Swedish Death Cleaning, Downsizing, Decluttering, & Retirement Planning

recently we did a video called a life without stuff and in it we told how we had not simply decluttered our home but how we sorted through everything we owned how we sold and gave away everything so we could live a minimalist lifestyle and travel the world full-time in retirement we are currently in Sweden and we thought it would be a good time to talk more about the method called Swedish death cleaning the term for this is dust donding it has become a trendy practice around the world and it's a method of downsizing your things to make it life easier for your heirs now it's a way of dealing with your stuff in a thoughtful loving and respectful way to yourself and to your loved ones now we aren't advocating that you get rid of everything like we did but we learned some things through this process and we believe they could help you today we're going to give you a pep talk and tell you how we dealt with the emotional side of it all while it may sound morbid we think it could be a great practice for all retirees we won't lie it is a hard job one that many people want to put off until later but after having gone through it we can see how it has changed our lives for the better and it can change yours we're John and Beth and we are the retirement Travelers like we said we are currently in Sweden and we have been traveling in northern Europe on this leg of our journey since we left this fall we've been to Ireland Scotland the Pharaoh Island and Norway earlier this year we were in Asia and Oceana we're vlogging our adventure so be sure to hit subscribe and come along with us we'll be heading to Finland next and through the Baltic countries on our way to the Mediterranean and the Middle East we are writing travel guides for each of these locations so check them out on our website retirementtravelers.com our channel is mostly about travel but we also have a passion for helping people live their best life in retirement now whether it's how to save her retirement or this how to think differently about your stuff you know we want you to live the remaining years of your life enjoying every moment you know seeing this beautiful world and sharing it with the ones you love Swedish death cleaning your switch wiring stuff to a life of dispersing those things blur as you age and to make your estate easier for your heirs to manage it's not about preparing for your death tomorrow it's about living for many tomorrows with joy and ease when we published our previous video we received many notes from people who were knee-deep in cleaning out their parents or their grandparents homes after they died they told us some really very sad stories about you know how they didn't even have time to grieve their loved ones because they face such a daunting challenge of sorting making decisions and really physically handling all that stuff that was left to them you know many of them were so sad for the position that they were put in they commended us for our efforts and told us that our kids were very lucky size for our kids someone said you didn't do it for your kids see you did it for yourself so you could go travel the world but the truth was we could have very easily put everything in storage and left it for our kids to deal with one day I mean but we wanted to live our lives different from the norm starting with how we dealt with our stuff so doing this for our kids was our motivation it was our love for them that kept us motivated there are several things that happened in this process we learned about what our kids really wanted and what they didn't you know we made it very clear to them that they had our permission to say no to anything we offered them you know we didn't want them to feel obligated in the end this turned out to be harder for us than it was on them you know when they didn't want something we deemed valuable we had to accept it and simply move on so we switched our Focus from our kids to others now we all know that giving is better than receiving and as the givers of things we saw the joy that many people had when we gave them something that they could use our kids needed some of the larger items because they were setting up their homes but there were many things that we ultimately had to send back out into the world for someone to find or we gifted them to strangers in need it felt great to give with a with a loving and willing heart so where do you start when you're considering this process Our advice is to plan on it taking six months a year or two it's hardly an overnight thing and we'd not recommend it you know take your time and make good decisions you know don't overwhelm yourself you know start with the things that are behind closed doors like a closet attics or your storage room don't disrupt your entire life at once work in sections you know keep the things that you use and need and let the rest go we found that we Face several types of things when we were sorting so let's talk about each of them and how we had to decide how to deal with them and the emotional impact of it we came across this one a lot you know over the years we had purchased some nice things that we had spent a lot of money on you know we were surprised when our kids didn't want these things but like then again why should they I mean they gave us enjoyment but then again they were purchased for us yeah this is a tough one for many people because they may have saved money to purchase it or they know the value a certain piece of jewelry or a collectible is worth but if your kids don't have the same taste it's better just to let it go I've heard from so many people they talked with pride about what their kids will inherit one day you know our advice is to have a good conversation with your kids but don't push your stuff on them you know kids will oftentimes feel guilty turning down something you love the better option might be to sell it now you know why you're not in a rush and just take the money you know your kids will probably be in a rush to get rid of it after you die and if they don't really want it and they probably won't get the full value for it we also struggled with this one you know we had many items that someone had given us these were thoughtful gifts and many of them we loved you know we felt guilty giving them away but our lives were moving on and so we took the approach that anything that was given to us was given to us with no strings attached several of these gifts were associated with memories memories of our parents or our grandparents our events in our lives like Christmas Mother's Day Father's Day things like that I had a lot of things that were my dads you know he died when I was about 30 years old of cancer and I really wanted to hang on to anything that gave me a connection to him you know a few of these items we gave to our kids but many of them we gave away and it was okay you know I think my dad would want me to live my best life and remember all the wonderful times that we had together you know not the things he would have understood that there was a time for this but also a time to let go you know grief can be very very hard and so we approached many things with the attitude you know that our kids needed a few things with memories attached but they didn't you know we didn't want them to have too many you know we really wanted to give them the example of living with less and that included living with less of our stuff there were a few items and we tried to keep it to a very few that we wanted our kids to know were passed on to us from our parents I had a quilt that has pieced by what would be our granddaughter's great great grandmother I wanted her to have it so after I told our daughter why it was a cherished heirloom she gladly took it to pass it on there were many items that we let go because our kids just didn't need 20 heirlooms don't be surprised if this is the hardest part of the emotional process yes it's very hard for many people going through Swedish death cleaning there are items that you might need in the future I mean it's a tough decision because you don't want to give away something that you then have to turn around and purchase again Our advice is to be realistic about what your needs truly are you know maybe you have a garage full of tools but you have a landscaping company that mows your yard now or you hire a plumber you know when you need one Our advice is to pass on the tools to your kids or grandkids and give away the rest you know people do need tools Habitat for Humanity will accept tools and building materials so think of them when you're giving these things away you know the same goes for other things that you encounter that you might feel compelled to hang on to you know and realistically you will never need them again don't think of items as money Savers now here's a good example I had lots of golf shirts that I knew were not cheap I thought if we save them I won't need to buy any shirts for a long long time if ever you know forget the fact that styles do change and I won't want to wear them in the future but I saw the ability to save money down the road as the reason for hanging on to them you know the better thought would have been you know keep 10 and give 30 away nobody needs more than 10 golf shirts but I had collected them over the years and I did have the closet space for them but living simpler is just fine I really you know there was about five of them that I loved and I wore those all the time anyway one of the hardest things for us was that the things that we were saving for our kids their childhood memories and and toys that we thought our kids would use one day I mean we had a baby bed a toddler toys and many of them our kids didn't want we had boxes of papers that they had written in school cheerleader uniforms clothes all kinds of stuff we gave them each a box with their stuff but told them to keep it or trash it it was their choice we know that parents houses can many times become a storage unit for grown kids and you know when they don't have room in their own homes you know maybe they're in between homes or they've just never got their stuff out of your house you know if your kids have left home and started a new life it's probably time to give them their stuff you know if they say throw it all away give it to them anyway and let them do it you know at least you know have them come back home and go through it with you you know sometimes just having a moment with your kids and letting go of it together is a pretty good strategy we had one more group of items that were really hard to deal with and this was our family photos we set these aside and dealt with them last I spent an entire week going through every picture we had we had boxes and boxes of photos and photo albums all of these things had been collected over the course of our 58 years of living we had not thrown away one picture and when we had birthday parties for the kids we took rolls of film and yet most of these photos were not ideal to keep so I sat down by myself and sorted I purchased five picture boxes and I went through everything I gave the kids only the good stuff I felt like a horrible mother throwing away so much but I knew I was making the right decision I just kept in mind the number one rule don't burden our kids with our stuff they wanted their pictures just not all of them I curated them to give them a good representation of their childhood and I moved on in the end they are very happy with the pictures they got and I'm glad that they didn't have to spend a week doing it themselves we had many people Advocate scanning pictures and organizing them and if you have time this is a great and Noble deed but first ask your kids if this is something that they really even want you know give them options do you want me to curate them scan them or do you want me to put them just in a small box for you my bet is that they will appreciate your offer but tell you that scanning every picture is not necessary our kids didn't want every picture nor did they want me to scan all of them we've talked on our channel before about taking advantage of the earlier years of your retirement when you're the healthiest to travel you do have a window of opportunity and that is true for this job as well making this a priority during the early years of your retirement is a great time to start the process as you age you'll have less accessibility to lift and then it becomes something that you need more help with most seniors need to prepare at some point in their life for a you know a smaller home or a home with Assisted Living making your life easier at that time is a good goal so what additional steps can you take to prepare your life for a simpler way of living the next important step in our minds is to address your estate planning like dealing with your stuff putting off estate planning is an easy thing to do you know many people think that they will have time or maybe they have very hard decisions to make about their end of Life Choices when we begin to prepare for retirement one of the first things our financial planners did was send us off to the estate attorney to get our wills and trust updated it wasn't hard and the attorney asked us all the right questions when it was done she sent a copy to our financial planners who secured it in a digital Vault with all of our financial assets speaking of financial planners if your financial planner isn't thorough like this you should consider a new one you know our financial planners have a digital cloud system where they update and store all of our financial documents you know we don't keep paperwork we don't want it and we don't have a place for it you know our documents are available any moment if we were to need them you know we don't want a system where we are forced to handle volumes of paperwork like annual reports and stuff you know we are traveling full-time so we want a system that's organized and if something happens to us our kids can access everything in one place we don't want any Leaf unturned we want precision and accuracy we want simple and organized if something happened to us tomorrow our kids would know exactly who to call and where to begin we want it to be as painless as possible for them we will leave a link to our advisors in the description so if you're looking for someone be sure to check them out our hope going forward is that we never fall into a pattern of living in the past with a life full of stuff and material possessions you know we have set our sights on a big experience Swedish death cleaning was the Catalyst for our ability to pursue our dreams you know having a home full of stuff would have slowed us down our nomadic lifestyle makes us very happy you know it's a great way to live if you have any questions about what we're going to do when we are too old to travel check out the next video it's up next be sure to hit subscribe and follow along on our retirement Journey around the world

Channel: Retirement Travelers

Views: 202,357

Keywords: swedish death cleaning 2023, what is swedish death cleaning, how to death clean, retirement travelers, why death clean, death cleaning in retirement, cleaning in retirement, minimalism in retirement, retirement downsizing, retirement clean out, death cleaning to travel, death cleaning swedish style, why death cleaning, death cleaning swedish, death cleaning results, death cleaning for downsizing home, death clean, death cleaning 2024, swedish death clean, downsize to travel

Id: HUziCEX2LUQ

Length: 15min 29sec (929 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 16 2023