Matthew: "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."
There is no word for "dostadning" in English. It is "Swedish Death-Cleaning." I can not do the umlauts.
The word refers to a human tendency, in their 50s and 60s, to begin to unload possessions and to streamline life. Furniture, clothing, tools, sports equipment, books, cookware and serving stuff, pictures and artwork, various collections, spare houses, time shares, and so on. Things in closets, things in the attic, things in the basement.
At some point, people realize they will not live long enough to use or wear out the stuff they have. Awareness of morbidity and mortality.
Most people fall somewhere in the middle of a spectrum between spartan minimalists to hoarders, collectors, and accumulators, but most people do end up with an excess of stuff, imagining that "I might need it someday" or "It might come back into fashion" or "my kids might want it." Nope. The psychology and psychiatry of it all is interesting, but we can leave that aside.
Inherited stuff is the biggest challenge for many. Things that connect us to our pasts, in general. Memory aids. Narcissistic and neurotic outlets. Keep what has true meaning while knowing that its meaning will be gone when you die. Death cleaning.
I was raised on this Wordsworth sonnet (among many others- I was thankfully raised on the classics of literature, music, and art by my cultivated parents):
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
