Death cleaning

My mother-in-law's house is now very close to empty. It has been a

long and difficult process. My wife and I are by now very practised

at totally emptying houses, having moved overseas on a budget on three

separate occasions. However, in those cases we have known the move

was coming months in advance, we have been living in the house at the

time (meaning we can have people come by to pick stuff up at any time

that suits them) and, of course, we deliberately live a relatively

minimal lifestyle in order to make this kind of thing possible. None

of those things were true in this case. Further, there was the extra

emotional dimension of having to decide which things to keep as

reminders, and also what to do with things which had been gifts from

us or my wife's siblings. Definitely cleaning "on hard mode".

While here, we visited our mutual best friend, who was born in Sweden

but moved to Australia with her parents as a teenager. She told us

that the Swedes have a concept of "death cleaning" (döstädning), and

sure enough there's even an English-language book[1] on this. The

idea, as you might guess, is that as you get to the age where your

own death is looming on the horizon, you begin pre-emptively clearing

out your life's accumulated material baggage in preparation for the

inevitable. Not only does this leave less of a burden to those you

leave behind, it also gives you a chance to hand things down to those

people in person, explaining the history of the thing, what it means

to you and why you want them to have it. Possibly even a chance to

see the thing's new owner enjoying it. This seems like a very nice

idea to me.

The entire experience has really driven two things home to me. One,

the sheer quantity of stuff that it is very easy to accumulate in a

lifetime if you don't actively make a conscious effort not to do so.

Two, the extent to which modern Western society is very poorly setup

to facilitate disposing of that stuff in a non-wasteful,

non-destructive way. Matresses are perhaps a prime example here.

Even charity stores will not touch used matresses with a bargepole,

unless they are absolutely spotless. A tiny stain in one corner and

the entire massive thing is destined for landfill, at great expense

to the disposer! Meanwhile, people sleep on the street. I

understand why it probably wouldn't work, but I really wish there

were great big warehouses where you could just drop off anything at

all that you didn't want, for free, and other people could come and

take anything they wanted, for free - and that there was a strong

social norm that this should be done in preference to throwing things

out or buying new things.

I have talked a tough talk in the past about not owning things that

aren't essential, and I think I walk that walk better than most

people with of a similar age, cultural background and income, but I

do think I have been slipping lately. I am prone to extreme lines of

thought when it comes to how to live my life (this will come as no

surprise to regular readers!), and my first response to having had to

deal with a deceased estate is to become like a monk and own no more

than ten items. This is almost certainly overkill, but I think that

having a cull of carelessly accumulated things after a year of living

in our new home would probably do some good.

[1] http://time.com/5063275/death-cleaning/