theory is, that once you dig through the “I don’t have time” or “I won’t be dead for another 40 years” or other excuses, at the heart of the resistance (assuming they know about this process, of course) is fear of death. So many people avoid considering their mortality and their inevitable death one day like the plague. There’s this bizarre “If I don’t think or talk about it, it won’t happen” mentality that we all logically know doesn’t make a bit of sense. Coming to a place of acceptance about the fact that death is inevitable and that we are not guaranteed a single moment beyond the one we are living in allows us to live each moment with much more intention and purpose. We don’t take a single day for granted. When we accept our mortality, it helps us do things like SDC that truly is a gift to those who will be left behind after we die.

So, what is SDC exactly? According to “The Spruce” blog- “In practical terms, this means organizing and decluttering your home to reduce the burden of sifting through dozens (side bar- I’d make that thousands) of objects and trying to decide what’s significant. With SDC, you’ll have already done that for them by only holding onto items you’ve determined to be essential…At its heart, SDC is about making decisions about what you keep and what you let go”.

Here are three great suggestions on where to start, also from “The Spruce”:

Do clothing first

Not sure where to begin? Start with your closets. It’s usually easy to sort through clothing and figure out what fits and what doesn’t (or what styles are better off going in the “toss” pile). While you’re at it, get organized and create a system for your closet—like reserving the main sections for regularly-worn items and putting seasonal clothing towards the back or up top.

Declutter by size

With furniture and other items around your home, start with the ones that take up the most space. From there, you can work your way down to smaller items and personal mementos—consider dedicating a box to hard-to-part-with items like letters and photographs. As you’re decluttering, don’t dwell on whether or not something sparks joy (this isn’t the Konmari method). Instead, simply take a clear-eyed look at the many items clogging up your kitchen and decide how many you actually use on a day-to-day basis.

Think digital

Our loved ones go through more than just our physical possessions when we die. You need to think of the digital clutter they’ll also need to sort through, which means making sure they have important login details for things like online bank accounts and other important sources of information. While you’re doing this, consider taking an afternoon to declutter your hard drive and desktop as well—that’s one mess no one looks forward to dealing with.

Like I mentioned previously, I have followed a minimalist perspective for quite some time, so I don’t have a lot of clutter. But I realized today that my husband and I have a number of plastic storage bins in our attic full of childhood and young adult memorabilia. These things have been a quandary for me. They do hold sentimental value, but what purpose do they serve? They’ve been in boxes for years in our attic and my parents house before that. If we keep all of it, guess what, one day our daughter has the privilege of going through ALL THAT STUFF. So, my project this weekend- go through each bin thoughtfully. Reminisce. Maybe I scan some of the pictures to save in a digital file. Maybe I keep a few of the things because it might be fun for her to share with her kids one day. But then I let the rest go. I admit that I feel a little sad at that thought. Throwing away those things that are tangible representations of my past. But I have those memories. I lived those experiences. I don’t need dusty boxes full of random things to prove anything. And I certainly don’t want to burden my only child with them one day either. So, I’ll make the time to go through them and I will let things go. It’s a gift I can give my daughter.

If you need help with decluttering, organizing or downsizing, Life Simplified in Huntsville is a wonderful resource. Karen and her team do amazing work and are a pleasure to work with. 

If we can help you with accepting your mortality and embracing your life more fully, please don’t hesitate to reach out via email at info@thebalancedlifellc.com.