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 . . . .
ReplyDeleteVery true. I do love holding old photos of my grandparents when they were young.
DeletePhotos 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.
ReplyDeleteOh that's a tragic story Kait!
DeleteOh, my heart! I'm glad you went through them. *sob*
DeleteI 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.
Fire! One more reason to digitize!
DeleteI'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.
ReplyDeleteLOL.
DeleteBe 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.
Our screen saver on the desktop pulls photos from our library - sometimes we will sit there mesmerized by them, or reminiscing about trips.
DeleteI had to move my e-frame off my desk because I'd just sit there for hours. LOL.
DeleteSigh. 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!
ReplyDeleteYes there is such a person Edith! I hired a professional organizer ($70/hr) and she was very helpful. The thing for me is having someone who is there to keep me focused, make suggestions, and keep me moving forward and not letting me give up. We sorted through boxes and boxes of memorabilia, organized everything and put it into marked boxes. It was expensive but it gave me peace of mind.
DeleteSO worth it! Anon, are you in New England, perchance?
DeleteHi Edith, no I am in San Diego. But if you are looking for someone - some organizers give free talks to various groups like at libraries, genealogy groups, etc. That might be a way to find someone other than word of mouth.
DeleteThe marvelous Kathy Vines of Clever Girl organizing is often on the blog, Edith! I think she is still in business, and she lives…in Melrose or someplace like that. She’s a genius!
DeleteThanks!
DeleteHonestly, I would love this as a career. My family is frequently terrorized by my zest for pitching things!
DeleteMy 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.
It is a never ending cycle.
DeleteJenn,
ReplyDeleteFor myself, I have a few photo books but nothing approaching what you describe. I'm sure some of them could be purged.
But I'm sure my mother has tons more. I wouldn't even want to begin to figure out what should be purged from the photos that she has stored away. I'm sure it will have to be done at some point but in the interest of being a world-class procrastinator I have not even really formulated a plan to start.
I am generally a procrastinator but love a good deep cleaning, so anything to avoid writing, I guess?
DeleteI have stuff to go through, but not too many photos. Since I seem to be undergoing two basement disasters at the same time 1) Furnace outage and 2) plumbing problem where the plumber didn't reattach the laundry hose and my first load dumped all the water on the basement floor, I am very motivated to go through the boxes in the basement and have been trying to do a box a day. The pictures for the most part are already upstairs, in a cupboard in my dining room. However, I found a couple of nude photos of pregnant me with my twin...I had totally forgotten about those. They were in an envelope in a box with a bunch of papers from our equal pay lawsuit of 1994. Huh. I definitely didn't want someone stumbling across them.
ReplyDeleteGillian, I love this so much. Opening to a mystery novel, for sure. *Jenn makes notes*
DeleteStacks of boxes of print photos and slides. Yes, it's time to digitize.
ReplyDeleteWhen my mother died, I divided her photos into three shopping bags, one for each sibling. And then our kids went through years of memories. It helped their grief.
Oh, that's brilliant.
DeleteOh, my gosh, this speaks to me. I have always loved taking photos, plus I have boxes of family photos taken generations before me. I did at least pass a good number of those on to my nephew, who's deeply into genealogy and is our designated keeper of the family history. But can I part with the gazillion photos of cats and horses who have long since crossed the rainbow bridge? That's a big NO. I've digitized some, but it's a slow process when you have to stop and reminisce for ten minutes before moving on to the next.
ReplyDeleteFor the record, I suck at Death Cleaning.
LOL, Annette. I'll come over and teach you to love it.
DeleteWow! Apparently this is something that I am succeeding at. I've had - and still have - multiple photo albums. There was a time, maybe 15 or 20 years ago that I started digitizing them. Not all of them, you understand, just the ones I thought I'd always want. They are saved to the cloud, or at least I think so - that isn't something I check. But they are on my computer and have become my screensaver. The grandchildren can sit in front of my laptop for hours, just watching. It is set to random, so no one knows what will be next, although they can always go to the grouping. I've arranged them by events or seasons. It is a simple thing now to add more pictures as they happen, which is not as often as it used to be.
ReplyDeleteNow consider my father who was camera enthusiast, always taking pictures and then developing them himself. Then he branched out into slides. Not exaggerating, there must have been millions of them. Sadly, many deteriorated but there were plenty in good enough condition. My sister and husband put them all on discs and gave them to people. Now I can only view the discs on my old PC but I have copied and saved the best photos to my current laptop. Some of those pix have solved family arguments! But so many memories are saved.
Photo screensaver for the win!
DeleteYou are winning, Judi! Well done.
DeleteWhen we cleaned my mom’s house to sell it (she was still living), we got to a room that had boxes of photos. I was overwhelmed and told my husband that I was going to throw them all away without looking. He told me to get them scanned and make into photo books which I’ve been doing with my photos the last few years. (I take lots of digital pictures of birds and other wildlife.) I got the photos scanned at a local place and made three books with themes as my summer projects. Then I cleaned out my photos from the days when our kids were little and you could get three for the price of one, got those scanned, and made a couple of more books. . . Did I actually throw away the photos I scanned? No, but they are organized and in one place. So my survivors will have lots of photo books that they can keep or toss, but I feel like I’ve done the heavy lifting. And I have a substack blog for bird photography so I’m creating fewer photo books.
ReplyDeleteWell done. It can be overwhelming.
DeleteMany of my photos were of my son growing up and I decided years ago to give them to my grandchildren so they could see what their dad was like when he was young. Other photos have been culled each time I've moved. I know a lot of you prefer to hold on to pics, but I only keep the ones that really touch my soul and those are few and far between. -- Victoria
ReplyDeleteThat's lovely.
DeleteI am in some way reassured to learn that purging photos tends to trip up even those who are doing Swedish Death Cleaning. When I did my Great Purge of 2024 prior to downsizing, photos were the hardest thing for me to deal with and honestly, where I was least effective. I did purge quite a few, but I also retained two large Rubbermaide bins plus an additional smaller bin with the promise I'd go through them again at some point both to organize and to purge more. Plus now that I've moved my sister into assisted living I inherited a box of needs-to-be-sorted photos from her, too. I had kidded myself that the long, cold months of winter would provide me the opportunity to go through them but I haven't touched them at all. Sigh.
ReplyDeleteThat's why I'm determined to get ahead of it. No one wants to go through someone else's - our own stuff is enough.
DeleteHere’s my solution. I am just keeping them. There you have it, I’m just keeping them. No more worries.
ReplyDeleteI am, though, semi haunted By the boxes of slides Jonathan has in the basement. They were way before my time, so I’m not in them, and I have no idea what it is. We don’t have a slide projector or any kind of device on which to look at them, so we would have to take out the boxes and hold each slide up to the light . I can tell you, Reddies, I am not doing that. When I mentioned, carefully, to Jonathan that we might want to do something about the slides, he says: I’m keeping them.
OK. Fine with me. They mean something to him, and that’s all I need to hear.
But we would get two whole basement shelves back without them, just saying. (We would get the same number of shelves back if I threw away my old boxes that once held Apple products, too, so it’s a balance.)
I say there are more important things to worry about than getting rid of photographs. Xxxxx
Hank, an inexpensive way to look at slides is a simple light box, with a translucent surface backed by a light source. If Jonathan ever wanted to look at them.
DeleteOh, thank you, I forgot about those! Maybe we have one, even. I’ll find it, and take a box of slides, and put it in the light viewer on the kitchen table and see what happens. I will keep you posted :-)
DeleteLOL.
DeleteI've never done death cleaning. I try to keep ahead of the mess. Emphasis on try.
ReplyDeleteWe have boxes of photos from all decades - going back to my father-in-law's marriage. I'm so glad my kids find going through old photos amusing because they're going to have a lot of them. Never mind the digital ones.
Yeah, mine do not.
DeleteAs you probably realize, it is not 10 days post my sister dying and I have a whole house to dispense with prior to selling – and we have a buyer lined up and they are perfect. That is the good news.
ReplyDeleteThe bad news is twofold. She took in all my father’s stuff and he was not only a historian as was his father before him, but a hoarder – and I fear so was she. In his dotage, he would scan newspaper articles to give a copy to someone. But he would do not just one, but 14 copies. Then he would decide that particular article needed to be in that and that album as well – so all collation was gone to excrement. We will not even mention the gazillion books – often multiples of the same title that were given as Christmas gifts – of no value but maybe 2nd hand books might take them. Photos – every one ever taken, black negative or not! She had 10 years to get started….
Then there is her house – 3 stories, a garage and a catch all shed – all stuffed. My brother wants to ‘hold’ every thing until May, when the family will be around (the same family who was here at Christmas and did not put name tickets on anything), let them choose, and then leave it to me to disperse by July.
I am going nuts. I know that I should just close my eyes and throw out. My brain says do it – my heart just can’t. There are people who can use those multiple bags of white sugar or the canned tuna. There is even a place that will take the tea-cups, but they ‘need to be saved’.
Arghhhh! I have done 3 garbage bags full in 4 days (I had some help, and they threw out everything in giant sweeps into the garbage bags – no sorting). I found expensive things that needed to be saved. There is too much stuff. About 150 plants to be sorted this week that thankfully are going to a garden yard sale – I wonder if they will take pots as well?
I hope the snow melts so we can start to disperse (it means a drive to town and a game of “I’ve been everywhere – homeless, SPCA, Food Bank, Food Kitchen”, and to be able to start the burn barrel going…
I now really empathize with you who have done this before. It is worse than moving – at least that was my own junk.
As for photos (the original question), I am glad I don’t use my cell phone to take pictures. How many people have ever looked at those gazillion photos that were taken, even after they were taken, and yet how full is their cloud storage? At least with a camera, we have to dump the photos on the computer looking for that perfect bird or butterfly picture and as for the rest – delete.
Margo, I completely sympathize, and empathize. Clearing out someone else's home is no picnic, and it is just damned HARD. When my father-in-law died after a dozen years being widowed, my single brother-in-law was paralyzed to clean out the house that he inherited. Finally, I stepped up, with almost no help. Their cousin came over one day, and we did a lot together, but that was out of more than a week of solid work on my part. And I helped my mother downsize from her three-bedroom home with a stuffed full 1,000 sq ft basement to a small apartment at my brother's.
DeleteJust the paper records! Maybe you don't need to save seven years of tax returns in Canada; I hope not! Good luck, I am with you in spirit.
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DeleteOh Margo - sending you strength and patience.
DeleteMargo, this sounds like what my dad had to go through when his dad died. We found SO MUCH STUFF. Photography equipment. Photos. Two guitars. Three VCRs. Countless cassettes (he liked taping movies from the TV).
DeleteFunniest of all was the money. $100 cash there, $50 here, $200 there. As a child of the Depression, he had money in the bank, but cash was squirrelled away everywhere "just in case." I think Dad found almost $1,000!
Big hugs.
Margo, my heart goes out to you. At least when my mother died, I had my sister and both my mother's younger brothers helping me make decisions. Otherwise, it's paralyzing.
DeleteMargo, I'm so sorry. I love a good deep cleaning and was born to purge but this would stagger even me.
DeleteThis essay makes me extremely anxious, Jenn. I have so many photos to organize and digitize, stacked downstairs, and it's such a daunting task I am paralyzed over it. I have bought two different photo scanners, too. The first was worthless, turned out to have been used by someone else and repackaged. The second one could work, except... the glass needs to be cleaned after every so many (not many) scans, if there is the slightest bit of dust (loads) on the photos, or worse, glue or residue from having been taped or secured in an album. To make this worse, twice now I have organized the photos, only to have my oldest (I'll put these back in the right place, Mom--right) take many photos for various reasons, and then just dump them in a pile.
ReplyDeleteAnd then, organizing them in the computer!!! And as Judi said above, all those digital photos from the past two decades--where the heck are they? I have multiple places, some I did not know were being saved to, and the duplicate (and triplicate, and more) situation is a nightmare.
Then there is my darling 2nd generation photographer husband. Who insists that we keep the FOUR tall filing cabinets and two additional shelving units of negatives, slides, and glass transparencies from the last 90 years! Never mind they were all digitized long ago. At least the million miles of film in big film cans (just like the old movies) that are on shelf after shelf at the farm. We so need a death cleaning. Or a bonfire. Environmental disaster, coming right up.
Let me introduce you to your new bestfriend, Karen. A company called iMemories will digitize everything - photos or videos or both FOR YOU. You stick it in a box and mail it to them and voila digitized. I actually have their app and have all of our family videos on MY PHONE! The cloud storage is $49.99/year but they'll also put them on a flash drive for you.
DeleteJenn, I have a truckload! "A box" would be doable, but this is many boxes.
DeleteBox by box - your version of Annie Lamott's Bird by Bird?
DeleteI should add that my digitized pictures live in an e-frame in the corner of my kitchen. I have 2500 pics on there from Hub and I dating in 1997 to the present day and I am not kidding when I say IT IS THE BEST THING EVER. I'll walk through and as the pics constantly are constantly scrolling from 6 AM to 9PM (you can set the time) and they remain for 5 secs before the next pops up, I will see pics of my dad, brother, grandma and it's like they're still here. I always say, "HI Bro" when I see him. The Hooligans entire lives are on there and it just makes me so happy to see the faces of my loved ones. I rarely see the same pic twice. So, if you digitize I HIGHLY recommend an e-frame but I have mine run off a flash drive - no wifi - it's old school but easier :)
ReplyDeleteMy mom has one in her bed/sitting room, and my brother and his wife have another around the corner in the kitchen. It's so fun to see their grandkids--my great nieces and nephew--show up and grow up in the latest pics.
DeleteI have an Ida Rose digital frame, but I need to encourage my younger son to add Silvio pix to it!
DeleteI’m afraid to read the Swedish Death Cleaning book, although I read and enjoyed her second book.. I have plenty of friends bugging me about whether I’m ready to get rid of all my stuff. They’ve all been through it. I just keep saying “not yet”. Photos are one thing I’d be prepared to sort however. Especially after the experience of dealing with my dad’s stuff when he passed - a keen amateur photographer all his long life, there were three storage units full. My sister took in the boxes and boxes of slides, and was gradually scanning them to share digitally but eventually buckled under the burden and gave up. I don’t have any offspring to pass down to and my nephew is not keen on being “gifted” with a lot of photos, so it’s totally my choice as to what to do. Makes it easier in a way. A friend who is both older and better organized had books made of photos that were important to her by an on line service, and says she actually looks through them now instead of them just residing in boxes. And she actually got rid of the photos too. That seems a good approach to me. Just gotta get organized.
ReplyDeleteIt's the organizing that can feel overwhelming.
DeleteAs often happens, there is a NYT article today about decluttering!
ReplyDeleteGift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/27/well/family/declutter-hoarding-sentimental.html?unlocked_article_code=1.NFA.ohUV.0sjIkk6XUn4n&smid=url-share
Great minds...
DeleteAfter my father’s death I went through his slides which were in the hundreds. I discovered he took multiple shots of everything so my task was to select the “best” one and discard the rest. The next step was to digitize them. One sad part was that he didn’t take many photos of people; I was hoping to see many more family members in all those slides.
ReplyDeleteThat is tough. You're a good daughter.
DeleteLike you, I have many photos. Definitely time travel for me. When I lived in England, I took a thousand photos! I found photos of people who I have no memory of meeting them I see them again. When I see them again, I wonder where I met them before and the photos remind me of where I met them though I have no recollection of meeting them. It’s strange because I usually notice every person in the room. I think perhaps it’s because they didn’t talk to me. Now I getting into memories inspired by this post about photos. My parents were surprised when I mentioned this very shy teenager whom I had met as a three year old. I remember her because she talked with me. I barely remember adults who didn’t know sign language.
ReplyDeleteRegarding photos, I found photos of me when I was recovering from meningitis. I had been in the hospital for most of the summer! I had to learn how to walk again. There are photos of me in my school uniform at catholic school. Fifty years ago my parents and I went to a relative’s fifth wedding anniversary. I was bored because I was the only kid under age 12 there. I went around the banquet taking lots of pictures! Most of the people at the banquet were born before 1900! They were still very active despite their age!
That is wild, Diana.
DeleteI did the great photo purge some time ago. Everything I wanted to keep went into albums. The rest gone. Digitized all our many videos of vacations and kids sports. Haven’t looked at them since!
ReplyDeleteI never looked at mine when they were on DVDs so...
DeleteThere are boxes. Several boxes, because we photographed everything before we all got smartphones and, of course, got the double print option, because why not? I'm not worried about winnowing through them; Victoria trained to be an archivist, making her go through them will just be me getting a little tuition money back.
ReplyDeleteI am concerned that the family will apparently have ceased to exist around 2005, because everything after that lives as a cloud of electrons somewhere. Oh, well, I doubt I'll be around to have to deal with that eventuality...
Very smart, Julia.
DeleteEmily Dame, I started going through the boxes of photos, thinking I would get the ones my mom took first. I was looking forward to it because they’d be of people I didn’t know and it would be so easy to just toss them. No, instead they were my pictures! I had to do the whole down memory lane trip (“Look how thin I was! And you had hair back then!”) which definitely slowed the process. I still have lots of boxes to go through, but I did get rid of a few hundred pictures. (When my husband and I cleaned out his parents’ house, he just threw their photo albums in the dumpster. He’s had a few twinges of regret, but not many.)
ReplyDeleteOh, and thanks for the reminder, Jenn! My father-in-law had one of those digital photo frames. Now if I can only find it and figure out how to load our pictures on it…. — Pat S
Do it! You'll love it!
DeleteGood for you, Jenn! I think about this all the time, but I'm afraid that once I start decluttering it will completely take over my life and I won't do anything else (like writing.) There is something addicting about sorting and organizing and throwing away. As for photos, all of my old (pre-digital) photos are in boxes and albums in the back of the black hole closet in my upstairs office. One of these days maybe I will get to them and digitize them. I can't imagine my daughter wanting the clutter of physical photos but my granddaughter might like them. The sad thing is that somehow the album that contained all my childhood pictures disappeared. We also have boxes of my parents' slides--mostly from their travels--in the attic, but I think they are probably ruined from the heat. We talked the other day about having a look at them but it hasn't happened...
ReplyDeleteMy dad actually made prints from his slides and put them in albums for my brother and me. I really appreciate that now.
DeleteNuts. My post disappeared. The essence was loose photos, no one doing anything about them.
ReplyDeleteLOL. 'nuff said.
DeleteMy sister and I are very, very lucky that our uncle, who is a computer person, digitized all the photos involving my mother's side of the family and many that he took of my parents, my sister, and me as children and teenagers. What a gift! I only have one big box of loose family stuff to deal with and a few albums. Oh, and I still haven't started death cleaning, although I believe it's the right thing to do, especially since I doubt our son will want a single thing we own.
ReplyDeleteMy Hooligans will definitely not be interested. Although, I plan to sort and give them each a box of photos that feature them. :)
Delete