What Is Swedish Death Cleaning, and Should You Do It? (2024)

Move over, Marie Kondo. Step aside, hygge. There’s a new kind of minimalism on the block: Swedish Death Cleaning.

In Sweden, "döstädning" (which translates to "death cleaning) is the cultural tradition of decluttering and organizing your life before passing away.

This inspired author Margareta Magnussen to write The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning: How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter. In her book, Magnussen asks her readers to think about organization and decluttering as a means of making their loved ones' lives easier in the event of their passing.

While Swedish Death Cleaning may sound morbid (okay, it's a little morbid), it’s actually a thoughtful, effective approach to decluttering. Plus, the method can provide some real benefits in the here and now, helping you decide what items are truly important and what aren't.

What Is Swedish Death Cleaning?

Swedish Death Cleaning is a method of organizing and decluttering your home before you die to lessen the burden on your loved ones after you've passed. Usually, older people or those battling a terminal illness partake in Swedish Death Cleaning.

In practical terms, this means organizing and decluttering your home to reduce the burden of sifting through dozens of objects and trying to decide what’s significant. With Swedish Death Cleaning, you’ll have already done that for them by only holding onto items you've determined to be essential.

“Sometimes you just realize that you can hardly close your drawers or barely shut your closet door,” writes Magnussen. “When that happens, it is definitely time to do something, even if you are only in your thirties. You could call that kind of cleaning döstädning, too, even if you may be many, many years away from dying.”

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Benefits of Swedish Death Cleaning

Swedish Death Cleaning has a ton of benefits beyond just decluttering including:

• Makes your life easier: When it comes down to it, Swedish Death Cleaning simplifies your life because it requires you to pare down to the true essentials.
• Keeps your home cleaner: After all, with less stuff, there is less mess!
• Reduces stress: Clutter and uncleanliness are linked to higher levels of stress. Swedish Death Cleaning eradicates the extra stuff, helping you feel calmer.
• Benefits your family: In the event of your passing, they will be better able to focus on the grief process versus needing to declutter your belongings.
• Helps you focus on what matters: Swedish Death Cleaning removes the excess, helping you focus on what is actually important.
  

Swedish Death Cleaning Checklist

While the essence of Swedish Death Cleaning is simple, this philosophy of decluttering can extend to numerous aspects of your home. It goes deeper than wiping down surfaces or even doing a deep clean—at its heart, Swedish Death Cleaning is about making decisions about what you keep and what you let go.

Do clothing first

Not sure where to begin? Start with your closets. It’s usually easy to sort through clothing and figure out what fits and what doesn’t (or what styles are better off going in the “toss” pile).

While you’re at it, get organized and create a system for your closet—like reserving the main sections for regularly worn items and putting seasonal clothing towards the back or up top.

Go through furniture and other items

With furniture and other items around your home, declutter by size. Start with the ones that take up the most space. From there, you can work your way down to smaller items and personal mementos—consider dedicating a box to hard-to-part items like letters and photographs. Simply take a clear-eyed look at the many items clogging up your kitchen and decide how many you actually use on a day-to-day basis.

Address digital clutter

Our loved ones go through more than just our physical possessions when we die. You need to think of the digital clutter they’ll also need to sort through, which means making sure they have important login details for things like online bank accounts and other important sources of information. While you’re doing this, consider taking an afternoon to declutter your hard drive and desktop as well—that’s one mess no one looks forward to dealing with.

Gather important paperwork

In addition to ditching any paper clutter, you'll want to pull together and organize any important paperwork such as legal documents, bank account information, etc. This will also be an opportunity for you to sort through any paper documents you don't need and can part ways with. This will help prevent confusion later on.

Common Misconceptions

As Magnussen mentions in her text, you don’t need to wait until late in life to start Swedish Death Cleaning. More than simply decluttering your home, taking this mode of minimalism up early can give you a clearer sense of matters most to you. Instead of being surrounded by random objects, the things you keep are imbued with deeper, more permanent meaning.

Getting rid of something also doesn’t have to mean losing it forever. Swedish Death Cleaning can be a great way to gift your friends and family objects you no longer need, but might hold meaning for them—like that copper pan set you’ve seen them eyeing. You’ll also find that many items can be sold or donated instead of simply going in the trash.

In the end, there’s no right or wrong way to do Swedish Death Cleaning. As long as you’re paring down the clutter around your home and surrounding yourself with the most meaningful essentials, you’re not only making things easier for your loved ones—you’re living a more purposeful life in the present moment.