A favorite hobby of mine is hitting garage sales and estate sales on a pretty Saturday morning. This hobby began over thirty years ago when it was a necessity rather than a trip for fun. We struggled financially starting out as young parents and garage sales often awarded us those perfect slightly used items needed, such as sports equipment, winter coats, furniture, and dishes. I now enjoy this as a hobby spending a dollar here and a dollar there to accumulate more "stuff."
A dear friend recently made a very smart move. Her son has a small, remodeled house next to their older two-story house. Being in their 60's and with aging mothers to help care for, they have decided to swap houses. Her son and his wife and child can now take on the stairs, and she and her husband can downsize to a one story and smaller living quarters which meets their needs.
It was in this conversation she told me about Swedish Death Cleaning. When you downsize, you must "downsize." What once fit into a larger home will not fit into a smaller home, and who really needs all this stuff anyway? The idea of the Swedish Death Cleaning is to do away with all the excess before you are no longer of this earth, leaving your children to then have to do it for you.
One of the estate sales I attended last Saturday was the fourth consecutive weekend the family had held the sale to get rid of all the mother's things they had not gone through and selected. The best friend of the daughter told me they had no idea how much could fit in closets and how much she had acquired over the years. A group of ladies were back for a second weekend to buy clothes for a 19-day river cruise they were going on together in Europe. This lady had enough clothes in all the bedroom closets for the group of ladies to choose color coded outfits to match each day of the trip.
It has been described as a gentle art to reach middle age and accept the inevitable. What does not bring us joy, we no longer need to house in our storage areas. If it does not spark happiness in us, we should no longer worry with it. We should give it a boot for some other young lady who will one day become middle aged and will then need to give it the boot.
One lady did tell my friend it did not bother her in the least leaving all of it behind for her children to deal with. If you think about it, we have picked up their socks, cleaned out their closets and under their beds enough to refrain from guilt having them now spend a month of weekends sorting and selling mismatched Tupperware.
The book on this topic suggests that life will become more pleasant and comfortable once we rid ourselves of the abundance. Mess is an unnecessary source of irritation. I agree with this wholeheartedly. There is a list of reasons why this is a healthy step in the aging process. But, the jury is still out for me. I love my things. And I have now reached the age in my life when I actually run across things I forgot I even had. And there is a quick flare of excitement like finding a five-dollar bill in a coat pocket at the start of winter from the winter before.
The book explains that getting rid of things is a good reminder that things don't last forever, including us. I'm not sure I need this reminder just yet. Trying to walk across the room after I have been sitting for over thirty minutes reminds me of this quite well. And I can't tell you what I have that brings me joy vs does not bring me joy. At some point all that is in my house at one time must have piqued my interest. And perhaps as my mind dulls over the next decades it will do so again.
And even though that family has had to spend a month of Sundays muddling through, I personally would think it the coolest thing ever if a group of old silver haired ladies plucked through my closets of clothes to prance around the Thames River in Europe. In fact, I now believe I have a new reason to plunge through the garage sale boxes once again.
