Decluttering is the ultimate act of love |
‘You are going to die before me and leave me to deal with this, and I will curse your soul for all eternity,’ I once said half-jokingly to my husband over a glass of wine. We were having one of our regular conversations about what he was going to do about his late uncle’s possessions, which had arrived at our house in lorry-loads about a year after we had married. ‘Why don’t you do half an hour of sorting every weekend? I will help you,’ I would suggest in reference to the multiple barns, basements and attics at our farm, which were now piled high with three generations’ worth of male hoarding. But with an increasing number of children in the house and no sense of urgency, progress was slow.
So when my husband was diagnosed, out of the blue, with terminal cancer early last year, I realised that my prophecy was to come true, and so did he. ‘Being ill really focuses the mind,’ he said rather sheepishly when he came home after a long hospital stay. By this point he was in no fit state to tackle the mountains of stuff he had accumulated, which visibly distressed him.
There was enough glassware and crockery to hold a large wedding, as well as a suitcase full of silver
There was enough glassware and crockery to hold a large wedding, as well as a suitcase full of silver
A friend who came to see us around the same time with a large chocolate cake joked about Swedish death cleaning, the act of consistently decluttering as you go through life so that your loved ones won’t be burdened with sorting through a lifetime of........