Swedish Death Cleaning is the Scandinavian practice of taking stock of your life and pairing down your possessions. Unlike other decluttering methods, the purpose of Swedish Death Cleaning is to manage your possessions and assets in a way to not burden your loved ones after your death. It asks you to consider your legacy and the impact your property will have on the people left behind.
Popularized in North America by Margareta Magnusson’s 2017 book, The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning, the method advocates for simplifying your life and evaluating the possessions you choose to retain. Part of the process includes organizing the key details in your life so as to make things easier for the people who will ultimately dispose of our property and administer our estates.
While we can see our physical clutter, it is more difficult to ascertain the amount of digital clutter we have. Depending on your age and interests, you may have laptops, phones, and tablets filled with digital pictures, music, and other documents stored in your home. Instead of taking a few hours to go through half a dozen photo albums, in the near future, family members will have to sort through thousands and thousands of digital pictures.
Applying the principles of Swedish Death Cleaning to our digital life eases the tasks for our estate trustees and family members. A few principles we can apply include:
Declutter with a Purpose
Consider deleting your old school notes, drafts of documents, and other items you do not need. Properly and safely discard your old digital cameras, disks, hard drives, memory cards, tablets, phones and computers. Review the terms of service and delete social media accounts you no longer use to decrease the chances of identity theft and fraud. Everything you dispose of during your lifetime is one less thing for someone else to worry about.
Organize and Categorize your Digital Property
Consider what type of digital assets may have value to your estate and/or requires your estate trustee’s involvement. Label important files and highlight accounts that your family and estate trustee will have to access.
Create a Document
Leave clear instructions for your estate trustee on how to access accounts that hold value for your estate. This applies to online bank accounts, gaming accounts, PayPal, cryptocurrency, reward points, and online investment accounts.
Consider how you will store passwords and instructions on how to access accounts that require two step authentication. There are many services that assist with the organization of passwords and accounts as well as less tech-savvy methods available to all.
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