The English Maximalista

Apparently, Swedish Death Cleaning is a thing. 

For those of you who haven’t heard of it, Swedish Death Cleaning is the process wherein one declutters one’s belongings so that after one dies, our loved-ones will be less burdened with the enormous task of sorting through one’s stuff.

It’s a concept which has long been popular in Scandinavia, reaching global attention in 2018, after the publication of The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Margareta Magnussen.

Now, to be clear, my own death isn’t something that I spend much time dwelling upon: when it happens, it happens, right? 

Yes, my husband and I have the legalities drawn up, which we openly discuss with our daughters so that there won’t be any surprises to our blended family when The Time actually arrives. But other than those law-ish kinds of practicalities, neither of us have any intention of behaving as though our own deaths are imminent. 

I am fifty years old, Mr. Maximalista is 54. We basically live our lives as though we still have a few decades of independent living ahead of us… and fingers crossed, we do! After all, fifty is the new thirty.

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A few years ago, I read an article in The New Yorker Magazine, written by Ann Patchett, who happens to be one of my favourite authors. Something that struck me is a conversation she had with her husband, Karl, when discussing some of their belongings which were being stored in their basement:

“Let’s get rid of it,” he said.

“Maybe you want to hold on to some of it?” [Patchett asked him.]

“Ten years ago, I would have said yes,” he said.

Perhaps when I am in my sixties, as Ann Patchett’s husband was at the time this article was written, it will be easier for me to let go of more stuff. 

I’m not there, yet. 

Right now, it’s enough for me to have a general sort-out whenever I happen to be going through one of our storage bins, or when the urge hits me to sort through a closet or a kitchen cupboard.

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Swedish Death Cleaning has been on my mind a little bit recently, simply because our own parents have, in various ways, been talking to us about their own mortality.

My mother and I talk on the phone most days. With more frequency, nowadays, she will tell me how, on any particular rainy afternoon, she has been going through this cupboard or that. Invariably asking me whether I wanted her to keep this item or other, or is she okay to donate to charity the yields of that day’s rummaging.

During Mummy Dearest’s most recent visit, the unloading of her luggage was a rather peculiar event. As expected, the usual items were pulled out of her suitcases: clothing, toiletries, magazines to read en route.

Amongst all of the usual travel accoutrements, mince pies, and flying saucer sherbet sweets, though, were buried some items particular only to us. Tea towels. A mug with the recipe for Yorkshire pudding printed on the side. A plastic bag containing several hundred old loose photos. A beautiful cape crocheted by my grandmother. The dress my mother wore when she was a child, on attending the wedding of a beloved aunt.

These sentimental items have now fallen under my stewardship, until the time comes for me to pass along this particular baton.

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Conversations with my family do make me consider mortality, and family legacy, in the vague sense that I wonder whether the Top Banana will ever care as I do about my cherished photo albums, or whether she will have any desire to keep items I hang on to with such grave sentimentality. Probably not. She is only 23, after all. 

Frankly, this isn’t something I’m clutching my pearls about just yet. Maybe I shall worry more about it in another ten or fifteen years?

In the meantime, these precious items continue to live in the closet. To my chagrin, I have never been a bridesmaid, so there aren’t any of my own dresses hanging in a garment bag alongside those of my mother and my daughter. (I like to subvert this expression: always a bride, never a bridesmaid.) 

For the time being, I shall enjoy being able to disperse to our daughters the fruits of my own maximalist collections, currently stored carefully in the cupboard, waiting to be redistributed as our girls begin to desire more grown-up acquisitions for the new lives ahead of them. 

Lots of love,

M xo