Prepare To Die

 

This post is not intended to be morbid in any way, but it is something I’ve thought about time and again.  In the past year I’ve been working on some things I hope will make it much easier on my children once I pass.  The last thing I wish to do is leave a big mess behind for my girls to deal with.  Whenever a loved one passes there are a lot of emotions and grief to deal with.  My goal is to do as much as humanly possible to lighten the load and make it easier for them when this eventually happens.

 

The first thing I did last year was to update my will and create a division of property list so that the items I feel are important, mainly heirlooms or items I know my children want, are sure to go to the right person.  If they change their minds or decide to trade stuff I am totally fine with that.  It isn’t like I’d have much of a say in the matter anyway once I’m dead, but if it helps them to not have to process too much on their own then that is my ultimate goal.

 

The next thing I worked on and will continue to work on is purging, organizing, cataloging and maintaining important papers and personal information.  We have a binder, and my girls are very aware of its existence, that holds this information so they can access what they will need to once I am gone.  It will also help them to know what to do at that time as well.

 

The biggest thing for me to do now is to keep my house in a manner that it does not become a burden for them to deal with.  I might be taking a page from Swedish Death Cleaning here, but to me it just makes a lot of sense.  As I get older I do find I need less and less stuff and once both girls are completely out of the house and on their own that will be even more obvious.  As I move on I will be really evaluating the items I own and any additional items I intend to bring into the house to see if it is really necessary for me to have.  I am going to organize and reorganize things too so that I don’t end up with closets and bins full of crap that no one really knows what to do with and have no value.

I want to minimize the amount of my personal belongings that end up in a landfill.  The thought of my children having to rent a giant dumpster and have it delivered to our driveway in order to empty out my house is very unsettling.  It makes me cringe actually.  I certainly don’t want to leave that as my legacy.  Not to mention, I really don’t want to contribute all that waste either.  So keeping things neat, tidy, organized, filtered and purged is not only practical, but in my opinion an act of love.

 

While I probably still have several years ahead for me to be left on this earth, at least I hope so, one never really knows for sure.  Things unfortunately do happen and we never really do know when our time is up.  I don’t ever think it is too early to prepare for our own eventuality.  The benefit of doing this not only helps the ones I leave behind, but quite honestly, it makes life nicer and easier for me in the meantime.

 

So when you are purging and decluttering this year, keep in mind a few things.  When I die, what am I willing to leave behind for my loved ones to have to deal with?  How much do I want them to have to send to the dump?  How much work do I want to burden them with at one of the worst times in their lives?  How many decisions do I want them to have to make?  What can I do right now to help make it easier for them when the time comes?  And if you don’t have a will, please consider doing one.  As hard as it is to think about sometimes we all have an end date at some point.