I have embraced…

The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning (Döstädning)

Where you reflect on the importance of your belongings in your life and mindfully declutter them to save those who survive your death having to deal with them.

“It is suggested that you value the significance or meaning of every possession…keeping only the items that enhance your life story”

This is my story…

From my earliest memories, my father collected things. I remember a huge chest of drawers filled with postcards from places in the UK and around the world…and the saucy seaside postcards, he kept separately. I remember a walk-in cupboard that was full of football programmes from the fifties. I would go in the cupboard and bury myself in football programmes…this was before ball pools were invented. He got numerous Saturday night sports newspapers from all over the country, Wales, Scotland and Ireland sent to our house so that he could keep tabs on which footballers played for which teams. Football collectors cards from cigarettes, sweet cigarettes, bubbly gum, tea etc.

A keen gardener, he collected plants, firstly it was Dahlias, just Dahlias, then Roses, just Roses, the Dahlias had gone then, next were Delphiniums, you get the picture…nothing else would be in the garden…so for parts of the year the garden was bare and totally uninteresting.

Then came the spoons…

3,000 SPOONS IN BURNLEY, LANCASHIRE (5.00)

Thanks, Dad…for those three thousand

EPNS…that’s Electro-Plated Nickel Silver,

Crested souvenir teaspoons.

The ones you craved throughout

The second half of your life,

When, unshackled from the critical eye

Of your dear, dead wife (my Mum),

You were free to create a monster.

A collection like no-known other.

Whenever I visited the family home

You would lovingly introduce me

To each new acquisition, as if

They were a new brother or sister.

“This one is from Afghanistan”

“Moonta, Australia…Nairobi…Zagreb.”

“Here the fifty seals of every US state

Pressed into the bowl of each spoon.”

There were ones from Bugle and Indian Queens

That you had made specifically

To fill the Cornish gaps in your collection,

It annoyed me more than it should have

That nothing would stand in the way

Of your astonishing need for completism?

With the spoons, once collected…acquired,

It was almost as if they became dead to you…

Your focus was all about getting the next one.

Which one, when the world is your oyster?

In your head you were the hunter-gatherer;

Buttonholing the holidaymakers,

Reminding them not to forget you

As they spent hours of their vacation

Doing the hunting, the gathering,

Tirelessly on your behalf.

Pestering your Asian workmates

On their treasured return to homelands

To give up some of their precious time,

Re-uniting with longed-for family

So they can traipse around

The trinket shops of Pakistan

At your behest.

They all brought them back

And wouldn’t take a penny

For their trouble.

And one by one they would be locked away

In your huge oak sea chest

And once inside, trapped forever

A collection too large

Ever to be displayed;

Never to see light of day again

Like the miser and his gold

When returned to…only to count,

Then it might as well not exist.

Whenever the question of mortality arose,

“They will all be yours one day!”

He would croon of my legacy.

Him eager to see delight in my face

Me, trying to hide the dismay.

“What will become of them

When I am gone, he asks?”

I mumble something about a museum

Which seem to both delight and assuage him.

And now he is gone…long gone.

Almost thirty years ago.

What to do with them?

Helpful suggestions abound such as

“You can sell them all on eBay!”

Not thought that one through, have you?

To catalogue them all and recoup the outlay?

3,000 photographs, 3,000 descriptions,

3,000 jiffy bags, and 3,000 trips

To the nearby post office

Much to the annoyance of the burgeoning queue.

I take comfort from the fact

That my Dad and eBay never met.

But I do thank my father

For enlightening me of the folly

Of collecting anything to excess,

Without thought for those that follow.

Those who will have no interest

In that unwieldy collection of teddy bears,

Of thimbles, model buses, jazz 78s,

Football programmes, shoes, beermats,

Or even your collection of fridge magnets

That are now too many for the free-standing Smeg,

So you keep them in boxes under the stairs;

And every kind of representation of

A particular animal that might fit

On all your windowsills, shelves

Or purpose-bought cabinets.

Easy answers for the problem

Of what to buy you for Christmas.

“Get her that frog you saw,

The one made out of sea shells!”

Think of your children, who perhaps by then

Will be old and grey themselves;

And if they just give them away

To a charity shop because

They have neither time nor inclination,

Then what was the point?

It has been mentioned to me

That I still possess a lot of books…

I’m working on it, OK?

©graylightfoot