It’s the first time I’ve heard of ‘Swedish Death Cleaning’ and it sounds unpleasant; but no, this is in fact a thoroughly practical, helpful and potentially enjoyable process of decluttering your home.
‘It’s about getting your house in order and not wanting to burden your loved ones with your stuff,’ explains Louise.
‘It’s a great concept and what’s more, you don’t have to wait until you’re older, you can do it now,’ she adds.
Louise Knight is a professional declutterer, a member of the Association of Professional Declutterers and Organisers (APDO).
The association is another revelation. I’ve seen Stacey Solomon’s Sort Your Life Out show on TV, I’ve read Marie Kondo books on tidying, but I had no idea that there is a professional organisation for declutterers and that it’s been in existence for 20 years.
How to deal with a build up of ‘stuff’ in our homes is becoming an ever-greater problem, so much so that many are seeking professional decluttering help.
Louise’s clients range from single mums in rented accommodation to retirees in six-bedroom properties, busy parents or time-poor professionals, then there are older people, and those who have a range of physical or mental health difficulties. She also has an increasing number of neuro divergent clients who she helps declutter and also set up systems for managing in future.
Her oldest client is a 90-year-old living in Totnes who needed help sorting her ‘room of doom’. Lots of us have a dumping ground room that needs attention, says Louise. ‘In this case it was filled with books, papers, sentimental cards and letters. She wasn’t physically able to clear it herself, but it was really stressing her out. The thought of it being a burden for people after she died was keeping her awake at night.’
It’s the Swedish death clean again. Getting things in order, and possibly getting rid of things you’d rather not be discovered. (That’s something I hadn’t considered!)
It doesn’t matter when you do it, says Louise, whatever time of life you’re at. One of her friends has been instructed by her parent: ‘Get Louise in when I’m gone!’
You can tackle your own clear-out but sometimes, ‘it can become visually overwhelming and so impossible to know where to start’, says Lousie.
Then there’s the emotional attachment to things. Part of the declutterer’s skill is to listen, to hear the stories attached to items. It’s about empathy.
Louise talks about a master carpenter who wanted help sorting through his tools. ‘He had 20 hammers and 30 saws, and stories behind every item. He wasn’t prepared to let them go until I heard those stories.’
This emotional attachment needs to be carefully talked about and worked through to get to a point when people are ready to let go, she says. ‘Some get to that point in first session, for others it takes a bit longer. So we start with easier areas, garages and kitchens are generally less emotional. But paperwork is very sentimental – cards, photos... these take more time, we need to build up to those.’
Having professional help means the task is kept in hand, there’s no danger of getting lost in reminiscences and running out of time. It’s potentially very different to getting a family member or friend to help, which can lead to rushing, judging or even frayed tempers. Louise’s background as a therapist means she’s particularly skilled at this careful handling.
Declutterers work in different ways, but Louise offers a free house visit after an initial phone call. Not everything has to be cleared in one go, the task is made to fit the client’s needs, so it could be one session tackling a cupboard or a room, or a series of sessions working through a whole house.
Louise advises on how to dispose of, or sell on items but at the end of a session, she always takes away a car-load of items for charity shops. ‘It’s very important that at the end it doesn’t get left, it adds to the sense of satisfaction that it’s gone.’
‘And I have a big car,’ she adds.
Louise has always been good at decluttering. She liked to tidy as a child, but it really came to the fore out of necessity in later years when she and her husband were buying and renovating houses. They moved six times in a decade, finally in 2020 selling a large five bedroom house in Harrogate to move to South Devon with their two children and rent a very small holiday cottage. ‘You master the art of organising and decluttering each time you move.’
Louise declutters her own home every few months or at least once a year, and you get better at it, she says. It’s something she’s seen happen with her clients, as they begin the process.
She has worked with clients where a situation has become ‘so overwhelming, they can’t perform day to day tasks in the home.’
In one Plymouth home, ‘the kitchen surfaces were so full that my client couldn’t use the hob any more. She couldn’t see the dining room floor because of the volume of items.
‘The first time I visited she opened the door and then said she was going to wait outside while I took a look around. It threw me, I was a little confused but then the penny dropped, the level of shame and embarrassment was so high she couldn’t bear to see the look on my face.
‘It shows the shame that people feel in that situation, it’s horrible and the way forward is to be completely non-judgemental but hugely empathic and supportive.
‘We gently unravel those emotional attachments together, but you can imagine how truly life changing it is for them to reclaim their home.’
Another case was where a woman had downsized to a bungalow following the death of her husband. ‘She couldn’t even open the door to the new neighbours when they wanted to welcome her to the village because she was so embarrassed at how it looked.
‘Helping her to declutter just meant that she could start her new life, a new chapter.’
‘Its such a privilege and a joy to do this job,’ says Louise. ‘To see people go through the journey and make that mindset shift and to see the emotional release of falling back in love with their space, to be able to help people lift the emotional weight that’s been dragging them down.’
There are surprising and fun moments too – like finding hidden treasures.
Louise went to help a lady in Bovey Tracey, in her 80s who decades previously had interviewed Catherine Cookson and Agatha Christie. During our session we found the signed copies of the books that those authors had given her and I heard the lovely story about Agatha Christie insisting she stay for lunch.
‘Agatha Christie had also given permission to record the whole interview – which was quite rare.
‘My client can’t find the tape but she’d never have got rid of it, so we have ascertained it’s got to be in that house.
‘It’s now our mission, we are so determined. If it’s in the house, we will find it!’
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