Swedish Death-Cleaning End-of-Year Update

This was on my closet door for 16 months!!!

Reading 50 books didn't go so well. I only managed to finish 18 books during 2021. Some of them were library books or ebooks, and I think I only gave away one or two of the books that I owned.

On the other hand, I finally discarded or donated 1,000 things. After listening to a TED Talk in July of 2020, I was inspired to get rid of 1,000 things because, as Liz Wright said, it would change my life.

Click here to watch Liz Wright's TED Talk.

I am happy to report that it actually did change my life significantly for the better.

I didn't put a lot of energy into Marie-Kondo-style tidying and decluttering, but one of the surprising benefits of having this goal was that I bought way less stuff because, you know, it would be more work to discard or donate it later on. Every purchase became more deliberate and I ended up with fewer projects to complete and fewer books to read someday.

A second surprising benefit was less stress, because the pile of things I needed to do or deal with wasn't constantly growing/growing exponentially.

Liz Wright was correct: Get rid of 1,000 things, and you will change your life for the better!