After the consumerist orgy that has not made us happier, today the slogan is decluttering, clearing, ordering. Research has established that clutter accumulation has a huge negative impact on your health, relationships, and productivity.
In this book, you will discover how to declutter using the simple and effective process of Swedish Death Cleaning. The concept is that you declutter your life, home, and personal space so that nobody else is constricted to do it. It might sound depressing, but the concept of Swedish Death Cleaning is not restricted to aging people alone, in fact, can and does occur at any stage of life, so anyone can benefit from living the essentialist lifestyle. In our society more and more often we tend to collect objects that, in our opinion, sooner or later could be useful. Clutter can accumulate in any space, without restrictions: at home, in the place where we work, in the car, in the bag, on a bookshelf, on the smartphone, pc, or tablet.
In this book, you will discover how to start off the process of death cleaning in order to clear out all non-essential items and live a happier and balanced life.
This sounded like it was written by AI that's been fed a bunch of decluttering books. There were no new or unique insights, and a lot of it didn't make grammatical sense either. I should have taken the misused apostrophe in the title as a cue.
Swedish Death Cleaning: What Moms and Housewife’s Need to Declutter House, Change Lifestyle and Enjoy Happiness by Cloe Hampton 1h 29m narrated by Jessica Andrews, 94 pages
Genre: Living, Self-Help,
Featuring: Mess Equals Stress, Clutter, Feng Shui, New Life, Making Money, Collecting, Repeating Information, Compulsive Buying Disorder, Recycling, Consumerism, Politics, Mahatma Gandhi, Industrialism, Kids, Giving, Detoxing, 10-Week Challenge, Sparking Joy
Rating as a movie: G
Quotes: "Will anyone be more joyful if I save this?"
My rating: ⭐️½🔁🥱💤
My thoughts: This book was boring and repetitive. 2 chapters on why we buy stuff. They got to the Swedish Death Cleaning in chapter 3, which was still repetitive. Basically, this book is about getting rid of stuff you don't need or want. The Swedish death cleaning adds a layer of getting rid of clutter you don't want to leave behind for your family to deal with and items that will change their memory of you. Instead of waiting until you're a senior, you're doing it now. Then, she gets repetitive room by room. My head considered hurting but was so bored it forgot to. This book is a 15-minute conversation repeated and expanded into a 90 conversation. It ends with a 10-Week Challenge, 2 hours a day, with a different theme each week, and she wants no music playing while you declutter. The bad grammar in the title should have been my first clue.
Recommend to others?: Nope! Skip this one it is a waste of time. There are better books out there. This one sounds like someone telling you about decluttering books they've read.
I actually contacted my library and asked them to check out this audiobook on Hoopla. I’m pretty sure it is written by A. I. At first I thought it was just a really weird translation from another language but its just totally bizarre English. Wrong syntax, strange word choices, baffling examples. Anyway. And I won’t even get started on the somewhat offensive title. The rest of you don’t need to know this stuff, just moms and housewives. Urgh. Don’t waste your time.
The title sounded exciting but unfortunately I didn’t read the reviews before reading this! I assumed that the awful grammar etc. was due to poor translation but now I’m not so sure! I persevered, but didn’t learn much - only what the phrase ‘Swedish Death Cleaning’ actually means.
Oof 😓 Unfortunately, “Swedish Death Cleaning: What moms and housewife’s need to declutter house, change lifestyle and enjoy happiness” did not provide any sort of new knowledge or beneficial advice. Beside the narrator sounding condescending and insulting, the book didn’t have supporting evidence for any of the chapters. Instead it appears to be the opinion of the author and reiterating the same thought over and over: spoiler - it’s get rid of your stuff. Yes? Thank you? Marie Kondo’s book inspired me to change my approach but this book did not. It also seems to also utilize her sparking joy concept which is fine… but the challenge at the end of book was just clean this room, clean that room, repeat.. and then even brings Kondos’ book up to suggest a different method with stockpiling. Also, the fact that she called people between the age 21 to 30 youngsters was just ???? Weird.
Downsizing has turned my attention to minimalist and decluttering lifestyle books this year and when I read a newspaper article about Swedish Death Cleaning I wanted to see how it differed from Marie Kondo’s method of tidying up. This was the only book my library offered. First, I was annoyed by the careless typo on the cover. Housewife’s? Really? Does anybody know how words are spelled in English? This as just grating. Is housewife even an occupation anymore? Also, this book is only a hundred pages. The difference in the methods are slight. In Death Cleaning (a dreary, awful title—who is eager to start this process?) a person should consider who will want your stuff when you die, then also consider whether the thing in question brings you joy. It’s basically the same as Marie Kondo without the cute folding of garments. Overall the book was okay in the organization of how to declutter but doesn’t add much in terms of technique and calling it Swedish Death Cleaning sounds morbid.
I listened to the audiobook and I have no clue how the reader could possibly read the text without laughing due to all of the vocabulary and grammar errors throughout. There were only a few sentences that actually made any sense and the only reason I finished it was that it was short and I couldn’t stop laughing. It had to be either a translation without an editor or AI generated because no native English speaker who is a writer could even try to put together a book this poorly written, even if they tried. And even if you can look past all of that, this book doesn’t even explain what Swedish Death Cleaning actually is or any practical tips for decluttering by any already written about methods. If I could give this zero stars I would.
I could not connect with what this author was trying to communicate. Like reading a legeal contract or scientific paper written for peers. I could not glean much.
Still seeking a book to listen to while declutting my home. Any suggestions?
(Nov2023 Update: Lose the Clutter lose the weight by Peter Walsh is a better fit for what I am seeking)
This book is truly terrible and I only got 15 minutes into the hour and a half audiobook before stopping. I first thought it was translated from another language by dumping the whole book in Google Translate, but my final conclusion is that this book was computer generated before sophisticated AI existed. Please don't waste your time.
I assume this is for beginner minimalists. I am not that, so I didn't hear anything terribly practical to carry forward. I love everything about this idea, though and have been practicing it all adulthood. Will continue to improve and will NOT leave a house full of junk for my kids to rifle through after I'm gone. ✌️
After having read books like The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up and The Home Edit, this book was a disappointment as it is just a repeat of the concepts of those and other books. The only difference is the Swedish motivation is to clean up so as not to burden your loved ones should you kick the bucket.
I’ll round up to 1.5 because the author knew to keep it short. While I am not sure if there’s really any new information or thoughts on the topic of decluttering, this “book” definitely didn’t offer any. It was much more like a magazine article or Today Show segment at best.
Really about the same as other decluttering books. However I do think keeping the thought of what the meaning of “Swedish Death Cleaning” means may help me to declutter more of my belongs and be mindful of what I bring into my home.
You know it's maybe not the best when the subtitle contains an incorrect word (housewife's instead of housewives). I'm sure there are better ways of presenting the idea of Swedish Death Cleaning. Still it was an easy audiobook to have read to me while on a road trip.
I only made it 6 minutes into the audio book. It made no sense, like it was translated from another language by AI and no one fluent in English bothered to check. The title has a grammar error, so clearly there was no editor.
It's okay but doesn't offer any new ideas (it references other authors' works). Awkward and incorrect grammar throughout the book was quite distracting.
Badly written. By AI?! Punctuation error on the cover, sentences that make no sense… Or has it been mistranslated? Either way, I gave up on trying to make any sense of it.