How ‘The Art of Swedish Death Cleaning’ Started a Trend at CandysDirt

Watching a funky show called The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning gave me hope for actually being able to dig out from under a lifetime of inherited antiques and accessories. I’m most decidedly not a fan of the Marie Kondo method of purging because all my “stuff” gives me joy. I grew up with an Air Force father and an intrepid mother, always up for adventure. Dad’s postings took us around the world from Paris to Pakistan and beyond, and my parents collected everything from a French antique prayer chair, to Turkish braziers, and a carved elephant chair. You name it, I probably have it.

When I look around my house, I relive our family adventures, and the memories make me smile.

There’s the brass hanging lamp my dear mother haggled for in a tent full of opium smokers in Chang Mai, Thailand. This was back when it was only a mountaintop village. You had to get there by jeep with a machete-wielding guide chopping the jungle out of the way to reveal the dirt road. Across from my writing chair, Asian musical instruments hang on the wall to the left, and a German clock from the 1950s is on the right. In my bookcase, you will find a Turkish hookah, a Chinese wedding basket, and an African sculpture nestled among a myriad of other treasures. In fact, that is what my mother called all of it, our treasures.

As the saying goes, you can’t take it with you. And while I’m not moving, and hopefully pretty far from shuffling off to Buffalo, I’ve realized I want to be the one to determine what happens to all of those treasures, and I certainly don’t want to burden my son with figuring it all out, because I’ve been there, done that. 

It took a year to clear out my parents’ home in San Antonio after they passed. I was there a week out of every month working on it. We had a garage sale, which I have a particular aversion to. The Salvation Army came twice, and we made numerous trips to Half Price Books and Goodwill.

Then we packed the largest Ryder rental truck we could find with what was left and hauled the remaining treasures to Dallas. All of those beautiful items went into storage for years and years.  I cannot begin to tell you what I spent on storage units.

The idea was I’d take one weekend a month and start the process of figuring out what to do with all these beautiful items. That worked for a while, and we continued downsizing to smaller units. But I was far from consistent. When I finally got fed up with paying for storage, we brought about 100 plastic tubs filled with goodies into my house. Furniture, lamps, and artwork got wedged in, and until this year, that has been just fine.

The day I tuned into a show called The Art of Swedish Death Cleaning, it gave me a new outlook on my overstuffed little cottage. Swedish Death Cleaning, or “döstädning,” is a real thing. The Swedes believe in a thoughtful approach to assessing their belongings and determining what to do with them, so when the time comes, their heirs are not left with a massive house full of their belongings. It’s not as harsh as the Marie Kondo method, so it’s not a slash-and-burn process, which I appreciate. You don’t have to do everything all at once, and that also appealed to me.

The Art of Swedish Death Cleaning show inspired me, not to immediate action, but the seed was firmly planted. I can’t tell you when the true turning point came. Maybe it was when my friend (and publisher) Candy Evans started her downsizing process for a major move. Maybe it was when I decided to take up the carpet in the front bedroom and get the floor refinished, which meant I had to empty the entire room. Maybe it was the mental shift that I suddenly had to start entertaining again. Whatever lit the fire, I find that I’m actually excited about this approach because, even though I’m not moving, I’m ready to part with a lot, and it means someone who loves our family treasures almost as much as I do will receive them, and best of all there will be more room to cram people in to my home to party!  

My first foray into what I like to think of as “placing” my belongings started with a friend, of course, who has an online auction business. If you just look around, you realize you probably have a lot of resources already at your fingertips. Over the coming weeks, the CandysDirt.com team will be sharing our purge stories and resources because we know we aren’t the only ones who need to start practicing The Art of Swedish Death Cleaning.

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Welcome to The Downsizing Diaries, where the CandysDirt.com team takes on the big question — What do you DO with all your stuff? Tune in next week as we start sharing specific tips for shedding your stuff.