Tag Archives: swedish death cleaning

The Emotional Journey of Swedish Death Cleaning

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Today I drove a carload of boxes to Laramie and made the final major delivery for my Swedish death-cleaning project.

One destination was the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming in Laramie. The boxes contained decades of my life: research materials, hard drives, scrapbooks, manuscripts, photographs, films, books, and assorted records from projects that occupied countless hours over the years.

A separate box held watercolor paintings my mother created. Those went to the Laramie Plains Museum. Some will become part of the museum’s collection, while others will help support its mission through fundraising auctions.

As I handed everything over, I found myself experiencing mixed emotions. The handoff took all of 10 minutes.

Kind of anticlimactic, considering I’ve been sorting and sifting since the Wyoming Writers Inc. conference at the beginning of June. AHC staffer Brie Blasi asked if I’d donate my stuff.

Part of me felt a sense of relief. My materials are no longer stacked in closets, on shelves, and in corners, waiting for me to decide their fate. They now have a permanent home where they can be organized, preserved, and, if anyone finds value in them, used by future researchers, historians, students, or curious people.

Another part of me felt a touch of sadness. Every box represented a chapter of my life. The manuscripts reflected ideas I chased. The photographs captured moments that seemed important enough to save. The films documented stories and people I believed should be remembered. Letting go of them felt a little like saying goodbye to old companions.

Yet there was also comfort in knowing that I have not really lost them. If I ever need to revisit a project, confirm a memory, or look up some forgotten detail from my past life, I can make the trip to Laramie and review the materials. They are stored in a different place now.

This delivery marked the culmination of a process that has taken years. Along the way, I sold my grandmother’s Sony micro TV and Star Wars action figures I used for gender bias training. Colleagues purchased my sports card and political memorabilia collections. Other items found new homes through donations and gifts.

I hope the people who have received my stuff enjoy it. All my items spent years, sometimes decades, in my care. Collections are curious pursuits. We think we own them, but we’re only temporary caretakers. Eventually they move on to the next person, carrying their stories with them.

There’s little left. Some clothes. Some shoes. A few personal possessions. My car. The essentials.

I’m an organ donor. I imagine those will make it into worthy sick people if my parts aren’t too worn out.

What surprised me most about Swedish death cleaning is that it was never really about getting rid of stuff. It’s about deciding what mattered and what stories deserved a future beyond my shelves and storage boxes.

The works my mother painted will now have lives of their own. Some may hang on walls where people who never knew her will pause for a moment and admire her work. Others may help support a museum dedicated to preserving local history. In their own way, they will continue telling part of her story.

The same is true of the boxes I delivered. The manuscripts, photographs, films, and research materials represent a lifetime of curiosity and creativity. Long after I am gone, someone may open a folder, examine a photograph, watch a film, or read a manuscript and discover a small piece of the world as I saw it.

There is something comforting about that.

For years, I thought I was collecting things. Today, I realized I was collecting stories.

Now those stories belong to the future.

As I sit at an EV charging station writing this, listening to Jalan Jalan Crossland on Wyoming Public Radio & Media, I feel a sense of peace. My mother’s work has found a home. My work has found a home. The burden of holding on is replaced by the satisfaction of passing it all forward.

My final act of stewardship is not keeping material objects forever.

It’s about making sure they can continue their journey without me and not end up in the landfill.

One Slide at a Time

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Rediscovering history before it fades away

I’ve been putting off the slide viewing for years. Sorting my stuff for the American Heritage Center motivated me to go through them.

The task seemed simple enough. I have boxes and carousels of slides and photographs accumulated over decades. I’ll take the hard copies to the AHC. My plan is to digitize them and create an online archive by signing up for another Google Drive.

Kodachrome was top quality in its day. A status symbol. The best prints. Kodak quit making Kodachrome, and I don’t want photos on the walls.

Now, all I want are fuzzy reference shots.

The thought of reviewing the slides daunted me, since I haven’t looked at them in decades. Some are labeled. Others are complete mysteries. I know there are family photos, travels, community projects, and who knows what else. There are stories worth preserving in those boxes. The challenge is finding and remembering them.

I stopped procrastinating.

I dug out my analog Kodak Carousel projector and created a makeshift digitizing station in the basement. The projector throws images onto a portable screen. An iPhone mounted on a flexible arm photographs each slide as it appears. The arrangement would horrify a professional archivist, but perfection wasn’t the goal. I just needed reference images good enough to identify people, places, and events.

The setup looks ridiculous, but it works.

In about 90 minutes, I clicked through four carousels.

Some images brought immediate recognition.

“That’s my uncle’s living room in Peru.”

“There’s Grandma.”

“I remember that train ride to Machu Picchu.”

Others were complete puzzles.

“Who are these people?”

“Where was this taken?”

Why did I think this was important enough to photograph 50 years ago?

As the images appeared one after another, I realized the project is about photography and about memory. Photographs freeze a moment in time, while memories fade. The two are complementary. The people who can identify the faces in old pictures don’t stay around forever. If nobody writes down the names and stories, eventually the photographs become anonymous.

I mentioned my progress to a neighbor. He wasn’t nearly as excited as I was, probably because he’s not ready to cut loose. My neighbor on the other side of the sidewalk is purging his mothballed business and saw my setup in the basement. I told him I’d keep it set up if he wanted to look at his slides.

The process reminded me why I’ve been engaged in a bit of Swedish death cleaning. The goal is to leave behind fewer mysteries for friends and family.

Before anything can be preserved, it has to be identified.

Because the sun comes up early, It’ll take me a few more days to look at everything in the relatively dark room.

The setup may be imperfect and takes up a lot of space. Analog slides are cumbersome, having to manually load them, being sure they’re right side up and not backward. I had two piles ready to store, but the apparatus irritated one of my neighbors who tossed them in a box out of disgust. It took up a lot of space in a common area. I should have rubberbanded them together.

The images I record will not be museum quality, but each click of the projector reveals another piece of my otherwise forgotten puzzle.

Some mysteries are solved instantly. Others require a little detective work, but every slide I identify is one less story at risk of being lost.

Those old carousels turned out to be time machines after all. I visited Peru for a family reunion, explored the Superstition Mountains in search of the Lost Dutchman, attended Nixon’s 1973 Inauguration, and, in high school, traveled to Alaska and met my long-lost Uncle Buck.

The real destinations are the stories that the photos bring to mind.

Analog Meets Digital: A wind-up watch, an Apple Watch, and the family stories in between.

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It’s graduation and wedding season. One of my second cousins sent me an invitation. Instead of stuffing cash into a card, I sent one of my books and, as part of my ongoing Swedish death cleaning project, one of my mother’s watercolor paintings.

Maybe it’s generational, but giving money seems impersonal.

Another kid I know made it from 8th grade to high school. I’m headed out of town and couldn’t make it to his promotion exercise.

My parents presented me with a wristwatch for barely passing algebra class. I searched through a box and gave him that wind-up watch and my first Apple Watch.

Analog meets digital.

Another second cousin is getting married.

I’m sorting through boxes of family treasures that once belonged to my grandparents. Every item comes with a story attached. I remember the story, take a picture, and cut ties with the object.

The good news is that younger family members are emerging as willing custodians. Most of my inherited “treasures” have been sitting in my office and storage area long enough to qualify for residency.

It’s time for a new lease.

As I sort through the past, I think about my own high school graduation.

My parents were practical people. They sent me off to Hastings College with a set of molded steel American Tourister luggage and a Smith Corona electric typewriter.

Not a stereo.

Not a car.

Not a television.

Looking back, I suspect they wanted to make sure I had every tool necessary to launch successfully into adulthood.

In reality, they kicked me out of the nest. “Don’t come back, unless it’s for your baseball cards and other assorted childhood stuff.”

The typewriter turned out to be one of the best gifts I ever received.

I learned to touch type in summer school before I took off for college, a prison sentence.

“Can type, ‘Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country,’ 100 words per minute. Willing to learn other phrases.”

For those under the age of 50, generations developed repetitive stress injuries typing that patriotic declaration over and over.

At the time, I thought typing was another boring skill adults insisted was important.

Turns out it paid the bills.

Over the years, typing helped me write newspaper stories, magazine articles, grant applications, reports, blogs, books, and enough emails to fill several libraries.

I still make money because I can sit down and move my fingers faster than my brain can talk me out of an idea.

The luggage disappeared somewhere along the journey. The hinges on the Pullman started to go from packing it too full over the years. I think I jettisoned the luggage in Lander. Suitcase wheels came out around that time.

The typewriter is long gone, too, replaced by computers that have more processing power than NASA had when it sent astronauts to the moon.

One thing leads to another.

I’ve collected typewriters since I watched “California Typewriters” with Tom Hanks. I’m selling those at the Wyoming Writers Conference.

As I pass family heirlooms to younger relatives, I wonder which items will matter 50 years from now.

Will it be the painting?

The books?

The family photographs?

Or will it be some random object that’s unremarkable today?

That’s the secret.

The gifts that change our lives aren’t always the exciting ones. They’re the molded steel luggage that says, “Go see the world.”

They’re the typewriter that says, “Learn this. You’ll thank us later.”

Mom and Dad were right.

I hate when that happens.