How To Free Yourself And Your Family From Unwanted Clutter

Being a baby boomer means that you’ve spent several decades on this planet, and many boomers have spent their entire adult lives in the same house. As time goes by, and especially if you have kids, it’s very easy to accumulate a lot of stuff and never get rid of it, to the point where your house becomes extremely cluttered and difficult to clean or even move around in. If your children have flown the nest and you find yourself with more rooms in the house than you need, you might even be tempted to fill them with stuff!

However, having too much clutter around you can cause you stress and lower your mood. As you get older, your mobility might also become reduced, and you could find it hard to move around in your house if there are piles of boxes or papers everywhere. This isn’t an easy topic to think about, but some older people also worry about leaving their children and grandchildren lots of unwanted clutter to sort out after they pass on, which is an emotionally difficult task to deal with.

In her book The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning, Swedish artist Margareta Magnusson describes a Swedish method for dealing with this problem called döstädning – literally, ‘death cleaning’. Although döstädning could be performed by people of any age and health status, the term is often used to describe the act of older people tidying up their belongings in preparation for their own demise. Despite this, the author insists that neither the process nor her book are sad. Swedish death cleaning involves others, because in going through all your possessions you will be reminded of the people they involved – from your kids’ art projects to your late aunt’s cardigan.

According to Magnusson you should leave sentimental items until the end and start your decluttering process by getting rid of items that you seldom use or that you have in excess. Of course, there might be a few things which you don’t use very often but really need a few times a year, and you could keep those in a unit such as those provided by Storage Area. Nobody needs to keep their worn-out coats, as long as they can afford a new one. Magnusson also suggests asking yourself if an item would bring someone else joy and giving it to them if so.

When it comes to sentimental items, the method which Marcus Chan used for decluttering his digital photo collection also works for physical objects: remember that you don’t need to keep all the pictures, baby clothes, kids’ drawings and so on. Holding on to one or two of each will be enough to keep the memories alive without encumbering you with lots of clutter.

Magnusson also points out another advantage of decluttering and keeping only what really matters to you: if you don’t go through this process, once you die your children might not know which items you valued the most and might end up getting rid of something you wanted to be an heirloom. So, take a deep breath and get started with your decluttering!




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