Astrid (47) is, along with Irene, the founder of Flow. She lives together and has two kids. Every tuesday she writes about the sense and nonsense of decluttering.
This may sound like a weird story, but if you’ve had a close encounter with death, you suddenly look at possessions in a completely different light. At least, that’s what happened to me. Because I once got to see what happens when you’re not around anymore: all those dear to you are left with the (pretty tough) task of deciding what to do with all your collections, your pots and pans, your shoes, the bottles of perfume and all those books. When I experienced that struggle, I remember going back to my own home, feeling just a tad bit timid. Because basically, you spend your life collecting stuff that someone else will end up having to sort through.
Okay, so as well as weird, it’s also a fairly cheerless story. And not something that needs to be pondered on all the time, but I also learned that what may seem so beautiful to you (that colored glass collection), may not necessarily be given the time of day by someone else. And thus it gets shoved in a box and taken to the charity shop. In any case, I found the whole experience to be, at the very least, a good eye-opener. It’s better to leave your loved ones with an inheritance of good memories (i.e. pay for dinner at the restaurant, have picnics in the park, send out invitations to cook a meal together, or go to a festival all together) than a house full of, well, stuff. Of course, I’m not saying you have to do something about it yourself; I’m just saying that the experience cleared a lot of things in my mind.Translation: “Week 1 – A whole life long”
