Smoke Signals by Milton Zolotow (art found while cleaning)

by Nina

“Death cleaning is certainly not just about things. If it were, it would not be so difficult.” —Margareta Magnusson, The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning

I wrote my series on letting go two years ago. See Letting Go, Part 1: Practicing Detachment, Letting Go, Part 2: Universal Kindness, and Cultivating Forgiveness (Kshama). Now I’m starting to practice letting go in a BIG way. You see, even though I’m healthy and active, I decided to start Swedish Death Cleaning this year.

According to Margareta Magnusson, “Swedish Death Cleaning” is a term that means 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.” In Swedish, the word for it is döstädning, with “dö” for “death” and “städning” for “cleaning.”

Unlike the big purge of each category of things you own that is recommended by Marie Kondo, with Swedish Death Cleaning, you take your time. So the practice is gradual and can be part of your everyday life. I find this approach both more realistic and comfortable since I have no particular timetable to meet. Also, I must admit that I find the process somewhat painful so doing a bit at a time is easier emotionally.

I grew up in a minimalist household (we lived in a mid-century modern house where “less is more” was the motto), so I’m actually surprised at how hard it is for me to consider parting with things I inherited from my parents and also from my in-laws. There are some beautiful things that we just can’t use and that my children won’t want, like the silk dress my mother got married in, my grandmother’s lace tablecloths, and the double bedspread with a ruffle that my husband’s grandmother hand quilted and embroidered. And I have a huge box of samples from my father’s years as a graphic designer that no one will want.

As Margareta Magnusson says in the quote above, this is certainly “not just about things.” So I asked myself about the terrible pain I was feeling: What was it really all about?

Eventually I decided that what I was feeling was actually grief, lingering grief over the deaths of so many family members. And that when I was giving away something that had been important to a family member or something they had made themselves, I felt like I losing part of my connection to them.

Then I wondered if there was something I could say to myself, some “opposite” thought, that would help me let go of what, in the end, were just “things.” In the past, when I let go of things that I have used myself, I generally thanked them for the use I got from them, as Marie Kondo suggests (see Goodbye, Dear Things, and Thanks!), but none of the things that I have been giving away recently were used by me, so a “thank you” didn’t seem appropriate. Plus, I felt I needed something stronger to say to myself that would help me stop clinging to the things and the emotions they provoked (see Aparigraha (Non-Hoarding) and Healthy Aging by Ram Rao).

In the end, I decided to practice detachment as described in Letting Go, Part 1: Practicing Detachment with an opposite thought that calls each thing the thing that it is. For example:

  • This is a silk dress, not my mother.
  • This is a brochure from the sixties, not my father.
  • This is a bedspread we can’t use, not my husband’s grandmother.

And I think both the self-reflection required by this process and an opposite way of looking at the things we can’t use has been very helpful for me. Although I’m still working my way through the attic, one box at a time, I have let go of quite a few things already, including all of the things mentioned above. And I’m starting to feel a bit lighter.

 

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