Swedish Death Cleaning

Decluttering and organizing your home and belongings is usually motivated by short term goals like spending less time searching for things, faster cleaning, and preparing for visitors to see your beautiful home. Swedish Death Cleaning is a decluttering and organizing trend which aimed less at your personal benefit, like saving time and money, but rather to avoid leaving a burden on your loved ones once you have passed away.

Inspired by the book “The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning” from Margareta Magnusson, I would now like to share my personal experience of death cleaning with you.

Swedish Death Cleaning, in simple terms, is decluttering before you die. It is not just about throwing things away, it is also about appreciating the things which had served you in your life. For example, Mari Kondo shows appreciation by saying thank you to items before giving them away. In Death Cleaning you take the time to recall the meaning the item had for you, and how it came to you. It is about processing the memories and closing chapters in your life.

It is also meant to make things easier for the ones you will leave behind. Even if it is difficult to think about your own death or the loss of a loved one, Death Cleaning before passing away prepares others to manage the situation better once it occurs.

Why Death Clean before your Death?

I was eighteen when I had to death clean for the first time. My boyfriend at that time suddenly lost his foster father. As his father was the last of his close family to pass away, the house was packed with memories of his foster father and his wife, who passed away three years before. My partner was overwhelmed by the situation. Over and above the emotional difficulties, it was also financially challenging as we both were still attending school, and he had no access to his foster fathers’ bank account as the will was not officially processed yet. The funeral had to be paid, together with ongoing daily expenses like electricity and water. There was no clear organization in the household, so it took us hours to figure out things like which religion his foster father had followed (if any), as they never spoke about it. It was a year-long journey filled with worries before we got to a point where we could get back to normal life. At the end of this period I promised myself that I would not put my loved ones in a similar situation.

During my twenties I did not own much, so there was not much to ‘clean up’, rather only organize. I took out an insurance which would pay for my funeral, and I told my family that I would like to be cremated, and have my ashes placed in the family grave. I also gave my mother full access to my bank account and instructed her to use the money for anything which needed to be sorted out after I passed away.

I was quite happy with that arrangement for almost two decades, before I came across the term Swedish Death cleaning. I realized that over the years I had accumulated not only more things, including a house, shares and further insurances nobody knew about, but my family situation had also changed. My parents became old, and these days it would be too much of a burden for them to take care of everything. Also, my current partner would face difficulties as we are not married, which in Germany means that you don’t have any legal right on the heritage. I then realized that was time to start a new round of Swedish Death Cleaning for myself.

How to start with Swedish Death Cleaning?

Margareta Magnusson recommends starting with physical items in the basement, attic and the entrance hall, as we tend to dump things we do never need again in these places. I personally started in my parents’ house, as I still had quite a lot of things left from my childhood there. School and study books, paintings I made as a child, toys etc. I completely forgot how much I had accumulated over the years, as I hardly checked my old children’s’ room. I invited my nieces and nephews to take whatever they liked, and the rest went to the recycling, charity, or found a new owner via Ebay. Like Kondo, Magnusson recommends to not start with pictures and letters, as you would probably get lost in the memories, and then passing on things would become even more difficult. Thus, I parked these things in a box for the moment so that I could deal with them later.

In Döstanding, the Swedish term for Death Cleaning, you start with the biggest things first so that you get rewarded for your efforts right in the beginning as you can see the impact of what you are doing. I followed this advice by giving away my childhood furniture, which immediately opened up a lot of space (my mother was very happy about that).

It is also recommended to start with something that would be easy to deal with/get rid of. I had a massive amount of study material from my time at university, so it was quite easy to put the paper in the recycling as nowadays all the information is available on the internet.

What to do with your physical and digital heritage?

After I reduced my overall belongings, it was time to set up a will to make sure my heritage is distributed according to my wishes. In Germany there is a standard split among family members if there is no will when it comes to money. It makes sense to get familiarized with your local laws on how heritages are managed and what tax laws are at play. There are lawyers who can help you to set up a will and guide you through these regulations if you are not happy with the standard policies and procedures. Keep in mind that debt is also transferred… If you have treasured items, and you have an idea what should happen with them, create a list and share it with your family and loved ones. If you are not sure if everyone would be happy with the distribution, Magnuson recommends giving the items in question to an independent third party, as the last thing you want to have is a dispute amongst your loved ones.

Next to the physical items, I also took the time to think about my digital heritage. There are plenty of online accounts, social media accounts and also this blog, which should not consume resources once I pass away. I followed Magnusson’s example and stored all account information in a little physical book with a note on what to do with them. It is much easier to grant access to your digital heritage this way than via official service provider processes (if they exist at all). You can also store this booklet in a bank safe if you do not want to keep it at home. It is important to specify in detail what should happen with all the data to avoid difficult decisions for others. For example, distribute all pictures in a FAMILY folder to all family members and delete the rest.

When to start with Death Cleaning?

Very often people start to think about their mortality late in their life or when their energy levels are already low due to long-term sicknesses. It might be difficult to speak with your loved ones about certain topics as they would not normally be open to have these discussions, as these discussions can be painful. I personally do not find it too difficult to speak about my mortality because, like most people, for me it seems to be so far in the future that it doesn’t appear as an immediate threat. Continuously keeping your paperwork and the people closest to you up to date on changes is also of an emotional burden then doing everything at once close to your own death. And you never know if sickness or sudden unexpected death could prevent you from doing your own death cleaning at all. Therefore, my recommendation would to start as early as possible.