Swedish Death Cleaning Gets Real
<p>If I could time travel and advise my younger self, I would tell her to just say no. Don’t rescue a U-Haul full of furnishings from Grandma’s house just because she left them to you in her will. Your daughter doesn’t need more than one American Girl doll. And those books? You can check them out from your beloved public library.</p>
<h2><a href="https://medium.com/classics-rock/civilizations-greatest-amenity-59f4510801c3?source=post_page-----de21f447913b--------------------------------" rel="noopener follow" target="_blank">The Public Library is Civilization’s Greatest Amenity</a></h2>
<h3><a href="https://medium.com/classics-rock/civilizations-greatest-amenity-59f4510801c3?source=post_page-----de21f447913b--------------------------------" rel="noopener follow" target="_blank">Access the knowledge of humanity for free. Plus much more.</a></h3>
<p><a href="https://medium.com/classics-rock/civilizations-greatest-amenity-59f4510801c3?source=post_page-----de21f447913b--------------------------------" rel="noopener follow" target="_blank">medium.com</a></p>
<p>Actually, my younger self knew that. At 22, I vowed never to own more than could fit in the trunk of my VW bug. I was a minimalist before it was a thing. Thirty years ago, in the early days of the internet, I moderated a discussion group for practitioners of voluntary simplicity. My intentions were always firmly in the less-is-more camp, but as John Lennon sang, “life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.”</p>
<p>So, like many over-privileged humans, I’m now occupied with paring down the excess from a lifetime of accumulation. Our consumer culture makes acquisition easy and mindless, making us feel overwhelmed by our possessions. It seems everyone is decluttering these days. Peacock has a new series on Swedish death cleaning, although I haven’t seen it because I decluttered my streaming services.</p>
<p>Nearly a year ago, I wrote about my efforts to spend the rest of my life not surrounded by objects ultimately destined for the landfill.</p>
<p><a href="https://medium.com/crows-feet/swedish-death-cleaning-gets-real-de21f447913b"><strong>Learn More</strong></a></p>