döstädning

 "Swedish death cleaning"

Apparently, there's at least one book out there about this, and I've seen multiple articles, though I've never bothered to read much past the headlines.  It's a simple idea, really: If you were gone, as in dead and gone, not just on vacation, would the things you're leaving behind be a burden?  

As the daughter of a dedicated pack rat, I am opposed to keeping stuff to just to keep it. I do not believe in "I'll use it someday," especially if it's been sitting in a box or a drawer or a cupboard for more than 10 years now.   Still, in a big house like ours, it's easy for stuff to accumulate because you can just put it up on a shelf and not even see it.  This is how you end up buried in stuff!

My self-appointed job this summer: döstädning, made possible by DH moving his office upstairs into DS2's room, which will be vacant until he gets his next leave and can come visit, and only the Army knows when that will be.  

It's going well, because I have no distractions and can work at my own pace, and I can be ruthless since there's no one else around to say, But don't you think...?  No, I don't.  Out it goes!

The downstairs is pretty much done except for the biggest job, which I'm saving till everything else is settled: the photo albums.  But cleaning out the guest room was huge, because it had become the junk room. We weren't expecting any guests over the pandemic, so no big deal, right?  Plus, all of our go-to donation places were closed, and I didn't want to just throw away good, some very good, stuff, so it just sat there, some of it for over year. 

But now, St. Vincent de Paul is accepting donations again, and I've made two trips there, plus a trip to Bookman's, and another trip to the solid waste recycling center.  DS1 switched around some furniture and there's more space in the guest room now than in the entire history of the guest room -- and even the closet is mostly passable.  I have a few targeted donations that I have to arrange, so those items are waiting in the closet.

It's lovely just methodically going through boxes and bookshelves and cupboards and closets, sorting everything: keep-donate-pitch.  I eliminated seven (!!!) boxes from my closet, at least 4 of which moved with me from Massachusetts over 25 years ago.  I have a much smaller stack of stuff that will fit in bottom drawer of my night stand, so here's to using furniture to hold things I actually like, that have meaning! 

Some part me is arguing, "You're erasing your own past!" when I pitch letters from high school friends or sweethearts, or my super dramatic adolescent journals.  Projecting time forward, I thought, Do I want anyone else to read this?  Do **I** even want to read this, ever again?  No, and no, especially the 2-inch thick file of legal bickering that ended my first marriage, or the tortured letters I wrote after a  (different) devastating break-up.  I do thank God I never sent them -- they were intended to be therapeutic, but looking back, I'm not so sure they were.  Rumination contributes to depression, but I didn't know that back then.  

The photo project will take a lot longer, although I've pitched at least a half-dozen old albums full of murky red-tinted photos that were not-great to begin with.  I've salvaged a few here and there, but I don't need, for example, full documentation of the construction of the deck on my old place in Natick, even if it was a really nice deck.  And no one needs scads of photos of people they haven't talked to in over  30 years, right?  They're not part of my life any more, and there's no reason to weigh myself down -- literally -- with photo albums from the times they were.  

It will be harder to go through the albums from my own family, but I know I can at least eliminate duplicates and bad pictures.  Back before digital cameras, if you weren't a serious photographer, you'd use your point-and-shoot, develop the film, and get your prints.  I never developed (pun unintended) the habit of pruning out bad shots back then, although if my fingers were in front of the lens, I wouldn't keep those prints!  But I know there are a lot of truly mediocre - or worse - landscape shots and architecture shots and honestly, no one needs those if they're not showing something specific. 

Sorting is the first phase, then will come scanning, and then figuring out long-term storage. I suppose if I can reorganize 20+ photo albums into a half dozen or so, that's not too bad, but I'm not thrilled with that idea.  Eventually, I want to move to a smaller house, and one reason I'm doing this is to prove to myself I don't need a house this big to hold all my stuff! 

Now I'll just have to resist filling up all the newly-empty spaces I've made.