So, I mentioned earlier that I know exactly what it feels like to be facing a garage/attic/basement/any storage space full of boxes and things, right? Stick with me – I have a bonus for you at the end of this blog!
Earlier this year I did my own Swedish Death Cleanse. If you are not familiar with the term, here is a quick summary of what it means:
döstädning = death cleanse
This decluttering practice from Sweden is meant to relieve a burden on family after one’s passing. Essentially, a family or a person goes through their things, room by room and discards anything that does not have real meaning. The idea is, if it doesn’t have meaning, it has no worth.
The practice is viewed as a liberating, but time consuming practice.
It can be very enjoyable to review items and share memories with family and then evaluate if it should be kept or discarded. Private items such as diaries or love letters should be discarded if they might cause your loved ones harm or unhappiness. Destruction of such items is actually promoted.
There. That’s a Swedish Death Cleanse. Now you know.
Look, I am not an old person nor am I near death but I had to do this cleanse. I had SO MUCH STUFF in my garage that I have been storing and bringing with me whenever I relocated.
Personal stuff I had been hanging onto since … well … the 1960’s when I was a little kid.
And guess what? Before I got in there and really sorted through it, I would not have been able to describe exactly what the stuff was except that it was SUPER IMPORTANT and THE STORY OF MY LIFE.
Ahem. Yeah. NO.
You want the truth?
The boxes and trunks I had so reverently set aside and cared for through multiple moves were mostly old stuff and things that I really didn’t need to keep. These boxes and trunks full of stuff did NOT reflect the story of my life. And to think I paid movers to schlepp this stuff every time I moved!
I was fortunate to be able to block out a day or so to actually go through all of this stuff that has been taking up so much space. All that space devoted to stuff I didn’t need to keep – FOR YEARS!
This so-called death cleanse was driven by the need to reclaim my garage for a real, practical purpose.
I needed the space in my garage for me – for real purposes.
Am I speaking to you yet? Am I telling your story too?
Here what I found when I went through the Decluttering and Sorting steps:
- School work – elementary through university
- My drawings and art work from childhood
- Annual calendars going back to the 1970’s
- Letters going back to elementary school
- Notes (the kind you passed in class)
- Photos
- Yearbooks going back to middle school
- Scrapbooks
- Mementos
- Love letters
- Certificates
- Reception response cards
- Wedding planning stuff
- Financial documents going back to my first job
- Career stuff – highlights and lowlights
And what did I learn?
Well, it was both fun and tedious, to be honest with you.
It was tedious to look at boxes and boxes of stuff I didn’t even know I had and now wondered why the heck I did! It was fun to rediscover my younger self at so many different ages. So many fun memories made me laugh out loud and smile.
More than anything, I was astounded at the stuff I kept and didn’t really need. Things I didn’t LOVE, NEED or USE but for some reason, thought I would need some day. Like my third grade paper on Native Americans or my college paper on Byzantine Art … really?
This was an important exercise for me to go through. I learned what was important to me and important enough to keep and protect. So many items (photos and papers) were rotting because I had not properly protected them. Don’t let that happen to you.
I went through the steps in ✷ A FREE COPY ✷ Start Archiving 101 to start protecting what I wanted to keep and eventually had an EDIT box to work through.
Using Editing steps I developed, I was able to whittle 3 trunks and 5 boxesof stuff into 2 small photos boxes and 1 small trunk of items worth keeping– many of which I now have on display because they tell my story.
I actually plan on repeating this exercise once a decade until I have one tiny cigar box of precious mementos left. Memories take no space friends – we just need a few precious things to trigger them.
I’ll share more about the EDIT process later.
Until then, Happy Archiving!
How is your archiving going??
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