So you’ve been reading your Marie Kondo and working out which of your socks spark joy and enjoying the liberating feeling of committing perfectly good objects to landfill – but it’s still not enough. You want to up the ante.
Then, friend, you need dostadning – or, to give it its English rendering, Swedish Death Cleaning.
It’s not just the name of our new band but also the new thing for those who want to get super hardcore about decluttering. Which is a weird thing to get super hardcore about but nothing surprises us anymore.
It’s the invention of Margareta Magnusson, who is “between 80 and 100” according to her Time interview, who pondered her own mortality and concluded that it’s better to dump your own garbage.
“Don’t collect things you don’t want,” she explained. “One day when you’re not around anymore, your family would have to take care of all that stuff, and I don’t think that’s fair.”
The premise is to imagine that you’re going through all the crap you own and working out what to get shot of in the inevitable event of your death.
Will your children/friends/robot butler/creditors really cherish that IKEA table you can’t fit in your new place, or that dead computer you were keeping in order to get your old novel manuscript off the second you find a plug, a floppy disc and remember how Windows 4 works? Or that PS1 with no controllers? Or your CDs – dear god, your CDs?
What even is this garbage?
And yes, so far, so Kondo. Where Swedish Death Cleaning gets real is that instead of binning your gear, you give it to your friends and family when you see them, sort of like a pre-inheritance.
And it’s also a good way to start those awkward convos about what happens when you cark it. You know, stuff that’s otherwise hard to bring up, like “just so you know, I want to be cremated” or “avenge me”.
And Magnusson also advocates for a “throw away box” where you keep the letters and photos and things which are meaningful to you and utter garbage for anyone else, in order that they can just ditch it once you’re in the ground without having to wonder whether its contents are worthwhile.
“That… that’s a LOT of poppa’s nudes.”
Of course, this technique isn’t for everyone. Some of us are planning to be sealed up in a pyramid surrounded by our possessions like the pharaohs of old.
But sure, hand off that lamp to Kate if you want. Why not make it her problem?