The Swedes’ Solution to De-Cluttering Before You Die

Author Marie Kondo recently furthered the decluttering trend with her book on the subject, and now a new theory with a different twist has come out of Sweden. We didn’t even know about this phenomenon when we wrote about it here.

“If your family doesn’t want your stuff when you’re alive, they sure won’t want it when you’re dead.”

“The latest volley in the decluttering business comes from Stockholm, where 80-ish artist Margareta Magnusson has just published a slim yet sage volume, “The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning.” The book will be published in America in January.

While Marie Kondo gave us strict instructions to keep only things that spark joy in “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing,” Magnusson’s book is straightforward and unsentimental, with a bit of humor. The main message from this mother of five is: Take responsibility for your items and don’t leave them as a burden for family and friends. It’s not fair. Magnussun says you can keep things that evoke good memories; there are no hard-and-fast rules such as folding your remaining T-shirts to stand upright in your drawers, as dictated by the KonMari method…”

Read ore about “Death Cleaning” here.