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We should not feel obligated to shed our belongings just to make it easier for our children.

Possessions can provide support for the future, cultivating a sense of aging in place.

For managing our belongings, there isn’t one fixed strategy across individuals or within an individual.

Most of us want to downsize as we get older—in a way that fits our own needs at our own pace.

As we grow older, we face considerable pressure to reduce our possessions and our living space. Such downsizing can have practical benefits and be personally liberating, but it can also lead to unnecessary stress and guilt.

This post does not criticize the act of downsizing, but it does push back against the pressure to do so, especially for the sake of our children. We can declutter and live more simply, but we should not feel obligated or guilted into discarding what is valuable to us.1

The Pressure to Downsize

Downsizing is often promoted as a virtuous gift and a way of showing love to our heirs. As middle-aged and elderly adults, we are counseled to reduce clutter so our children won’t face the arduous task of clearing out and cleaning after we die. We are also advised not to accumulate any new things because of the additional burden this will add.2

In an enlightening post on Swedish Death Cleaning, Psychology Today blogger Dr. Donelle Dreese offers a different perspective, saying that such cleaning “is an act of love for all those who will be in the position to clean out our ‘stuff’ after we are gone.”

Disciplined downsizing is also presented as a path to wisdom. By going through all of our possessions, seriously considering what matters to us and discarding the rest, we may move toward a deeper understanding of our place on Earth, “growing downward, smaller, one among the grasses,” in the words of poet Wendell Berry. Such downsizing conveys a moral imperative to acquire wisdom through un-acquiring possessions.

Gently Resisting the Pressure to Downsize

Considering the Children. For many of us, when we die, our children will be in middle age. The ideas in Swedish death cleaning........

© Psychology Today