"Paring life down to the essentials and focusing on creation serves multiple purposes: It liberates us from awareness of self and time; it allows us to become immersed in an activity that we experience as extrinsically meaningful. Along with Jacques we can say that it allows us to come symbolically to terms with our mortality, while at the same time, it sustains our defenses against mortality awareness."
https://zdoc.site/paring-down-life-to-the-essentials.html
I've heard of Swedish Death Cleaning. I think it might be something they do in Sweden. Getting rid of years of accumulated crap so your kids don't have to deal with it. Sounds like plan.
16 comments:
Poor as they were, my grandfather told my grandmother when she felt the end coming on to get rid of all her things. Don't leave nothing for no one.After he passed, one day she got really sick and took an axe to all she owned. She got rid of everything except one of each. One chair, one cup, one plate, one fork, etc. She recovered and lived over twenty more years.
Talk about your fresh start :)
Swedish Meatballs
Creativity doesn't help, nothing helps, not even paring down;
It's all a ricochet steeplechase ride under the eye of a clown.
That image is hypnotic, in a good way. I'm stealing it for future use.
I like the idea of a good death cleaning. It's the polite thing to do. But why wait until end of life when you're all feeble and not up to the task? Don't get weighed down by your stuff. Toss or donate as you go unless it's actually useful and/or otherwise important.
It's a neat quilt, Am. Love the flower pattern at the edge. I'm pretty good at keeping the stuff at bay, my main problem is going through papers. Who knows what idiotic things my kids would come across if I died tonight :)
You're a doll for cheering me up, ricpic. Keep it up.
I like the death cleaning idea, too, but after you're gone whoever is left to deal with it should have no trouble finding a couple guys with a truck who would love to go on a treasure hunt through just about any house. If the spoils are sufficient they wouldn't even have to be paid.
Why not Washington D.C./Federal Government death cleaning? Getting rid of the dead wood, deep state flunkies, graft, and waste so our kids do not have to deal with it?
I've been attempting to work along those lines the last year or so. Books are my downfall, they're my children, if I don't take care of them, who will.
Evi, that is way too sensible an idea.
Great story, amp. "One chair, one cup, one plate, one fork, etc." Did she continue living that way? Different circumstances but I lived like that for a couple of years after getting out in 68. Me and my backpack and the wide open spaces. It was nice for a while, a breather after some intensity. Then I figured out I have to earn a living. And then you start acquiring stuff. Then next thing you know you're dead and don't give a damn about your stuff one way or the other.
Y'all know that if the eye of the hurricane passes directly over the top of the volcano out there in Hawaii we're all gonna die anyway.
So it is written.
I'm not sure, family circumstances being what they were I never met her. I know she eventually moved in with my aunt, but that was after her son-in-law, my aunt's husband died.
A flood wiped out a trailer park.
Poor things lost everything they had. Everything. It really was genuinely devastating.
News team shows up. Woman caterwauling about losing everything she owned, all of it just wiped away. She spoke strangely. "All muh pik-churs, all muh dishes,all muh pots and payuns,all muy nicknacks.
Reporter prompts, "All your treasures."
Woman sobs, "All muh treh-zurs."
I know.
I'm bad for cracking up laughing.
There wasn't a single thing of actual value in the entire lot. Every piece of junk is an emotional treasure to this woman. Nicknacks. Treasures. There is no discretion whatsoever. The lesson from nature is don't invest emotion in perishable junk.
The other lesson is maybe a trailer isn't such a sound real estate investment.
It was like the tsunami in the Indian Ocean that wiped out coastal towns. We saw wrenching video of people swimming for their lives amid bamboo and plastic junk washed out to sea. All of their cheap crap just washed away like it doesn't even count.
Because it doesn't count.
Sorry not sorry to sound so harsh but it was a rather stark lesson on the temporary nature of the material world. And man-made material even more so. And far more so when all your treasures and memories are bound up in bits of plastic and thin wood.
How can pictures be a treasure when they're all stuffed in drawers unframed and nobody ever looks at them?
Contrary to that, my parents had tons of pictures they never looked at. But we did. While still alive, I went through their house room by room and cleared them all out down to essentials.I couldn't believe how many drawers there were in that house, and each drawer filled to the brim with photos. And cameras. Photographs literally everywhere. Our entire history in pictures, the entire history of photography itself in pictures. Every type of camera imaginable. Every type of film. From simple box cameras, to pocket spy cameras through Polaroid cameras, several types, some even still in their packages, to 35mm, again, several types. Every place we lived, every place my dad worked, AF bases and homes and environs, I put them all in a shoe box. The first room, the shoebox filled so I got a larger box. The second room that box overflowed so I got another box. The third room, my sister's bedroom turned storage I switched again to ANOTHER GIGANTIC BOX. The box itself nearly filled the center of the room. I looked at each photo and tossed it into the box. Photos of people who I had no clue who they are.
It was a large task. And I hated it. I came to despise the photo fetish. I lost a grounded perspective.
Then at my dad's funeral reception, my sister went through and selected about 100 photos and spread them out on a table, along with odds and ends that struck her fancy, like slide rules and calculators, and schematics of electronics, navigation tools, electronic tools, and I must say, she did an excellent job as curator. She brought a woman's fresh perspective. Unusual things that interested her. Things that were mystery to her. She was very good at picking through my dad's crap that I would have trashed. That table of photos was fascinating to my dad's family and the rest of the visitors. All those years they had no clear idea what he was up to. [One photo was the console of a small(ish) radar site. The inside of a radar where men worked. Looking at the photo I could actually smell the brilliantly polished waxed floors and the ozone from the electronics. I told my dad's sister that was his home stereo. And she and her daughter believed me. "Really?" They both looked at me in amazement. " It's big."]
So they really were treasures. To them. In that moment.
Thanks, amp. I'm sure those 'circumstances' would be an interesting story.
Rabel, does that mean Swedish cleaning should be practiced every day as we never know what concurrences might occur.
When the quilt it hit my eye like a big glass parfait of colored Jello squares, I wondered if it had been posted with me in mind? If so, thank you! If not, then I'll regard it as another delightful Snap of Synchronicity!
My first encounter with Swedish Death Cleaning took place over at Althouse a few months ago. One of the older long-time readers/commenters there brought it up in a cafe thread, with a book recommendation that I checked out but didn't follow through on ordering. I was in the throes of my own form of death cleaning at the time, attending to the grim and arduous task of reducing or moving what we've managed to glean, reap and collect over the years.
While I wouldn't call the bulk of what I was cleaning out crap, there were several dump runs involved in addition to the truckloads sent to the thrift/mission store. Do I feel lighter, more free? Yes, though I also feel somewhat less anchored. We are definitely going through a time of transition.
I moved 7 years ago and that forced me to deal with 17 years of my on accumulated stuff. Got rid of a lot of it. Only tossed one or two items that, in retrospect, I should have kept. Most of it - good riddance.
Of course, after 7 years here the cycle continues. My current goal is to use up all the tons of wood I have sawed up over the years or die trying. Either way is good.
And when I am gone it can be dispersed. Did I ever mention finding my parents' wedding picture in a thrift store? At the time that was a bit shocking but now as a divorced guy I get it.
The funny thing about my estate will be that almost the entire contents of the house, and indeed, parts of the house itself, were made by me. No market value can be properly assessed.
You are welcome, my work here is finished! Hahahahaha!
It wasn't an open thread...it was a post! And it wasn't several months ago.
https://althouse.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-gentle-art-of-swedish-death-cleaning.html
Interesting, Rabel, keep a good thought :)
Thanks, all.
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