Swedish Death Cleaning
I’ve taken advantage of the past couple of cold, wintery weekends to begin my Swedish Death Cleaning project in the guest room. It ceased functioning as a guest room long ago and has become a junk room/storage room.
Swedish Death Cleaning is a bit of an off-putting term but is simply a decluttering method that takes you beyond Marie Kondo’s mantra, “does it bring you joy?” by adding “will it bring anyone else joy?” It involves taking care of clearing out your own clutter rather than leaving it for someone else to do after you are gone. This is not just for the elderly, though. The younger generations get caught up in keeping too much useless stuff, too.
I’ve not read the original book, “The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning: How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter,” by Margaretta Magnusson,, but am trying to follow her words of advice: “If you don’t love it, lose it. If you don’t use it, lose it.” The final decision-making question is, “Will anyone be happier if I save this?” Most often, the answer is “no.”
I remember how hard it was to dispose of my mom’s household goods when she died. Even though my sister had already helped her purge her house to move her from Oregon to Arizona, and Mom had identified things that needed to go to someone specific, it was a lot of work to dispose of her stuff, on top of all the emotion of the time. I can’t even try to imagine how much worse it would have been if she hadn’t left things in such good order. So, I have already experienced the value of Swedish Death Cleaning.
The process is very taxing on the brain, and I can only work at it for a short period of time at each setting. It’s definitely going to be a long project that needs consistent effort.
Last week we got the bunk beds out of the room and to the garage (since they belong to a family member, I can’t bless someone else with them). We put in some shelves to organize the tools, gardening, and chicken supplies that have accumulated as we’ve worked on building up the homestead. This week, we cleaned and bagged up the mattresses and moved them to the garage. That left me enough room to work on “the shoving closet” – the place I shove everything that doesn’t have a place to belong. I went through VCR movies (I kept less than a dozen – down from a whole box), books (I kept only my three favorite authors and a few other strays, maybe a couple dozen total – two big boxes are ready to donate to the library), and yarn and undone crochet projects (unopened skeins went to the donate pile, the rest to the garbage). Once I hit the bag containing my mom’s wedding dress, grandmother’s doilies, and various other textiles from previous generations, I could not make a decision and knew it was time to stop.
This isn’t the only room I need to declutter. There are things throughout the house and garage I brought from Wyoming over 10 years ago that I’ve not touched. It’s definitely time to go through everything.
Fair warning though – it’s definitely not the time to come over to my house – such chaos!
OH, THE WEATHER OUTSIDE IS FRIGHTFUL
We’ve had snow the past three weekends. That’s not normal for North Carolina. In between storms the temperatures have been below freezing (frequently in the teens at night) and rarely got even into the 40’s during the day. I’m not whining, but, let me make the statement: I am done with winter.
The chickens are not particularly happy about it either. It’s been amusing to watch them, from inside the house of course, come to the coop door, look out at the snow and after a short ponder, turn on their heels and return to the depths of the coop.
The only part of the homestead that is not bothered by the weather is the greenhouse. Walking inside that silly looking, plastic-covered-cattle-panel-held-together-by-ratchet-straps-and-duct-tape greenhouse is amazing. The temperature is higher inside by 10 – 20 degrees than outside. The pansies provide such a cheerful greeting when I come for my weekly visits to water. The cauliflower, though I know will not form heads (I planted them too late) have beautiful, lush green and purple leaves. The carrots and lettuce are still growing vigorously. I harvested more carrots today (the chickens enjoyed the green tops) and the lettuce will be ready for another haircut next week. All in all, going into the greenhouse brings a smile to my face and a lift to my spirit – even at the end of January.
A WAY OF LIFE
One of my favorite preparedness quotes is:
“Preparedness, when properly pursued, is a way of life, not a sudden, spectacular program.” — Spencer W. Kimball
I have learned that this is completely true. You don’t just “do” preparedness. It is a continual process.
You don’t just buy your food storage and you’re done. You can’t pick tomatoes from a garden you don’t plant. You can’t read a first aid book to figure out what to do while someone is bleeding in front of you. You can’t pull a flashlight or a blanket out of a car kit you don’t put in your car.
As with anything in life, preparedness and self-reliance, start with education. Some of us learn these things as children but many people must actively seek out preparedness information.
Then, remember: “Information is not knowledge.” — Albert Einstein
It is Doing that turns Information into Knowledge. We must act on the concepts we have learned.
When you first start doing something new, there is always a learning curve. While you can eliminate some missteps by learning from the mistakes others have made, you will certainly have to make your own. These are not meant for discouragement, but for experience. Sometimes you learn more from your “failures” than you do when you have success with your first try.
So, if Preparedness is not your lifestyle, Start Now; and then, Keep Doing It. Always think about what you are going to work on next.
What are you going to work on next? Your Important Documents Binder, your emergency car kit, your short-term (3 months) food storage? Or will you learn a new preparedness skill or pay off a credit card? Choose something and Do It!
SUCCESS!
I finally successfully used my Nesco Smart Canner to pressure can!
If you’ll recall, I purchased an electric canner in August. It seemed be a good option for my canning needs, but I have struggled with it. After my last failure in October, I got some guidance from Nesco customer service, but didn’t muster up the gumption to try again. Until now.
This weekend, Winter unveiled her claws and we spent most of our time in the house, watching the snow/sleet/rain/snow fall, and freeze, hoping the electricity stayed on (we were fortunate). Even the chickens refused to venture from their coop.
I used some of the time to cook down a turkey carcass I had stored in the freezer last Spring. The meat was used to make a casserole and I canned the broth.
It may not seem like much, but it’s a hump I needed to get over. I am cautiously optimistic that I can continue using the Nesco for small batch canning.
POWDERED MILK IN YOUR FOOD STORAGE
For anyone interested in Food Storage topics, I have added new information in the Food Storage menu tab (just below the blog title). It will be easy to find the information there in the future. For now, click on the links below to go straight to each page:
AND SOW IT BEGINS
Today’s excitement: my first batch of seeds arrived!
I ordered Golden Delight Zucchini, Twister Cauliflower, Katrina Cabbage, Crimson Sweet Watermelon, Kuroda Carrot, Roulette Heatless Habanero, Gypsy Pepper, and yes, even Mountain Vineyard Tomato (only because it was free) from Hoss.
I had really good success with the seeds I got from Hoss last year so they were the place I ordered from first this year.
I’m not done ordering seeds though. There are two or three more seed catalogs I need to look through.
No, I don’t have enough garden space for everything I want to do. Oscar will just have to build some more raised beds!
BLUE EAR LOBES?!
While we were out in the chicken coop installing the new nest box and interacting with the hens, I made a startling discovery: Toast had blue earlobes! Her beard is quite burly so I’d never actually seen them before. I didn’t know blue ear lobes was a thing.
Cue a Google search… Sure enough, there are a few breeds of chicken that can have green or blue earlobes.
The only problem is, after we finished what we were doing and picked her up again to get a picture, they weren’t blue anymore!
“Hey Google: Do chicken earlobes act like a mood ring, changing colors according to their moods?” … Yep.
Huh, you learn something new every day.
A NEW NESTBOX
Now that we are getting five or six eggs a day, I figured we’d better get the girls another nesting box. Once all ten hens are laying, two boxes may not be enough.
The Little Giant nesting boxes we have been using have worked fine but the Legbars (Pecky and Caboose) have taken to sleeping in them at night. As a result, we often have to wash poop off the eggs. I know, that’s a digusting thought but, if you have chickens, you have poop.
I decided to see if getting a different style was possible. There are nesting boxes that let the eggs roll away, keeping them clean. Another benefit is you don’t have to stick your hand under an annoyed hen to check for eggs. I haven’t been willing to pay the price for this kind of nesting box up this point but I got an Amazon gift card for Christmas, making it worth consideration.
Fortuitously, in addition to having the gift card, there was a coupon for $12.00 off so I popped it right into my cart!
Birds are suspicious of new things. We’re hopeful that putting this in the same place the previous nesting boxes had been will encourage the girls to use it. We’ll see how that logic pans out over the next few days.
Two Chickens Homestead 
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