There is a new “thing” out these days, another concept which, if followed, promises that you will be more organized, more productive, more happy, more free. It has to do with  STUFF.

It’s called Swedish Death Cleaning and it goes like this. As you get older, you systematically declutter your life’s accumulation of STUFF, getting rid of it with the goal of minimizing the amount of stuff you have that ultimately would be left for others to deal with after you are gone. For anyone who has had to sort through and deal with the belongings of a departed loved one realizes, this is not an easy thing to do.

When we went to live in Asia, back in 2007, I went through a total purge of our house. We lived in a large 4 bedroom house that included a basement full of boxes of stuff, much of which had never been looked at since moving in 6 years prior. Not wanting to lug all of this with me, I got serious about getting rid a lot of it. I looked at everything, every piece of furniture, every cupboard item, every stray box with one question in mind – “When I open this on the other side of this planet, will I see this with a smile on my face?”. If not, out it went. I gave things away to friends and neighbours – treadmill, piano, tools – I filled two trucks from 1-800-GOTSTUFF to cart away, and I furnished an entire apartment that son Mike, who was staying behind, was going to move into. The rest went into the moving van. It was a very liberating experience and I felt so much better once it was done. Lighter.

But even then, there were things that did not get sorted to any great extent – my own personal papers, photos, clippings, writings, letters, as well as some of those dead relative boxes I was not capable of dealing with. 26 boxes of the stuff. This is what it looks like:

Large wicker chests, plastic bins full of file folders, other assorted boxes of varying sizes and shapes. Inside are all kinds of things including letters and snapshots belonging to different deceased family members. I have a box full of letters written by my grandfather to my grandmother many many decades ago that I inherited from my mother who also no doubt was “gifted” these when they cleared out her mother’s stuff after she passed away. I recognize all the old handwriting – my father, my mother, my grandparents. I have no real urge to read all this stuff, but there’s something about that handwriting that makes it hard to just pitch it. Peeking into other boxes, I find old letters from high school friends written to my teenage self in the years after we moved from Montreal to Toronto (almost 50 years ago!), old term papers and essays from university, journals, notebooks, souvenirs, magazine clippings, stuff stuff stuff. Big sigh.

So my project for this month is to Get A Grip. To sort through these boxes and shred, recycle and figure out what to do with this. I can already see a problem. Memory prompts. Finding certain things leads to a trip down memory lane, a huge distraction from the task at hand. But this quest may not be just about how many sheets of paper I can shred in an hour or a day and if I look at it as the journey it is, it could be an eye opener and not such a bad thing. We’ll see. And, like the feeling of the big pre-Asia purge, I’m sure I will feel better not being weighed down with all these boxes of unopened memories.

Shredding My Life

After a week of this I’ve reduced the number of boxes by 40% and filled up bags of garbage, paper recycling and shredding. A good start. I have yet to dive into the really hard stuff – letters, journals and photos that feel a bit like mine fields ahead, but I take heart with the description of Swedish Death Cleaning as a “gradual” process. At least I’ve made a start. No doubt current generations will have an easier time of it as no one seems to write letters or print photos anymore. All you’d have to do is a couple of clicks to reformat a hard drive and you’re on your way. Off to the great unknown.