‘Everything you touch has memories’

Making room, finding peace via ‘Swedish death cleaning’

By Carol Stender

Julien Batcheller of Fargo wasn’t aware her cleaning methods had a name... “Swedish death cleaning.” She just knew it needed to be done.

And she did it twice. The first time was when she was joined by her siblings to clean their childhood farm home after their parents’ deaths. The second came when she and husband Barry moved from West Fargo, ND to their new home in north Fargo.

She gained perspective through the process: Don’t move items into the new home unless it can be used in that home. 

“You become so aware of it when you lose your parents,” she said. “That’s when it became a part of my brother’s, sister’s and my life. It was when we had to clean out our parents’ farmhouse from a lifetime of living there.”

Her parents, David and DeLores Johnson, lived on the family’s Norman County farm for most of their 60 years of marriage. Although the couple moved twice in their lives - once to an assisted living facility in West Fargo and later to a nursing home in Ada - but they didn’t want anything moved from their home. When David still drove, he would take his wife to the farm where they would reminisce.

They did tell their children they could have the furniture, though.

“But we had all the furniture that we needed already,” Julien said.

David and DeLores grew up during the depression and they saved almost everything. Julien asked her dad why there was a pair of used boots in the garage. One of the boots, she said, had a hole in it.

“You never know when you’re going to need shoes,” he told her.

When he replaced a sink faucet, instead of tossing the bad one, he kept it. And when Julien and Barry were remodeling their West Fargo home, David came to get the boards that weren’t going to be used. He put them in the farm’s unused barn.

“You have to respect that, but when it was time for us to deal with all these things, it was a lot,” Julien said.

After their parents died - DeLores in 2010 and David in 2014, Julien and her siblings, Lynn Johnson of Ada and Janelle Regimbal of Grand Forks, ND, met at the farmhouse to clean. There was extra impetus to clean and declutter their childhood home. A nephew would be moving into it soon. He was joining Lynn and his son in the farming operation. The younger farmers are the fifth generation to farm the Johnson land.

They set up a process for it all. There was a pile for donations, another for items to keep, and yet another for trash.

There was laughter as well as tears as the three tackled the household items.

“You are grieving because you are in the home you grew up in and you have all those memories,” she said. “Everything you touch has memories. We proceeded, though, day after day.”

There was the china set in the cupboard that, once a year would be removed for cleaning only to be put back in its place.

“We never used it,” Julien said. “Those were the ‘good’ dishes.”

The sterling silver was divided into three piles by DeLores years ago. She wanted to make sure each of her children had an equal share of it.

“What they say about using what you have is so true,” Julien said. “Don’t keep it to have it, use it.”

They learned some valuable lessons through the process namely how to declutter and do “Swedish death cleaning” so their own families won’t be in the same position. Julien and Barry put it to practice when they began to pair down their own items.

The two lived in a two-story, full-basement home in West Fargo. Their two children, a son and daughter, had left home and had their own families and careers. They didn’t need all that space.

They built a new home where they could “age in place.” The rambler style home’s main floor is the living quarters with all the bedrooms, bathrooms, laundry, kitchen, dining and living room. The basement is unfinished.

Before their move to the new home, however, they did another deep declutter of their home.

“At first when I walked into our house, the thought of this was overwhelming, but you can only get it done by starting,” Julien said. “You just go into a room and start at the first cupboard. It’s not so bad and after you get done with one thing, you are so proud of yourself.”

They wanted to pair down before their move and, really, everything was neat and orderly. Items were stored in a closet or in a drawer. And there were the kids’ stuffed animals and trophies from their school days. They found stacks of vinyl records they hadn’t listed to in years.

“We just decided we aren’t going to move all these things,” she said.

And then there were items like Barry’s books.

“My husband is a voracious reader,” Julien said. “We had book cases built in all across one wall, and I said we won’t have the storage for all this in the rambler. I told him to pick his favorite authors and keep those.”

It was a hard task for someone who loves reading, but Barry accomplished it. They hauled car load after car load to the public library, she said.

Julien, herself, had a chicken-theme collection. It reminded her of picking eggs with her Grandpa Johnson. She would dust the figurines regularly, but when it came time to declutter, she let all those items go except for a chicken Christmas tree ornament and a picture of her as a child with the chickens.

“Sometimes you just have to take a picture of it,” she said.

They kept the items they would need and donated or got rid of the rest.

There are some items they decided would not be coming into their home, like a new air fryer. Both of her children have commented how nice the appliance is, but Julien doesn’t have the room to store it and has other appliances that can do the job.

“I don’t have a big family to prepare a meal for anymore,” she said. “It’s something I just don’t need.”

They’ve been living in their new home for a few years now and enjoy the one-level home. They also appreciate everything they learned on the journey.

“It was really relieving,” Julien said of the decluttering. “It weighs you down and by getting rid of it and making life simple and cleaner, it gives you peace.”