I chanced upon an article by Margareta Magnusson in last week's Time magazine. It's about Doedstaedning. That won't mean anything to you unless you're a Swedish speaker. She translates it as Death Cleaning but I think it's translation is broader than that, like Death Placing or Preparing.
Anyway, semantics over, I had great empathy with her article as I've found myself of late looking around the house and thinking that I don't want someone to have to clear up my mess, you know, "when I'm gone". And it seems I'm not alone in this. It's something we do. It must be similar to that surge of cleaning and organising one's supposed to have just before giving birth. Instinctive. Primeval. Only at the other end of life. And without the pain.
In the last year or so I've had a few surgettes of decluttering and organising but they were just that, little surges. What's kicked off a more serious approach, the Death Cleaning, is a situation we found ourselves in last autumn, when TP by default was charged with the clearance of the two homes of a departed relative.
The experience took my concerns for Death Cleaning to a whole new level. So I've walked through the house, identifying the areas of mini-hoarding which need decluttering, cleaning and re-organising. And there are a few! But my Light Touch 2018 approach allows me to make this an easy and hopefully pleasant journey, tackling one area at a time.
Without any real planning on my part, the upstairs bathroom was the first area to get my attention before Christmas.
Anyway, semantics over, I had great empathy with her article as I've found myself of late looking around the house and thinking that I don't want someone to have to clear up my mess, you know, "when I'm gone". And it seems I'm not alone in this. It's something we do. It must be similar to that surge of cleaning and organising one's supposed to have just before giving birth. Instinctive. Primeval. Only at the other end of life. And without the pain.
In the last year or so I've had a few surgettes of decluttering and organising but they were just that, little surges. What's kicked off a more serious approach, the Death Cleaning, is a situation we found ourselves in last autumn, when TP by default was charged with the clearance of the two homes of a departed relative.
The experience took my concerns for Death Cleaning to a whole new level. So I've walked through the house, identifying the areas of mini-hoarding which need decluttering, cleaning and re-organising. And there are a few! But my Light Touch 2018 approach allows me to make this an easy and hopefully pleasant journey, tackling one area at a time.
Without any real planning on my part, the upstairs bathroom was the first area to get my attention before Christmas.
We hadn't used it that much in recent years; the area was without organisation and, as you can see from the pic on the left, a bit of a dumping ground - towels mixed with spare toiletries, spare toilet brushes mixed with toilet rolls. So without any real game-plan. I tidied up the area as best I could.
I tidied up skin care items into a basket, and after this pic fitted a toothbrush arrangement on the wall.
This was but a bathroom tweaking, a light touch tidy up. There's a bit more sense to the room now. But I still needed to find a home for the towels, seen here stored in cubes. I realised that the under-eaves cupboards would be perfect for towels and spare toiletries, but they were, errr, rather full, but more on that tomorrow! Yes my dearies, I fully appreciate that your lives are busy and you've probably had your fill of me by now, so I've split my post in two. I'm keeping the second part of this shaggy dog story until tomorrow.
Come by again Sunday to find out what was in those innocuous looking storage cupboards.
And I'm sorry but you'll have to wait till then to find out why I was wearing a suede waistcoat to go to the cinema!
A la perchoine.
