76: Sleeveless in Seattle

What do you wear when you clean? It was as I was picking out the most perfect tank — not too tight, not too loose — and my Laundry Day stretchy pants that I realized I was donning a cleaning UNIFORM.

Is this normal? Do I care? Do other people have special cleaning outfits? Is this just a form of psychological motivation, much like getting new running shoes or, I don’t know, a fancy new trowel?

We got into it in today’s show. Listen here:

Also on today’s show, I told a truly harrowing story about a moment of exceptional uncleanliness in my own life (apologies in advance), a potentially tense riff formed between my mother and Andrew (but not really), and we talked about the art of Swedish Death Cleaning, which is truly, truly fascinating. From Margareta Magnusson, the author of The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning:

Do not ever imagine that anyone will wish—or be able—to schedule time off to take care of what you didn’t bother to take care of yourself. No matter how much they love you, don’t leave this burden to them.

Basically, the idea is that we should all be cleaning up our shit before we die to ensure that our loved ones don’t have to wade through mountains of crap — or worse, things they really don’t need to discover (like your ancient Polaroid nudes or, like, your 7th grade poetry). This came up in my life when my childhood neighbors both died, leaving a house that was FLOOR TO CEILING with 50 years of ephemera. Watching the couple’s only son deal with the sheer volume has been eye-opening.

Here’s the clip that we played a bit of today:

You can read the whole book. It’s fascinating!

A couple of other things we mentioned that you may want to know more about:

As always, we love to hear from you. Call us on the Spotline: 508-HOW-WASH.

Hanna Brooks Olsen