Death cleaning is the translation of a Swedish term, döstädning, describing a kind of de-cluttering later in life, when you downsize to make things easier for the next generation. It’s being popularized by The Gentle Art of Death Cleaning by Margareta Mangusson. This is part of a complete episode.
Leave a comment
1 comment
More from this show
When you’re talking about the location of an inanimate object, is it okay to say that it lives there, as in The peanut butter lives in that cabinet or The flashlight lives on that shelf? Strictly speaking, of course, that object isn’t...
Sean in Oneonta, New York, says that when he was growing up in New Jersey, his family would pile in the car and set off on a surprise adventure, whether a short distance or long, and the kids would be told only that they were going on Buxtehude...
Thanks for the book tip!!
Dö (die/dead/death) städning (cleaning or tidying).
Swedish is a more agglutinative language than English, so something that requires as many as 3 or 4 words in English can be expressed with a single, long word in Swedish. e.g. “yrkeskompetensbevis” (certification of professional competency), or “lastbilsförare” (truck driver).