Hey Boomers, for your kids’ sake please ‘Swedish Death Clean’ the house

There’s a shipping container in my folks’ backyard. Neither parent remembers exactly what’s in it.

The corrugated wall panels are lined with cardboard boxes, plastic tubs, odds and ends, disused electronics and things they claim: “might come in handy one day”.

Many people leave the burden of sorting through their possessions after their death to grieving family.Credit: iStock

Case in point, the plastic bucket the kelpie wore around his neck after he was desexed. My folks are all set for that 2032 trip to the vet with their future dog.

I feel overwhelmed by clutter whenever I spend time at the family home.

There’s a wall unit of fancy glassware collecting dust. The dining room table’s last dinner party was circa 1998.

My parents’ wardrobe is brimming with clothes that hold “memories”, some of which are no longer worn but are being retained on the off chance of future weight loss.

Lurking in dark corners is the odd Aldi impulse buy.

And beware of the kitchen cupboard that produces a tsunami of Tupperware containers whenever opened.

For years, I gently encouraged them to hold a garage sale and donate to the Salvos.

I helpfully manipulated their streaming service algorithms to suggest programs like: Tidying Up with Marie Kondo and The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning.

Although it sounds morbid, döstädning or death cleaning is about a “home edit” to ensure your stuff has a purpose, according to the show’s Swedish interior designer Johan Svenson.

The series is based on a sensible and surprisingly not-so-sad book by Swedish author Margareta Magnusson who writes one shouldn’t “ever imagine that anyone will wish or be able to schedule time off to take care of what you didn’t bother to take care of yourself”.

“No matter how much they love you, don’t leave this burden to them.”

As an expat who returns to Australia once or twice a year, it strikes me how visibly older my parents appear – greying hair, age spots, creaking bones and a growing list of minor ailments.

Friends of mine are already starting to lose their parents or are having to transition them to nursing homes. The grief and stress of those monumental changes are compounded when there’s a house full of stuff to clear out.

I dread the prospect of spending weeks sorting through my parents’ possessions. It would be the greatest kindness to my sister and me if they got serious about downsizing in advance.

My father briefly had a jolt of decluttering motivation during a cancer scare years ago. He organised his shed and 30 years of paperwork, and found joy flogging a vintage motorbike, a heater, filing cabinets and antique lamps on Gumtree.

But Operation Declutter stalled during the pandemic.

I was locked out of the country for 18 months, and when I finally made it home, I discovered the folks had acquired the shipping container for storage. Now there was extra space inside the house for more clutter.

When it comes to household organisation, I am no neat freak. But moving house 15 times in the past 20 years including two international moves has helped me rein in my belongings.

The Danish concept of hygge – creating a warm and cosy ambience at home – has also taught me that less is more.

Edith Cowan University psychology associate professor Natalie Gately says people’s relationship to their possessions is complex and can be heavily influenced by their upbringing.

“The post-war economic boom resulted in mass consumerism and possessions were a sign of our wealth, status and a sign we were coming up in the world. That mindset can be hard to discard,” she says.

“Some Boomers may have had unstable childhoods, we had a surge in the [mid-1970s] of divorces when the no-fault divorce laws came into effect, so there were separations, housing moves, country moves in some cases. For some, our possessions also represent stability.”

My folks grew up in working-class families in the 1960s/70s and inherited an aversion to being wasteful from my grandparents – Italian migrants who came with nothing but a suitcase, and Australian farmers who weathered the Depression.

Unpicking that mindset decades on is difficult and I understand why it is easier to close the cupboard door and not think about it.

Of course, there are special keepsakes worth keeping that span generations. This European winter I have swanned about in Copenhagen in a glamorous tweed trench coat that my mother bought in 1976 with her first pay cheque as a secretary.

Likewise, it’s a delight to read my favourite children’s books from my childhood to my toddler nephew and see him burl about on the same battery-powered toy car that I rode at the same age.

But one must ensure such treasures aren’t lost among the jumble of everything else.

As humans we must face up to the fact that when we die we can’t take anything with us, and only a few of our possessions will hold meaning to others as they do to us. So spare your grieving children and family of sifting through a life’s worth of detritus.

Lisa Martin is an Australian journalist living in Copenhagen.

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