Stage 1 – De-Clutter and our discovery of Döstädning
The black speck you see above the dime is a kidney stone. This tiny thing became the catalyst for Lisa and I to get up and start a series of events that would change our lives.
Mid February 2018, Lisa went to Hardin Memorial with a kidney stone. It was entirely amazing to us how such a tiny thing could cause so much pain. At the end of the event, she and I decided to change course, and make another significant life change.
The following is a story of what happened next…
Our modest house on an ordinary street had about 2700 square feet of living space, and though we are not hoarders, we still had a LOT of stuff to get rid of. I believe that most people have varying degrees of a tendency to hoard (human nature most likely). Fortunately for us, when we finally decided to sell up, we had already (for several years) been re-considering the need to hold onto stuff, and were already in the process of disposing of things we did not need.
During this time we discovered Döstädning.
Döstädning is Swedish for ‘death cleaning’. Basically you are performing an important service for those left behind when your time is up. So now, instead of leaving a major chore for our children to deal with when we die, our intention is to leave them an inheritance, and a few odds and ends to take care of. (BTW: the most important task to accomplish is to collate records of ones accounts, passwords, and all personal documentation such as your wills).
Actually, ridding ourselves of ‘stuff’ turned out to be a very satisfying experience that we’d recommend to anyone who has/owns more than they touch and use within a year. The adage ‘if you haven’t needed it in the last 12 months, get rid of it’ rang true to us, and we aggressively designated possessions either as ‘keep’ or ‘get rid of’.
Of course the above-mentioned adages and comments do not do justice to the reality of actually having to sell, give away, or throw away a good proportion of things that have been collected over four decades. Obviously, some things are easy to get rid of, for example, on our street we could put just about anything by the edge of the street and it would not be long before it was spotted and taken by someone driving by. Our town also has an annual ‘Spring Clean Up’ that allows residents to put out most everything they want to get rid of.
But there are a few things that neither the trash company nor the City will not collect that include: tires, concrete, and paint. We had a load of paint….
Years of painting inside and outside our house had resulted in us having about fifteen used and partially full one gallon containers of paint which was a problem, until we mentioned it to Mike-C, a brilliant member of our family who told us to pour them all into a single container and he would use them to paint rooms in his apartments.
Mike’s Paint (3/3/2019)
Harder decisions were represented by things such as furniture and gifts. Another tool that we employed during this time was a philosophy made famous by Mari Kondo (also known as Konmari). Basically, you would consider the item in question, ask if it still sparked joy in your heart, if it did not you would thank it for its service then let it go.
