Death Breath – "Death Breath" (2006)

I stink to high heaven

Bringing you closer to hell

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The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning is not exactly the feel-good book of the year.  After all, its  subject is how to divest yourself of all your unnecessary junk before you die so your kids or others won’t have to face that depressing task after you’re six feet under.

 On the bright side, it’s only 107 pages long – I’m talking small pages with a lot of space between the lines – and takes at most an hour to read.  (In other words, two or three bathroom visits for the average guy.)

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Margareta Magnusson, the author of The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning, describes herself as being “somewhere between 80 and 100 years old.”

Ms. Magnusson (or her agent) must be a close friend or relative of someone high up at Simon and Schuster.  Otherwise, I can’t imagine how this book got published.

Much of The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning consists of advice that is so obvious that only a moron couldn’t figure it out for himself.  The rest of the book consists of irrelevant anecdotes and non sequiturs, a few examples of which I’ll provide below.

Margareta Magnusson

For example, here’s an excerpt from the book in which the author tells you how to death clean your clothes:

[S]ort all your clothes into two piles (on your bed or on a table).

Pile one is for clothes you want to keep.

Pile two is for clothes you want to get rid of.

Then look through pile one and pull out the items that require small adjustments or dry cleaning.  The rest you can put back in the closet.

Give or throw away the clothes in pile two.

Are you f*cking kidding me?  Do you really need to book to tell you to do that?

This woman needs to get serious
about death cleaning!

A little later in the book, the author describes what happened the last time she did a death cleaning of her own clothes: 

I managed to reduce my wardrobe by two dresses, five scarves, one jacket, and two pairs of shoes.  A grandchild took a pair of shoes and the rest I gave to the Red Cross.  Wonderful!

Sounds like Margareta Magnusson just saved her kids all of two minutes.  Gee, thanks mom!

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Here are some examples of the irrelevant anecdotes and non sequiturs I promised you above:

Once, about ten years ago, I went on a sailing trip with a family for several days.  Whenever everybody on board was to leave the boat for an hour or more, the cabin door needed to be locked, but no one could ever find the key from when we had last unlocked the door. . . . Beautiful islands were around us, and yet every adventure off the boat began with a bad mood . . . caused by the hunt for the key!  Imagine how a little hook for the key on the inside of the cabin door could have brightened our lives on board. 

(She has a point, but what does it have to do with death cleaning?)

One of my daughters-in-law told me about a little girl in the nursery where she works.  She wanted to draw her best friend.  When the drawing was finished, the little girl turned over the paper to draw the back of her friend on the reverse side.  What a wonderful idea.

(A very cute story, but I must ask once again: what exactly does this have to do with death cleaning?)

Once I was invited to a tea party in Singapore.  Everyone had to wear a hat – it was compulsory!  I had not worn a hat in 20 years or so, and was not really well stocked in that area. . . . And then I saw my wok hanging on a nail above our gas stove.  I put it on my head, taped an orchid on the front brim as decoration, and tied it under my chin with coarse string.  Believe it or not, I won first prize and received a beautiful glass bottle of Schiaparelli’s perfume “Shocking!” for my efforts.  Wow!

(So did the wok survive the death cleaning or not?)

One of my daughters has a sign in her kitchen that reads, “I kiss better than I cook!”  It is an informative and fair warning to her guests – that they might well have an evening of all sorts of surprises . . . ahead of them.

(I wouldn’t mind getting a dinner invitation from this daughter . . . if you catch my drift.)

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Given that the author of this book is a woman, it comes as no surprise that she has a low opinion of men – including her late husband:

In hindsight, I think that doing [death cleaning] on my own might have been a good thing. . . . Had I cleaned with my husband, it would have taken us years.  Men tend to save most things rather than throw them away.  That goes for even the smallest nuts and bolts.  They think . . . that every little thing will be useful at some later occasion.

More from the author about the uselessness of men:

I sometimes wonder how men cope when they become widowed.  Men of my generation often manage poorly . . . . They can barely boil an egg, let alone sew on a button. . . . For a long time, the best solution for widowers has been to get a new wife as quickly as possible – someone to do the laundry and ironing, and to save them from impending starvation.

But the author thinks there is reason to be optimistic about younger males:

In Sweden, many young men enjoy both sewing and knitting; others are fantastic cooks and can combine flavors that make the mouth sing!  And they are not so stupid as to waste time ironing the entire shirt when they intend to wear a sweater on top; they know that only collar and cuffs count.  When these younger men get old, their skills will be of great benefit to them.

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Ms. Magnusson doesn’t know everything there is to know about death cleaning.

For example, she asks this question – “Can I give an old samurai sword to my teenage grandson?” – but fails to answer it.

The most difficult conundrum presented by death cleaning – how to deal with embarrassing possessions – is addressed in a chapter titled “If It Was Your Secret, Then Keep It That Way (or How to Death Clean Hidden, Dangerous, and Secret Things)”:

Maybe Grandfather had ladies’ underwear in his drawer and maybe Grandma had a dildo in hers.  But what does that matter now? . . . Let us each have our small preferences, as long as nobody gets hurt.

But it is perhaps a nice gift to those loved ones who may be death cleaning for us later if we do a little bit of our own cleaning now – to reduce these types of belongings a bit before we leave our present life.

Save your favorite dildo – but throw away the other fifteen!

That is excellent advice – as far as it goes.  But Margaretta’s children will probably be somewhat dismayed to find even one dildo while cleaning up for her after she shuffles off this mortal coil.

What we naughty oldsters really need is a way to have our cake and eat it, too.  But how can we keep the embarrassing items we can’t live without for as long as we are alive, but make sure that they are never found by anyone after we die?

I’m still working on that one.

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Click here to watch a video of Margareta Magnusson explaining death cleaning.  

I’d guess she’s closer to 80 than to 100.  What do you think?

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Death Breath is an old-school Swedish death metal band that released today’s featured song on its 2006 debut album, Stinking Up the Night.

Margareta Magnusson is also an old-school type and Swedish.  I doubt that she’s a fan of death metal, but two out of three ain’t bad.

Click here to watch the official music video for “Death Breath,” which features a zombie, a hot Swedish blonde, and a Volvo.

And click on the link below to buy The Gentle Art of Death Cleaning from Amazon: