Don’t worry, I am not planning to croak anytime soon.   Swedish Death cleaning sounds so morbid, but I’ve been sort of curious, if not downright captivated, by what I’ve seen about the decluttering method lately.

The term was coined by Margareta Magnussen in The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning: How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter.  Full disclosure, I’ve not read the book, I’ve just read ABOUT it.  I will be rectifying that shortly because the book has nearly perfect reviews.

How I Started

This year has been busy with work. I’ve been on the road nearly every week.  Certainly much different from last year’s lockdown.  Which means less time at home with my baseboards.  If you catch my drift.  Spring cleaning was not on the agenda.

Then.  I had two and a half weeks’ vacation scheduled.  What?!  That’s never happened.  Heaven.  Dreams of crisp mountain air, long and leisurely hikes, lodge patios and chardonnay.

And then.  Everything caught on fire.  They closed the forests.  The air was anything but crisp and cool.  Dang it.

Disappointment was short lived because we live in my happiest place ever with plenty to do.  I did spend time at the gym and the pool and with some good books and with friends, but I got a little fiddly and thought I needed to get productive.

The thought of hands and knees on the floor with baseboards or on a ladder with the transoms somehow was just not appealing.

Usually I’m pretty good at purging and don’t really consider myself a hoarder, but I have been finding it more difficult to find storage for my stuff.  Hmm. 

This is the tale of how I took a stab at Swedish Death Cleaning.

The Garage

Patriotic décor is stored in one of my garage cabinets shared with autumn décor.  It was such a mess, it was just depressing.  So one day when it wasn’t 115 degrees, I started pulling everything that was pretty old or that I just didn’t really like.

After an hour or so, I had one grocery bag of trash and hub took a completely full truck load of treasures to the donation station.

That was just the garage. Which now has one whole side of cabinets organized and with plenty of room to see what’s in them.

My Closet

Again, I’m usually good at keeping my closet weeded out, but I got brutal with my clothes and shoes.  At the end of the purge, I even had a big bag of empty hangars.  Frankly, I could get a little more aggressive pitching jeans, but I left them alone.  For now.

At the end of the day, I had three dresses. That seems sort of pitiful. So I ordered two more. But ones that are actually in style.

Linen Closet

I really organized the linen closet pretty well last year, and get in there rarely enough that it has stayed in pretty good shape.  But there is room for improvement.

There are now a ton of table cloths someone else will get to use.  For another date, pillows will be going, but I ran out of steam.

Kitchen

Entertaining for the past two years has really been different.  For all of us, I know.  Life is just different and I’m not holding onto things I thought I would use, but now am certain I will not.

Stacks of dishes and glasses made it to the donation box.  It was a little hard at first, but then I got joy knowing my stuff is pretty, still in good shape and will be appreciated by someone else.

Everything has lots of space and I’m not balancing things on top of each other to fit into our cupboards.

I’ve ruined three manicures and spent hours going through stuff.  And.  I’m not quite finished.  And.  I’m thankful my vacation is over so I can get some rest sitting at my desk.  Phew.

My house isn’t quite ready for me to die, but when I do, someone will have a lot less work to do.

What I’m Eating

DF Deb teaches cooking classes and recently taught one for the youth at her church.  She shared a delish gluten-free cracker recipe she made.  I really like the choice of a healthy treat which meets the restrictions so many people seem to have these days.

I haven’t made these myself, but they were a big success and this is what Deb wrote about them:

I just love the crackers because the assembly is easy (once you get a handle on the roller) and you just slide the parchment paper with batter rolled/cut on to the cookie sheet and bake it.  It took two cookie sheets for me – I rolled the first half of the batter extremely thin ~1/16″ and then the second half I rolled at 1/8″ and both were edible.  The 1/8″ ones were the ones that could handle the dip.  The 1/16″ ones were potato-chip-ish!

Here’s the recipe link:

Cassava Flour Crackers

Recipe by Adriana Harlan https://livinghealthywithchocolate.com/how-to-make-homemade-crackers-with-cassava-flour-vegan-paleo/#recipe

What I’m Reading

Okay.  I really have some stuff to review and share, but this post is too long, dang it.  Stay tuned and I’ll tell you all about next post.

Blessings on a wonderful week ahead.