I like garage sales and I work on cars and make things in my shop. In our area, there’s a company that does estate sales where they show up to a house during the week and organize everything and have a sale Friday through Sunday. It’s a well run company that seems to be doing well. The family can take stuff they want before the sale starts and then instead of paying someone to remove everything else, people like me come in and pay for the stuff and haul it away themselves. It seems like a good business model. When I get to a house that clearly had a person living there, for a long time, I take a moment and just hang out in the previous owner’s space, smelling the smells, noting the lighting and the arrangement of the tools and try to imagine what he (usually a guy) might have repaired or invented in the space. A couple times, I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to have a loved one of the departed tell me about him, about the crazy shit he did and made in that shop and other times he got frustrated with some project. I try to picture his struggles and victories that he had, not so different from mine. People seem to like to talk about this kind of stuff with me and I love it. But here’s the thing - I started to think that in some number of years, there will be strangers wandering through my house making mental notes of stuff they think is ugly or “definitely from another time” or overpriced or rusty or useful or whatever, while my kids (and wife?) will just be glad they didn’t have to deal with all my stuff/junk. It got me really thinking that I ought to thin the heard of my possessions and just get the collection down to the bare essentials that I’m using right now and not keep stuff around merely because it’s been there for a long time, then my family would have less of it to deal with after I kick the bucket. As it turns out, the Swedes already have a term and a whole philosophy for it. They call it death cleaning. Just knowing that others, even on the other side of the planet, have similar thoughts, is comforting to me and learning about it has helped my own decluttering process and general melancholy that I’m feeling about the whole topic. I won’t be able to take any of this stuff with me, might as well reduce the burden on my loved ones. Who knows, maybe with a twinkle in their eyes, they’ll tell a deal-seeking guy a little something about me.