LIFE AFTER MOTHER: Swedish Death Cleaning

When the great singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen was facing end-of-life health issues, he gave one last interview in 2016, where he said, “Putting your house in order, if you can do it, is one of the most comforting activities, and the benefits of it are incalculable.”

So begins Margareta Magnusson’s book The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning that has generated a wave of interest in the Swedish custom of recognizing the grim reality that one day you’ll put your house in order for the last time — or someone else will. It’s meant to combine a physical transformation of organizing one’s home and possessions while at the same time allowing an emotional transformation, discovering what matters and what doesn’t.

Magnusson’s book is not primarily a how-to manual, it’s more a series of anecdotes about involving her family of five children and their families in the process of clearing her clutter. Perhaps her most important rule is, “If you don’t like something, get rid of it.”

She suggests starting by scheduling a week for each room, even a small simple space such as a laundry room — finishing early is all right. Determine what to take care of, sort, keep, sell, or throw away, what can go to an auction house or even a museum, what has value. Invite family, friends, and neighbors over to see what they want, and they can either take it, or a note can be made for future reference. 

Other helpful advice includes, “Don’t start with photographs — or letters and personal papers, for that matter. It can be both a lot of fun and a bit sad to go through photographs and letters, but one thing is certain: if you start with them, you will definitely get stuck down memory lane and may never get around to cleaning anything else.” 

When you do get to the photos and papers, you have several options. You may want to make photo albums — or virtual photo albums — for various family members, or sort the materials into different envelopes to pass along.

Magnusson also provides some cautionary tales. Discussing books, she mentions she was able to give an encyclopedia set to a school, but her greatest problem was what to do with several old leather-bound Bibles. A local church didn’t want them, so she kept the two that had family records — births and deaths — written in them, and threw away the others.

She — what?

I understand her quandary, but I wonder how much effort she made before she threw those Good Books away, which she admits feeling bad about. She asked a church but what about another church, a school (maybe the one that took the encyclopedias), a non-profit organization, or a used bookstore?

On the other hand, I know sometimes, you just take the simplest option, and you throw something away because you don’t need it right now and you’ve got bigger issues to deal with. I’ve had a few bloopers like that myself. When you throw something away, it doesn’t come back, and you risk regretting it.