Swedish Death Cleaning for Very Much Alive Guests

 JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: We've all heard about Swedish Death Cleaning, yes? I confess, I'm not sure how it got it's name - I don't suppose Swedes as a group get ready en masse for the end. On the other hand, we've all seen clips of Ingmar Bergen's The Seventh Seal, so maybe they are?

 

The goal is to declutter and organize, not just for you, but to make it easier for your family to deal with your home and possessions when you go toes up. But it's also an absolutely prime way to get your house more ready to put on the market. I'm not planning on either in the immediate future, but I am sick of having a huge house where I still can't comfortably have guests sleeping over because the bedrooms are still crowded with the kids junk precious things.

From Just A Girl and her Blog. My tubs, sadly, don't match...

At any rate, this spring, I decided to combine the traditional seasonal deep clean with a real deep clean, tossing bags and bags of old clutter from the kids' rooms, shoveling out the depths of a closet that went back thirty years (dear reader, I found perfectly preserved baby clothes there!) and finally sorting my Christmas decor by type, giving away ornaments that no longer sparked joy, as Marie Kondo says. It's so perfectly organized now, I plan on including 'The Christmas Closet' as a regular part of the house tour.

 

 If you have a keen eye, you may notice that I'm writing about this as if it's still going on, despite the fact we're in late August and getting perilously close to the Fall cleaning season. Yes! It is, and I am still working on it. But now I've run into a difficult contradiction.

 

This Saturday, my daughter Victoria is getting married! (You can read more on that this weekend.) Some of you may remember I've already referred to my daughter's wife, and mentioned their November trip to city hall in the comments. They're doing this European style, separating the civil service and the religious festivities. 

 

As a result, my house is going to be topped off with guests. Along with Spencer and Virginia returning to the nest, I'm putting up both Victoria's godmothers (plus one godmother-husband.) In addition, I'm having a dinner party Friday night!

 

The issue, of course, is that Swedish Death Cleaning involves careful consideration, organization, and sorting. Here Come The Guests cleaning involves putting everything into boxes or laundry baskets and shoving it all into a closet or unused bedroom where no one will see your shame. 

 

This will VERY MUCH not be me.

But there are no unused bedrooms! Heck, I'm putting myself on the blow-up bed in the family room. And I'll be darned if I'm going to sully those carefully emptied closets with yet more odds and ends. What to do, what to do? 

 

Dear readers, tell us your techniques for in-depth cleaning versus Quick! Guests! cleaning. By the time you read this, I will have hopefully succeeded in prepping for my visitors without disappointing the Swedes. Or Death. If not, I'll let you know in the comments.