Let’s get it out of the way right now: the term "death cleaning" is a bit morbid but it isn't as bad as it sounds, and it works. The idea is when people die, they leave stuff. Lots of stuff. Reams and reams of it, piles and piles of it. And it’s friends and family that are left to dealt with this stuff surplus, this mountain of minutiae.
That’s where dostadning comes in. In Sweden, people start as early as their ‘50s, as the years roll by slowly but steadily decluttering. Yet the process isn’t only for those contemplating a visit to the great wine bar in the sky. It’s for all ages.
Margareta Magnusson, the author of The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning, says “My motto is, if you don’t love it, lose it. If you don’t use it, lose it.”
She says she is between the age of 80-100, and in the process of dostadning, “a permanent form of organization that makes your everyday life run more smoothly.”
“Living smaller is a relief,” Magnusson writes. Death cleaning isn’t the story of death and its slow, ungainly inevitability. But rather the story of life, your life, the good memories and the bad. “The good ones you keep,” Magnusson says. “The bad you expunge.”
Keep only what you love, and what makes you happy in the moment. It’s like tidying up, but with an added sense of the transience and futility of this mortal existence. As Magnusson says, you won’t be taking any of it with you, so why hold onto it now?
FULL STORY
Thanks for your find today! 
🏔 
