Jenn McKinlay: Recently (last year, the year before, I have no idea), I listened to The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Margareta Magnusson. It is exactly what it sounds like, a book about cleaning out your possessions before you die so that the people you leave behind don't have to.
My best friend is Swedish and we talked quite a bit about the book while I was listening to it. My friend confirmed that this is how most Swedes are - thoughtful about not leaving behind problems for others. I can vouch that this is true because she and I are the same height and weight and every time we visit, she gives me shoes or clothes because she's also 12 years older than me and in constant death clean mode. I'm okay with this because she has excellent taste and takes care of her things so it's a win win.
What I loved about Magnusson's book was that she made the death cleaning easy and straightforward and then you get to the final chapters and she talks about the one thing that makes even death cleaners stumble -- photographs.
Well, I was determined not to falter. Armed with a trash bag, a shredder, and the misplaced confidence of someone who has watched exactly one episode of a home organization show, I opened our storage unit.
You know the one. The Indiana Jones warehouse of my past where between the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail were seventeen boxes labeled “PHOTOS—IMPORTANT!!!” (Apparently, I felt very strongly about that in 2009.)
Here’s the thing about old photos. You don’t simply “go through” them. You time travel. One minute you’re tossing duplicates, the next you’re misty over a blurry snapshot of a long-gone dog who, in that photo, is mid-zoomie and eternal.
I found hairstyles that should have come with warning labels. Seriously, I think my bangs in the 80's are solely responsible for the hole in the ozone layer. Outfits that were clearly chosen during a period of temporary insanity, I mean, were shoulder pads that doubled as pillows really necessary? Entire vacations documented before smartphones, when I took 24 photos and 19 of them featured my thumb or a sunset that looked beige.
And yet.
There were the Hooligans dressed up as toilet paper mummies. The Hub's grandparents dancing at our wedding. Friends tailgating at the college game where the keg was featured but we're all there in our day-glo highlighter hued clothing, holding red Solo cups.
I’ll confess: the shredder remained tragically underfed.
Yes, I mailed a decade of photos to an ex so he could remember what he looked like in the 90's. Yes, I let go of the mysterious landscapes that simply didn't translate their awesomeness to a faded 4 X 6 inch print. Yes, I bravely discarded photos of people I absolutely couldn't identify. Who are you, sir, and more importantly why are we hugging?
Still, knowing that my Hooligans (bless their hearts) are never going to care about the 20,000 photos that document their Dad's and my lifetimes, a solid dent was made. Many giant boxes have been distilled into several much smaller ones with their contents to be digitized at a future date. The rest? Well, progress is best measured by hefty bags and I have many to go before I sleep (nod to Robert Frost).
How about you, Reds and Readers, what do your photo archives look like?
It would take me the next twenty years [at least] to digitize all the photographs we have . . . I'd consider digitizing them except for the fact that there's something quite satisfying in holding a special photograph in your hands . . . .
ReplyDeletePhotos are so hard. Before we moved from Maine in 2011 I went through all my photo albums. It was a walk down memory lane, and I'm so grateful I took the time. All the old-style big book photo albums, mine, my parents', my grandparents', were in one box and never arrived in Florida. In this case, all I have are the memories. What's funny, the important ones I can still see in my mind's eye. Nowadays, my photos are on my hard drive and my physical and cloud backups. I still have some smaller photo albums that survived, but everything is online.
ReplyDeleteI am such a big fan of this book. I’ve read it twice and sent copies to multiple friends.
ReplyDeleteFor my photos, such a mix - last 15-20 years are safely (I hope) backed up in the cloud. Before that a mix of albums and photos that I meant to scrapbook but never did.
My best friend lost her house in the Eaton Fire last year. She’s the kind of person who documents everything. Her work scrapbook survived because it was in her office. I volunteered to digitize that one for her since 3 of the years covered were ones that we worked together. I had copies of some of the photos, but it was a joy to reminisce about the others.
I'm Norwegian, so anything Swedish is suspect! But moving house after 30+ years helped ... with everything but the photos. they may be left for my poor children to deal with, though this post does inspire me to, at least, get those travel landscapes gone.
ReplyDeleteBe honest, who sits looking through their photos stored on the cloud? Even the ones on the computer?
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, the bulky, old-fashioned photo albums on the shelf are fun to take down when the grandkids visit.
I have my brother's photos, my parent's, my husband's parents and our own. When a task looks that big and messy, it is hard to set time aside to attack it. I do love going through the photos I organized and put in albums.
When my step sister's house burned last year, I went through all the albums from when we were together and pulled out photos of her kids and some of our earliest escapades and adventures when we were single. I gave them to her last Passover. She was delighted.
Sigh. I am incapable of sorting photos. I start and then get paralyzed with that trip into the past. I need a Swedish Death Cleaning doula. Are there people for hire who could come over and be organized and ruthless for me? I think that's an important new career for somebody!
ReplyDeleteMy physical photo archives consist of 3 large blue Rubbermaid totes filled with albums.I did not get rid of them in The Great Purge of 2024. They made the move and are in a bedroom closet. I was going to put them in the lower shelves of my bookcases that have doors on them, but they don’t really fit and my husband quickly commandeered those for his baseball making supplies…except for the one shelf I claimed for puzzles and games. Since we went digital there’s no telling where the photos are…various computers and sticks and things I guess. I also have a small stack from when my grandparents died.
ReplyDeleteAnything that was photo related when we cleaned out my parents’ house in 2018 went to my sister’s house to be tackled later and there they still sit.