Have you heard about Swedish Death Cleaning?
Where sentimental value meets Facebook Marketplace.
There’s a television show called the “Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning” where three cheerful Swedes descend upon cluttered American homes like minimalist Viking spirits.
They smile politely while staring at your collection of commemorative beer steins and ask questions that cut straight to the soul.
“Will anyone want this after you die?”
“Why do you own 17 extension cords?”
The premise is simple and terrifying. Swedish death cleaning (döstädning) is the practice of gradually getting rid of your stuff before someone else has to do it for you.
I don’t want my grieving friends and relatives to stand in my garage holding a box labeled “miscellaneous cables” and wonder if I was building a radio station or hiding evidence.
I’ve been Swedish death cleaning for years without realizing it had a name. I thought I was slowly becoming the old guy muttering, “Why do I still own this?”
The Marshall Fire accelerated the process for me. Watching entire neighborhoods go up in a puff of smoke changed my relationship with possessions in a hurry.
I started thinning out decades of sports memorabilia, political collectibles, souvenirs, and enough paper ephemera to start my own presidential library or baseball museum.
At first, it was hard.
I had convinced myself that every object contained meaning. I took pictures of everything significant. I got rid of the item and kept the memory.
“This ticket stub is history.”
“This bumper sticker might be valuable someday.”
“This faded Rockies pennant represents an era.”
If I wanted a replacement, I could buy another.
Eventually, I realized my heirs are not going to lovingly curate my life’s treasures. They’re going to rent a dumpster.
Now I’m down to the nuisance phase of death cleaning. The weird objects. The things that survive every purge because they’re too sentimental to toss.
Which brings me to the Sony micro television.
This tiny set came from my grandmother’s estate over forty years ago. She had hauled it all the way from Japan sometime in the 1960s, back when electronics from Japan felt futuristic and exotic.
The little monitor looked like something NASA might issue astronauts to watch Walter Cronkite on the moon.
I’ve carried that little TV through apartments, condos, moves, closets, shelves, storage bins, and several rounds of “I really should get rid of this.” It became less of a possession and more of a hostage situation.
The TV held me hostage.
I dug out the box and posted it on Facebook Marketplace.
Immediately, two kinds of people appeared.
The first guy messaged me within minutes.
“I can come right now.”
That’s slightly alarming. Nobody has ever urgently needed anything good from Facebook Marketplace. Usually, it’s either haunted, illegal, or both.
Then another user chimed in helpfully to explain that old electronics are worthless.
Thank you, internet stranger. That was comforting.
But the first guy arrived today, and it turns out he’s part of a group called the Colorado CRT Connection. These people rescue old cathode ray tube televisions and monitors.
They restore them, tinker with them, keep retro gaming systems alive, and host meetups that benefit the Children’s Hospital.
Who knew there was an underground network of people lovingly preserving obsolete television technology?
This guy looked at my grandmother’s tiny Sony TV the way an art dealer might inspect a lost Picasso.
“The guys are going to be so jealous.” He knew exactly what he bought.
He appreciated its history.
He was genuinely excited.
This object I’d been schlepping around for decades wasn’t junk anymore. It had found its next chapter.
That’s the beauty of Swedish death cleaning. It’s about getting rid of things and releasing them back into the wild while they still mean something to somebody.
All our treasures eventually become mysteries to the next generation.
“Why did Grandpa keep this?”
“What is this thing?”
“Can we throw this away?”
Every once in a while, the right person shows up. The object finds its tribe again.
My grandmother is smiling that her quirky little television, carried across the Pacific Ocean 60 years ago, is still sparking curiosity instead of gathering dust in my basement.
I still have a box of cables I’ll take to Goodwill soon, 2028 at the latest.
What would the Swedes think?
I still don’t know what to make of this coronavirus thing. I’m thinking people are hoarding food and dry goods thinking, “Well, if it’s nothing, at least I have a stockpile of toilet paper and lysol to last me until the 22nd century.” The talking heads and politicians make no mention of the 2009 swine flu pandemic that infected a billion people and killed 500,000 around the world. That all happened a year after the international financial system crashed.
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