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Back in October, there were job lots of articles about this book, which I of course pre-ordered because it falls within the SMTC genre so, of course! This is the non-fiction equivalent of My Kind of Romance Novel: sweet, sweet, quick reading that makes me smile and leaves me happy.
Magnusson walks the reader through helping her father move from a big house he’d shared with his recently deceased wife (the author’s mother) to a smaller apartment. She moves on to describing clearing out after her mother-in-law. She then tackles the much more difficult story of downsizing from the house she and her husband raised 5 kids in (with all kinds of jaunts all over the world along the way), after her husband died following a long illness.
She understands what is out of scope. She mentions hoarding, treats it with compassion and a recommendation for medical treatment — but ends the brief discussion of it with advice to get a really big container when the time comes. This is a book about _death_ cleaning, after all.
She doesn’t directly tackle the biggest enemy of SMTC: environmental concerns. She discusses a wide variety of ways of getting rid of things that doesn’t involve a dump: figuring out someone you know personally who could use it, selling it, etc. Part of her advocacy for death cleaning well in advance of death is to give oneself time and energy to get through this process without having to be hasty. She makes one remark that really made me laugh very hard. All our stuff, to summarize, will probably destroy the planet, but it doesn’t have to destroy our relationship with the person who has to deal with our stuff when we die.
Magnusson is the person who says the things that we all feel bad about thinking, but she does it not from the perspective of the person who is feeling bad about thinking it, but rather from the person who put the guilty party in such an unfortunate position in the first place.
Magnusson has some amusing comments on the subject of man sheds / man caves and decluttering them. In general, she seems to think that death cleaning is probably more a woman’s activity than a man’s, and that men are more prone to wanting to keep every little thing because it might be useful someday. Altho she is moderately optimistic that younger generations are improving, in terms of young men’s domestic skills.
It’s a rollicking little book and won’t take you long to read. I may update this post in the next few days if it turns out to have staying power in terms of encouraging SMTC in my behavior. That’s one of the main reasons I like to read books like this, but it can be difficult to accurately predict which ones are motivating and which ones are just a good read. Some of the most pleasant are not effective and some of the more irritating ones are incredibly effective. This feels like a less effective book for me, altho, obviously, YMMV. Regardless, worth a read.
Note: SMTC, Something More Than Cleaning, is my term, not Magnusson’s, and encompasses organizing activities, decluttering, downsizing and, of course, death cleaning.
Magnusson walks the reader through helping her father move from a big house he’d shared with his recently deceased wife (the author’s mother) to a smaller apartment. She moves on to describing clearing out after her mother-in-law. She then tackles the much more difficult story of downsizing from the house she and her husband raised 5 kids in (with all kinds of jaunts all over the world along the way), after her husband died following a long illness.
She understands what is out of scope. She mentions hoarding, treats it with compassion and a recommendation for medical treatment — but ends the brief discussion of it with advice to get a really big container when the time comes. This is a book about _death_ cleaning, after all.
She doesn’t directly tackle the biggest enemy of SMTC: environmental concerns. She discusses a wide variety of ways of getting rid of things that doesn’t involve a dump: figuring out someone you know personally who could use it, selling it, etc. Part of her advocacy for death cleaning well in advance of death is to give oneself time and energy to get through this process without having to be hasty. She makes one remark that really made me laugh very hard. All our stuff, to summarize, will probably destroy the planet, but it doesn’t have to destroy our relationship with the person who has to deal with our stuff when we die.
Magnusson is the person who says the things that we all feel bad about thinking, but she does it not from the perspective of the person who is feeling bad about thinking it, but rather from the person who put the guilty party in such an unfortunate position in the first place.
Magnusson has some amusing comments on the subject of man sheds / man caves and decluttering them. In general, she seems to think that death cleaning is probably more a woman’s activity than a man’s, and that men are more prone to wanting to keep every little thing because it might be useful someday. Altho she is moderately optimistic that younger generations are improving, in terms of young men’s domestic skills.
It’s a rollicking little book and won’t take you long to read. I may update this post in the next few days if it turns out to have staying power in terms of encouraging SMTC in my behavior. That’s one of the main reasons I like to read books like this, but it can be difficult to accurately predict which ones are motivating and which ones are just a good read. Some of the most pleasant are not effective and some of the more irritating ones are incredibly effective. This feels like a less effective book for me, altho, obviously, YMMV. Regardless, worth a read.
Note: SMTC, Something More Than Cleaning, is my term, not Magnusson’s, and encompasses organizing activities, decluttering, downsizing and, of course, death cleaning.