Too.Much.Stuff

And the Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning

Dear Friends,

It’s a beautiful Fall morning here. The leaves are turning, and the angle of the sun makes them glow. It’s been a while, again.

On the cancer front I had some good news recently. My tumor marker that is monitored has now dropped to its lowest measurement since I was diagnosed, even making it into the range of normal. I hold this news loosely, celebrating that it appears that the cancer is quieting its growth right now, while knowing that everything is impermanent. I still have cancer, it will always be Stage 4, I will always be in treatment, but at the moment I have some more good time. My current treatment is in 3-week cycles. Week 1 is rough, Week 2 starts to improve, and Week 3 is good. Today is a week 3 day and I try to make the most of them.

Inspired by some good energy weeks this summer and by the Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning (both the book and the streaming series), I have been tackling and purging my stuff.

A week 3 trip to Lake Tahoe in October. The group of boulders looked like a Council of Elders to me.

I couldn’t remember what was in the large box shoved in the back of the loft shelf in the shed. Purge mode had begun and so down it came for me to unpack. I dug through layers of crumpled packing paper, and then I saw the socks and knew exactly what I’d found. I think it was my grandmother who used old socks to carefully wrap and protect these crystal goblets. I remembered unpacking and repacking these for holiday meals growing up, and the box eventually came to live with me. I sighed as I wondered what to do with these beautiful glasses in our very casual lifestyle in our small house with little storage. A friend who was helping me said why don’t you use them? My first thought: they are for special occasions. This thought is what had relegated them to a carefully packed box for the last 30 years. Why not use them? So I wrapped up my IKEA wine glasses and gave them away, and put the goblets in the kitchen cabinet.

This was the summer of the purge, and it is spreading into fall purge too. Several friends were in purge mode with me. Maybe once we are solidly middle-aged it’s time to re-evaluate our stuff. In my case we have a shed full of bins of stuff, some of which hadn’t been opened since my last move 10 years ago.

The shed plan had always been for my wife to set up a woodshop in there, but it was overflowing and cluttered with stuff. Another friend who loves to sort stuff and is entirely unsentimental came one weekend to get the ball rolling. Having someone objective on your team is invaluable! No judgement, but do you really want to keep that?

I have always been a saver for “just in case.” Over time I have realized that “just in case” rarely comes, and if it does, I can usually get what I need. “Just in case” and her cousins “I could find a use for that”, “let’s save those for a special occasion,” “this belonged to my beloved dead family member” create the justification for holding on to stuff. There are also all the lifestyle aspirations that keep me holding onto more stuff for when I might pursue that aspiration.

But stuff becomes clutter, energy becomes stagnant, and it all begins to feel suffocating.

The cluttered shed was not my only motivation. Given my diagnosis I wanted to sort and pare down what I will leave behind. I don’t want to burden my loved ones with all this stuff that frankly they don’t want. My kids are minimalists and don’t want the collections of family mementos I have housed.

Swedish death cleaning invites us to reevaluate our stuff, to not pass this task to our loved ones after we die, but also to have our spaces and stuff be a reflection of our lives now. I loved camping at one time and have many fond memories of camping through the years. In my current body, I will not be tent camping any more. My wife and I had collected a comprehensive set of camping gear which we have barely used in recent years. Same with bicycling. I used to love puttering around on my bike, but again it is not safe for me to do so anymore. We gave the camping gear to camping friends and young families just starting their camping adventures, and the bikes to a shop that tunes them up and provides them at low cost to people who need transportation. Big spaces, both physical and mental opened up, and I could breathe easier.

Buy Nothing (a neighborhood giving group based on social media) has been my friend, helping me to pass things to new people who actually want them. Teacups for a tea party, jewelry to use for a collage, an antique chair for someone’s bedroom. I have a friend who is giving her special pieces of clothing to young people who will wear and enjoy them.

Dealing with sentimental items is the most difficult. Giving things to actual people, as opposed to thrift stores, makes it easier for me to part with these items. Sometimes I have needed to take some time to be ready to part with something. During that time, I’d consider all the stories and memories that the thing evoked and would realize I could keep those stories and memories while letting the thing itself go. Sometimes even telling the story to someone helped me release it. My rule of thumb became either use it or pass it on, with a limited number of very selective cases where I would pack it away again, and in those cases tried to leave notes with the story or memory. And I will give explicit permission for my loved ones to choose to keep what is left, or to give it away guilt-free.

The purge continues. There is still too much stuff, but I am mostly enjoying revisiting the bins of stuff and finding new homes for it.

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If you’ve been here awhile, you’ve heard me extol Andrea Gibson who passed away in July. Come See Me in the Good Light, the documentary about their life with their wife, poet Megan Falley, will begin streaming on November 14 on Apple TV. It is a beautiful, poignant and funny portrait of living and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Wishing that you find grounding in these troubled times. Thank you for being here.

Sending you love and strength in these days,

Maija

Today’s song is Human by Brandi Carlile. The complete Healing Happens playlist is available on Spotify and Apple Music.

Healing Happens on Spotify

Healing Happens on Apple Music