De-clutter Doula or Death Cleaning

Yesterday Robert (my friend / housemate / ex partner) and I took a load of his stuff to storage. The long negotiation of how he moves out when there is nowhere for him to go has resulted in him taking on the lease for my mothers storage facility, which she and I took on when she transitioned into her small sheltered housing from the 3 bedroom house. Despite the sheer metric tonnage of stuff that my brother, sister in law and I lugged to the tip then there was still so much my mother couldn’t let go of. She was preoccupied with a notion that she needed to keep all her accounts going back more than 7 years in case she was ever audited. She also had boxes of training materials from the Open University, some of which is now out of print, including their Death and Dying course, incidentally.

The time has come now where the very last of my mothers things are now out of the storage facility, which is now filled with Roberts things, and instead of me being able to celebrate what space of mine is now cleared of his stuff, it is now full of the last of Mum’s stuff. 

“Your home is your larger Self” says Kahlil Gibran 

What does your home say about you? 

Me, I still pinch myself when I look at what a beautiful home I have; incredible considering my history of homelessness, that I have (thanks to a community funded deposit) a mortgage on this very small welsh stone quarryman’s cottage. It’s metre thick stone walls and log fire kept us very warm and safe during the storms recently. So if my home is my larger Self then it is solid, miraculous, safe, warm and very beautiful, rooted in the welsh landscape and with a real potential to be a refuge and shelter for pilgrims and the local community. 

The house’s potential (and mine) is thwarted only by other people’s stuff! My ex partner embedded in the loft spilling his 6 decades of very personal and precious things into space which I consider “mine”… and only in clearing his are we drawing in more of Mum’s. The metaphors seem extremely apt. I had a Feng Shui master do a reading for the house; there are two guardians of the house – one is a dragon energy in the stone above the fire and the other is an angelic energy and that one would be the one to bring in flow and prosperity. You’ll never guess where the piles of stuff end up! 

Yesterday I was in the storage lock up cursing and swearing as I lifted out the stone-heavy boxes of my mothers work. I came across a couple of boxes that were full of my fathers stuff. I actually cried out with frustration “God! Why didn’t they sort this out themselves in their own lifetime?!?! FFS” and from a nearby lock up came a guffaw and some chap I didn’t even know was there just said “life, goes by so much faster than you think”. 

I know he is right. My mother probably imagined she would one day sort and clear the stuff in the loft and the cupboards, my father wouldn’t have known he was going to die so young. Once illness and death have their grip then clearing the clutter is an enormous expenditure of energy. And yet, the clutter is a physical manifestation of all that is unresolved. Not all of it negative of course, I can see that the learning resources and many of my mothers books will find their new home in Earth Hospice. If I don’t hang all her wall art, I will certainly use the picture frames. But do I just bin my fathers stuff? It’s just files of his design work from the 1980s, not something that goes to charity. 

I feel a ritual fire coming on. And I am going to have to go through everything with a fine tooth comb in case any of his patents have value today. I am certainly not attached to my mothers bloody accounts. 

I have, in my capacity as Death Doula had several fantastic jobs where decluttering was a big part of it. It is a heck of a lot easier to clear stuff that you have no attachment to. The psychological process for the person who is dying and their family however can be vast. Some folks are happy for you to just take it all away, donate, recycle, tip. But for some people the unpacking of the boxes are about the telling of the stories. The remembering, the processing, the highs and lows, the mundane and the precious. 

Declutter Doula is a very intimate and privileged role. And depending on how clean or not a person’s house is, can be a dirty, dusty, and at times, disgusting role. It can be slow, patience can be needed in abundance. Frustrating at times when you think “just bin it FFS!” and they cling to something you know has little, or worse, negative value to them. 

The results, however, can be ecstatic. To see a house cleared, the rooms in order, the hospital bed in what used to be the living room, just the most valuable possessions around them, flowers, a candle, goodness me the lightness and freedom in the energy. Amazing. 

And metaphorically and literally, that person is more ready for Death. They are not leaving their unresolved stuff either for their children or some house clearance van. It is such a simple thing but so important. 

I am sure you are familiar with the idea of Nesting before a birth; this is a fledging process, un-nesting, relinquishing attachments and freeing the self. 

Why would anyone wait until they were dying to do that work? Shouldn’t we all be doing it now, who knows what tomorrow brings!