So much to do, so little time

and a spot of Döstädning

Oct 27, 2024

Waiting to have the floors stripped

FIRST AND FOREMOST

I seem to have alarmed some people last week when I said I was stressed and unable to settle to any writing. My apologies. I was simply suffering from diary overload. Several events came along at once and I thought I could manage, but it all got the better of me in the end. As I tried to explain in my holding piece last week, none of these events were bad, I really wanted to do them – it’s just that they all ran back to back and I hardly had a chance to catch my breath in between.

First my friend Sophie came from her home in North Wales, to stay with me. She and I both subscribe to the saying “Houseguests are like fish: after three days they start to go off” and strictly limit the duration of our visits to each other, but this time we had a lot of things we wanted to do together, so I suggested she stay four days and head home on the fifth. It worked and we filled our time well.

As soon as she’d gone, my husband and I, plus two friends, packed our bags and headed off for a four-day trip to Belfast to meet up with friends who were visiting from America. It was well worth it and we had a great time until everyone but me and one other got some sort of tummy bug, which all rather put a dampener on events and brought them to an untimely end.

The day after we got back, carpentry work began on our sitting room which we are having “done up”. Prior to this we had had to clear the room of most of the furniture and take the carpet up leaving the bare boards underneath and carting the carpet, underlay and various other rubbish off to the council tip.

Half the sitting room during “sort out”

The first stages of the carpentry work went on until late morning on Friday !8^th October. Mid-afternoon, four guests arrived for a celebratory dinner we were having that evening for our fifth wedding anniversary. They were all staying for the weekend. Two days before they arrived, the toilet in the bathroom they were going to be using began to malfunction and we couldn’t get it fixed. They had to use the downstairs loo instead.

Once our guests had departed on the Sunday, we readied ourselves for the arrival of the company who are sanding the floor-boards in the sitting room and hallway. As I write, it is Friday and they are still only half way through it. My husband and I may have to move out for 24 hours next week while they paint the hall floor, as we will be marooned either upstairs or down, until it dries.

The hall floor waiting for new paint

Once they’ve finished, the decorators start. Phew! I know it will all be worth it in the end but crikey, it’s stressful! One really good aspect is that it is making us question what we might put back in there and we are becoming surprising ruthless about getting rid of things. And that leads me on to

DÖSTÄDNING

For those of you who don’t know, this is the Swedish practice of “death cleaning.” The idea is to declutter your life before you die, to ease the burden on the loved ones you leave behind.

In case you think I’m being a bit premature here, the Swedes recommend everyone over 65 does it, so at 67, I am exactly the right age. I hope, of course, that I shall be around for many years to come, but the great thing is that they will be years spent surrounded by much less clutter than I have at the moment which, frankly, will come as a relief.

I think death cleaning is a fabulous idea and indeed, I reckon, people have been doing it intuitively for years, we just never had a name for it before. Think about it: do you really want to saddle your poor children/siblings/family/friends with having to decide what happens to all the accumulated belongings of your lifetime?

I have been thinking about this a lot lately and there are a number of areas in my home I have decided I want to target. One of them is a battered old cardboard suitcase that once belonged to my parents. It is full of “Sentimental Stuff” I have collected over the years, in fact since I was a teenager.

Everything from old diaries, photographs and piles of love letters, to theatre programmes, newspaper cuttings and birthday and Christmas cards. I have had a number of attempted culls over the decades, trying to reduce the content of this bulging old piece of luggage but have never managed to reduce the mountains of paper by much.

This time I have been much more hard-hearted. It's amazing how much easier it becomes as one gets older. I can now rummage through it and think

“Will my kids have any interest at all in this?” or, just as often, “Do I really want my kids reading this?!”

I spent days on the clearance this last week and managed to get right down to the bottom of the suitcase for the first time ever. I discovered all sorts of stuff including postcards and letters from people whose names I no longer recognise! Why on earth I ever kept them is a mystery.

I have collated all items of a similar nature and put them in labelled, plastic folders so they will be easy for my twin daughters to identify and just dump the things they have no interest in. Indeed some more may go in my next purge before the girls are even confronted with it. I am feeling jolly pleased with myself. Now the only thing I still need to do is apply the same lack of mercy to my bookshelves, my wardrobe and the loft and I will be able to feel really self-satisfied. Onwards!!

Have you been through a death-cleanse or clear-out that has made you feel much less burdened? I’d love to know if you’ve got any advice to make it easier. Please feel free to share with me by clicking the button below and I shall respond

Home Truths

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