The concept of Swedish death cleaning, popularized by Margarita Magnusson, is now ubiquitous on social media and the Internet. Before I discovered it formally, I had already bought into the idea through my own restlessness. I discovered a personal need to tie up loose ends and remove the dross out of a life I no longer wanted cluttered with the remains of a wonderful something that no longer existed.  

After that first lost year, I looked at the barren landscape around me and felt a strong impulse to purify my surroundings, as if to reduce everything to its most basic core. I viewed it as a paring away of the years of garbage, meaningless now that the center of my existence had vanished. 

The lure of minimalist possessions, of boiling down the essence of what was important, became overwhelming. I wandered through the house, repulsed by the clutter of what I had gathered through the years as if objects had some intrinsic importance when they were merely bulwarks against the nothingness that lurked ahead.  

I became obsessed with streamlining the narrow world that was all I had left. I cleaned out kitchen and bathroom cupboards, amassing tubs of small appliances, hair pieces and ornaments, beads, and jewelry, unused makeup left over from a subscription service I delayed in cancelling for too long, duplicative pots and pans, scarves, belts, and accessories. Finally, I got up the nerve to tackle the walk-in closet where my darling’s clothes hung in silent remonstrance against my will to declutter. I cried with every bag I filled with the clothes I would never see worn again; I confronted the pain of the finality of their disappearing forever. I was conflicted between the idea of losing my remaining tangible evidence of his existence and knowing that as long as they hung there as a silent witness, I would cry and suffer daily whenever I saw them. Part of me wanted to keep them as mementos of what had been, to lock them up inviolate. But I had to admit that while they stayed, they would keep the wounds bleeding, tearing off the scabs that were reluctantly beginning to form. It was the choice of a band aid I could slowly and painfully peel away or a swift rip off of scar tissue that would now have a chance to heal. Tearfully, I held them close, tried to find a scent of what had once been there, then rolled them into anonymous bundles to be stuffed into plastic trash bags for charity donations. It seemed to take a long while to work through it, perhaps because frequent breaks to process my emotions were desperately required. For every shirt and jacket I slid off the hanger, I remembered when he had worn it and what we had been doing at the time.  

Unable to lift all the bags and tubs, I was able to find a donation center who would send out a truck to pick up all my stuff. Refusing to blubber in front of strangers, I kept a stiff upper lip watching so much of my life thrown onto their characterless pile.  

It is incredible the amount of “stuff” we acquire in a relatively short span of time. Tired at the end of a hectic day, we stuff the clutter into drawers and cabinets, thinking we’ll sort it all out later. When we open a stuffed cabinet, we quail at the mess that confronts us and quickly reclose the door.  

Years ago, there was a common maxim: “He who does with the most toys wins.” It made a great bumper sticker but a less than logical philosophy of life. As we get older, the toys gradually tarnish. Our ambition to outshine our contemporaries becomes blunted. Who cares who wins? (Hint: no one does) Friends and families fall to the inevitability of tide, of chance, of death. 

When I was younger, and successful in my own business, I drove a Porsche, several through the years. I loved those cars: Wolf, Max, Werner, and Josef. Now I drive a Hyundai and don’t feel less adequate or think I am being deprived. Our values change, often without our being aware of it. We strut the stage of life, as Shakespeare would say, in a cyclical pattern. We come into the world naked and alone. Over the decades we acquire and build so much. As the arc of our lives starts to move downward, we shed much of that which we have gathered and admired so fiercely. Our lifestyle becomes leaner and more streamlined. Our world steadily shrinks as the valueless chaff is heaved overboard and we eventually leave life as we entered it, naked and alone.