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Canongate Books - Margareta Magnusson

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80 pages

English

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Description

Dostadning, or the art of death cleaning, is a Swedish phenomenon by which the elderly and their families set their affairs in order. Whether it's sorting the family heirlooms from the junk, downsizing to a smaller place, or using a failsafe system to stop you losing essentials, death cleaning gives us the chance to make the later years of our lives as comfortable and stress-free as possible. Whatever your age, Swedish death cleaning can be used to help you de-clutter your life, and take stock of what's important. Radical and joyous, eighty-something Margareta Magnusson's guide is an invigorating, touching and surprising process that can help you or someone you love immeasurably, and offers the chance to celebrate and reflect on all the tiny joys that make up a long life along the way. Dostadning was previously published as The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning.

Sujets

Assertiveness

Self-help

Informations

Publié par	Canongate Books
Date de parution	02 janvier 2020
Nombre de lectures	3
EAN13	9781838851286
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0400€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Margareta Magnusson was born in Gothenburg in Sweden. She has worked for many years as an artist and has had her work exhibited as far as Singapore and Hong Kong. She has death cleaned many times, for herself and others.
Margareta Magnusson
The paperback edition published in Great Britain in 2020 by Canongate Books
This digital edition first published in 2019 by Canongate Books
First published in Great Britain in 2017 by Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
canongate.co.uk
Copyright © Margareta Magnusson, 2017
The right of Margareta Magnusson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 78689 110 5 eISBN 978 1 83885 128 6
To my five children
‘Putting your house in order, if you can do it, is one of the most comforting activitites, and the benefits of it are incalculable.’
Leonard Cohen
Contents
Foreword
Death Cleaning Is Not Sad
Why I Am Writing This Book
Precious Time and Helping Parents
How to Begin
What To Keep and What Not To
Sort and Sort Out
More Organising
It Is No Fun to Play ‘Hide the Key’ When You Have Hidden It from Yourself
A Very Good Approach
Happy People
A Second Opinion
My Third Death Cleaning
Death Cleaning on Your Own
How to Discuss the Topic of Death Cleaning
Did the Vikings Know the Real Secret of Death Cleaning?
Only Count the Happy Moments
The Little Optimist
Don’t Forget Yourself
Making the Move to a Smaller Space
Mapping out Your New Space
Home
A Few Thoughts on Accumulation and Other Things
– Things
– Clothes
– A Note on Children’s Clothes
– Books
The Kitchen
– Cookbooks and Family Recipes
Things, Things and More Things
If It Was Your Secret, Then Keep It That Way (or How to Death Clean Hidden, Dangerous and Secret Things)
Unwanted Gifts
Collections, Collectors and Hoarders
In the Garden
Pets
At Last: Photographs
Stuff You Can’t Get Rid Of
The Throw Away Box
Correspondence and Communication
Written Things
My Little Black Book
Death Cleaning Is as Much (or More!) for You as for the People Who Come After
The Story of One’s Life
After Life
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Foreword
The only thing we know for sure is that we will die one day. But before that we can try to do almost anything.
You have probably been given this little book by one of your children, or as a gift from someone in the same situation as you and me. Or perhaps you’ve picked up a copy for yourself, because it struck a chord. There is a reason for this. You have collected so much wonderful stuff in your life – stuff that your family and friends can’t evaluate or take care of.
Let me help you to make your loved ones’ memories of you affectionate, rather than upsetting.
M.M.
Death Cleaning Is Not Sad
I am death cleaning, or as we call it in Swedish: döstädning . Dö is death and städning is cleaning. In Swedish it is a term that means removing unnecessary things and making your home nice and orderly when you think the time is coming closer for you to leave the planet.
It is so important that I have to tell you about it. Maybe I can also give you a few tips, since this is something that we will all have to face sooner or later. We really must if we want to save precious time for our loved ones after we are gone.
So what is death cleaning? For me it means going through all my belongings and deciding how to get rid of the things I do not want any more. Just look around you. Many of your things have probably been around for so long that you do not even see or value them any more.
I think the term döstädning is quite new, but not the act of döstädning . It is a word that is used when you or someone else does a good, thorough cleaning and gets rid of things to make life easier and less crowded. It does not necessarily have to do with your age or death, but often does. Sometimes you just realise that you can hardly close your drawers or barely shut your cupboard door. When that happens, it is definitely time to do something, even if you are only in your thirties. You could call that kind of cleaning döstädning , too, even if you may be many, many years away from dying.
I think women have always death cleaned, but women’s work is not often in the spotlight and should be appreciated more. When it comes to death cleaning, in my generation and those older than me, women tend to clean up after their husbands first, and then they clean up before they themselves are no more. While one would usually say ‘clean up after yourself ’, here we are dealing with the odd situation of cleaning up before ourselves . . . before we die.
Some people can’t get their heads around death. And these people leave a mess after them. Did they think they were immortal?
Many adult children do not want to talk about death with their parents. They should not be afraid. We must all talk about death. If it’s too difficult to address, then death cleaning can be a way to start the conversation in a less blunt fashion.
The other day, I told one of my sons that I was death cleaning and writing a book about it. He wondered if it was going to be a sad book and whether it made me sad to write it.
No, no, I said. It is not sad at all. Neither the cleaning nor the writing of the book.
Sometimes I feel a little uncomfortable with how unappreciative I am about some of the things I want to rid myself of. Some of these things have brought benefits to me. But I’ve discovered that it is rewarding to spend time with these objects one last time and then dispose of them. Each item has its own history, and remembering that history is often enjoyable. When I was younger, I never used to have the time to sit and think about what an object meant to me in my life, or where it came from, or when and how it came into my possession. The difference between death cleaning and just a big clean up is the amount of time they consume. Death cleaning is not about dusting or mopping up, it is about a permanent form of organisation that makes your everyday life run more smoothly.
Now, when I am not running around Stockholm, enjoying all that the city has to offer, I have time to enjoy all that my apartment has to offer, which is a reflection of my life.
The world is a stressful place. Floods, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, fires and wars follow one another. To listen to the media or read newspapers makes me depressed. I would shrivel up if I could not combat the negativity of the world’s news with good friends, experiences out in the natural world, music, beautiful things or just enjoying something as simple as a sunny day (which can be rare in our northern climate).
I would never ever want to write something sad; there is enough sadness out there already. So, I hope you will find the words and thoughts ahead helpful and entertaining, perhaps even humorous at times.
To do your own death cleaning can really be very hard. Maybe you have to downsize your home for some reason, maybe you have become single, or maybe you need to move to a nursing home. These situations tend to affect most of us at some point.
Going through all your old belongings, remembering when you used them last and hopefully saying goodbye to some of them is very difficult for many of us. People tend to hoard rather than throw away.
I have death cleaned so many times for others, I’ll be damned if someone else has to death clean after me.
Once someone is gone, things can be chaotic enough anyway, I can tell you. There are many sad stories about siblings who start to quarrel because they want the same item. This type of situation does not need to happen; we can plan in advance to lessen the chances of these unhappy moments.
I had for example a lovely bracelet that my father gave to my mother a long time ago. It was given to me in my mother’s will. The easiest way to avoid future complications among my children was to sell it! That was a very good idea, I think.
Later, discussing the sale with my children, they were fine with my decision. They had each been given something that had belonged to my father and mother. And after all, the bracelet was mine to do with as I pleased. Taking precious time to discuss one bracelet with my five children seemed unreasonable. Death cleaning is about saving such time.
Why I Am Writing This Book
I am now somewhere between eighty and a hundred years old. I take it as a responsibility of my old age to tell you about my experiences, because I believe this philosophy of death cleaning is important for all of us to know. It doesn’t matter if it is your parents or friends and family who are getting older or if it is about time for you to begin death cleaning for yourself.
I have moved house seventeen times within my own country and abroad so I should know what I am talking about when it comes to deciding what to keep and what to throw away, whether you are moving house, moving country or moving to the Great Beyond!
Although it seems to be mostly women who death clean since they tend to live longer than their husbands or partners, sometimes, as with the family I grew up in, my father was left alone first.
If someone has lived in a home for many years where children, grown-ups, relatives and guests have stayed and felt welcome, that same someone is often so busy that they never think of reducing the number of things in the household.
And so the number of possessions in the home grows quickly over the years. Suddenly the situation is out of control and the weight of all those things can begin to seem tiring.
Your exhaustion with all this stuff may appear out of the blue one day. When someone cancels a weekend visit or a dinner you feel grateful instead of disappointed, because you may be too tired to clean up for their visi