I sat down in front of my hall closet on a Tuesday morning with a cup of coffee and good intentions.
I’d read an article about Swedish death cleaning a few weeks earlier. The kind of article I almost closed because the name sounded too heavy.
But I’d kept reading. And by the end of it, I wasn’t thinking about death at all. I was thinking about the closet in my front hall.
The one I’d walked past a thousand times without opening.
So here I was. Tuesday morning. Coffee in hand.
The closet door was open.
My coffee was getting cold.
And I hadn’t moved in twenty minutes.
What was the first thing supposed to be? The coats nobody wore? The bags I’d forgotten I owned? The box of scarves on the top shelf?
(Where did you even start when the answer felt like everywhere?)
That’s the part nobody tells you about Swedish death cleaning. The hard part isn’t the throwing away.
The hard part is the first move.
The minute you pick up the first object, you’re not just decluttering anymore. You’re holding a piece of your life and asking what it should mean to the people who’ll find it after you.
Most of us aren’t ready for that on a Tuesday morning before our coffee gets cold.
I sat in front of that closet for almost an hour. Then I closed the door, washed my coffee cup, and walked away.
It took me a few weeks to try again.
The second time, I didn’t go back to the hall closet. I started somewhere else entirely. (Somewhere much smaller.)
And what I learned that second time is what I want to share with you today.