Swedish Death Cleaning, Downsizing, Decluttering, & Retirement Planning

This video is about Swedish Death Cleaning and how downsizing, decluttering, and living a minimalist lifestyle in retirement is good for most seniors as they age. It's about making your estate plan better and making it easier on your heirs. This should be a key part of your retirement planning and simple living as you age.

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Swedish Death Cleaning, also known as "döstädning" in Swedish, is a cultural concept and decluttering. This unique approach to decluttering and organizing one's possessions is rooted in the idea of preparing for the end of life and making it easier for your loved ones to deal with your belongings after you pass away. It encourages individuals, typically older adults, to take proactive steps to simplify their lives by decluttering and organizing their possessions. It's not just about decluttering, but what you have and what will remain after you pass.

The motivation to do Swedish Death Cleaning is driven by a sense of responsibility and consideration for your children and other loved ones. By doing decluttering and downsizing while you are still capable reduces the burden on your loved ones at a later time. This can be the most loving act you could do for them.

Swedish Death Cleaning involves systematically going through all your possessions and deciding what to keep, what to give away, what to sell, and what to discard. The focus is on keeping only the precious few items you cherish the most. It recognizes the importance of sentimental items but encourages you to curate and preserve only the most meaningful ones, rather than hoarding everything. This can help you cherish the memories while decluttering the rest.

Swedish Death Cleaning doesn't strictly adhere to everything about minimalism, but it does share some principles, such as valuing experiences over material possessions. This process also aligns with the idea of reducing waste and being mindful of the environment.

Swedish Death Cleaning is not a one-time event but rather an ongoing process. As your life circumstances change, you will need to revisit and declutter on a periodic basis.

In summary, Swedish Death Cleaning is a practical and philosophical approach to decluttering and organizing your life. It is driven by a sense of responsibility and consideration for your children. It encourages people to thoughtfully curate their stuff and create a simpler living space while also helping clarify end-of-life wishes.

▶️ We started our channel to inspire and share our world travel lifestyle, adventures, and optimistic outlook on life with others. After completing a two-year journey in our Airstream to see all 50 states and 51 National Parks, we left to travel abroad. We have downsized our possessions and sold our home so that we can wander about with only the things in our backpacks.

We love living on the road, traveling each week to a new location. We plan to travel extensively to every part of the world. Ours is not a slow travel lifestyle but rather a vagabondish one. The goal is not to check a country off a list, but to experience it by meeting new people, seeing how others live, and making new friends. We believe in laughing, loving, and living our lives to the fullest.

We are working hard to build a beautiful website where you can get travel information about the places we have been. In addition, we post blog articles to help you travel better. Our channel is a way of augmenting that effort, so sometimes we post videos about how to travel or a vlog showing our lives on the road as we do an activity or an adventure. We also post Shorts, so check those out, too. We hope to entertain you, but most importantly, we want to inspire you and give you the confidence to plan your own adventure around the world.

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[RetirementTravelers]

Swedish Death Cleaning has changed our retirement lives for the better. We hope this video helps motivate you to move forward with decluttering, downsizing and simplifying your lives in retirement for both yourselves and your loved ones.
John and Bev

[Milestonemonger]

While relocating from Bahrain to Romania, the warehouse that held our household goods caught fire before shipping. Everything was gone, furniture, persian rugs, electronics, clothes, old pictures, you name it, gone. We were sad for about 2 minutes before we realized that It was the best thing that could've happened to people who are close to retirement. It's been 2 years, and we haven't had the need to replace anything!

[elizaC]

I scanned every picture of mine and of my mother's and put them on a drive. It took me 5 months of many hours a week. I did it as a labor of love, my mom was living in assisted living and by doing this, it gave her a digital picture frame with her history, she loved it.

[bearisland]

This powerful and wonderful video hits very close to my heart. When my estranged father died unexpectedly I had to clean up his apartment alone. The paperwork alone took about 60-70 hours, and the stress of the entire process gave me some sort of cold/flu thing that lasted for several weeks. All I took from his belongings was a book and a poor plant that needed some love.

My mother is now very elderly and I'm trying to get her to part with her large assortment of items. The walls I'm facing are hard as steel.

My husband and I have no children, but in our 40s and 50s we are already Swedish Death Cleaning. There is no way I would want friends or strangers going through my stuff after I'm gone.

I hope more people your age and younger watch your video. ❤

[resterAnonyme]

What helped us was to take a picture of the item. For example my wife's wedding dress and all of the related wedding stuff, we took pictures of it and let it all go and it helped a lot.

[gazzafloss]

Absolutely great advice. I was an only child, my Dad died suddenly in his very early 50's in 1976 just two years after I had married, what an enormous job of sorting through the workshop and possessions of a very "practical" man who had accumulated tons of tools and gear and at the same time dealing with a grieving mother. She left us in 2013 in her mid 80's, leaving a house full of accumulated personal treasures and memories, which I'd, many times, tried to convince her to downsize. It became another major operation to "pack up a life well lived", and dispose of everything because we already had all of our own "stuff" and needed for nothing.
I guess it's what us humans do, we do know we will have to depart this "mortal coil" but being as we don't know the "when" it's better to prepare ahead. We do not want our kids or grandkids to be needing to do this for us, we're taking steps to downsize now.

[michellefisher]

My husband and I have just gone through this same process. We are full time RV’ers! Over the course of two years we sold our 3400 sq ft home downsized to an apartment. We then continued the getting rid of stuff, moved out of our apartment into our Airstream trailer end of July! It was both one of the hardest things we’ve ever done AND the most rewarding thing we’ve ever accomplished. Stuff and things are a huge burden. It really is a gift of Love ❤️ to not pass that burden on to our children. Thank you for sharing this vlog and your story. Like you, two of the hardest things were photos and paperwork.

[bobclarke]

Thank you both for demonstrating retirement travel. ⭐ My mom said "Living hands choose wisely." After she passed we found our names taped to the few pieces of furniture she still had. We received boxes of stuff we gave her every Christmas for several years. She had almost nothing in the end, which she said was more than she was born with. 🙂

[catclark]

This makes much sense and I'm going to start asap! My kids will love me for it one day, I don't want my stuff to be a burden for them :)

[Hearts]

Y'all are an inspiration. Thank you so much 🏆👏

[RonyRozner-ky]

I made a promise to my two adult boys, when it was my time, it would take them no more than 45 minutes to clear away my belongings. I don't think it meant much to as there never had to clear out a lifetime of stuff. I'm going to share this video with them and ask for comment. Thank you for handling this delicate subject with such clarity and grace. Happy New Year.

[JayandTanyaTravel]

This was one of your best videos. If you watch our videos at all you know we are in a temporary travel hiatus while Tanya recovers from hip replacement surgery. So, I've been busy following the same death cleaning process you describe to make it simpler for Tanya if I pass first. You're exactly right that the big "things" are not much of a problem but the documents, photos, memories, etc. are the tough ones and it's definitely something that is best done in chunks, not all at once. Thanks for sharing your experiences.

[peggybaggenstoss]

In 2021 I sold, gave away, and donated so much as I downsized. I had my daughters come to my house and get what they wanted. After that I put what I wanted to move with me in one room. Everything else was put in an estate sale.
It was and continues to be so freeing to own LESS… more time to visit with friends.

[JohnandCaraRetiredTravellers]

9:48 this was the hardest “the children’s things”, I did the same boxed their things and said “keep what you like and do as you wish with the rest”. 🥰~Cara

[Melody-cpgj]

We did this and purged out all the stuff. It was emotional, and gave them what they wanted, and just took our suitcases and moved abroad. It was an acceptance process. Donated alot of charity, and neighbors on free stuff websites on facebook. Stangers appreciated. It took atleast six months to get rid of all the stuff! Finally the furniture.. down to zero. Garage was first!!

[Esther-psvx]

Liked the video before watching because I know that the video will be one of the best. Now back to the video. Thank you!

[hughjass]

This is my 2nd video of yours and I'm so impressed with your content! This is such an important topic and one which I'd highly recommend everyone consider, even if they don't plan to be a traveler.

"Stuff" is an anchor. It weighs you down. It holds you back and restricts you in ways you don't even realize. Stuff needs to be put or kept somewhere and that means space used up and space costs money. And the truth is that if somehow, half or more of your stuff vanished overnight and you didn't know about it. you wouldn't even miss it because you'd probably forgotten you'd even had it.

My general rule is 2 years. If I haven't used an item in the past 2 years, chances are I probably don't need it and won't miss it. Cleaning out and de-cluttering can be a hard and at times emotionally difficult exercise but it's also such a very liberating one. I recommend it to anyone, especially if they wish to become a traveler. I'm already nearly finished with mine and I'm so happy I started it when I did.

[sharonslay]

I was 48 when my mother passed & my new husband & I cared for her the last 3 years. My Dad has passed 10 years earlier & she didn't downsize.
I did it & I was fortunate she was in a condo & a lady in the building had caregiver who took everything to her church. All we had to do was carry it down to the basement, but I'm telling you my Dad had paperwork from the 1950's. It was very grieving to go thru everything. That was 20 years ago. I have downsized my life ever since. ❤

[kensmith]

I met the two of you at Isle Royale a couple of years ago. I have been following your adventures since. Thank you for this video - my wife says I am a pack rat and she is right. Your advice is timely as we have been discussing the need to simplify and downsize somewhat. Thanks again!

[goofygirl]

We're in our late 50's and started paring down a couple of years ago. That has led us on a Swedish Death Cleaning mission in preparation for retirement and downsizing. What started off feeling a bit overwhelming has become much more manageable. I'm currently going through old photos and this has been a slow moving process but I will be so happy when what we have left is carefully and thoughtfully organized with everything clearly labeled with names/dates/occasion. It is so much better to do this now rather than one day handing a jumble of old pictures and papers in multiple boxes for our kids to sort through and deal with. Duplicate, redundant and just plain bad pictures can be tossed - no need to save those. Less is more.