By James R. Hagerty
Where others saw mere clutter, Margareta Magnusson spotted a moral issue: Who is responsible for what she called "the mountain of crap" most of us accumulate over a lifetime?
Her answer was definite: We should sort out and sell or give away almost all of our trinkets, T-shirts, books and baubles before we die -- rather than leaving a dreary chore for friends or families.
Magnusson, a seascape painter and mother of five, was in her mid-80s when she wrote a bestselling book, "The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning." It introduced a concept -- cleaning up your own mess before you die -- that resonated around the world.
The 2018 book, translated into more than 30 languages, has sold more than one million copies worldwide. It also inspired a Peacock streaming show in which Swedes visit America to counsel people who can't cram anything more into their closets and cupboards.
Magnusson practiced what she preached. There was little left to tidy up after she died at the age of 91 on March 12 in Gothenburg, Sweden, where she was living in a retirement home. "The only thing I have to do now is talk to journalists," said her youngest daughter, Jane Magnusson, a documentary filmmaker, who several years ago made a short film about her mother.
A never-ending story
Magnusson's fame was a fluke, resulting from a conversation between Jane and an American friend in the publishing business, Stephen Morrison. He mentioned his worries that he might eventually spend years sorting through the possessions of his father and one of his aunts. Jane Magnusson replied that she had no such anxieties: Her mother was always shedding surplus stuff.
Morrison saw the potential for a humorous self-help book. He introduced Margareta and Jane Magnusson to a literary agent, Susanna Lea, who sold the idea to Simon & Schuster's Scribner imprint.
Marie Kondo of Japan had established herself as the youthful face of decluttering. That left room for Magnusson, who was five decades older than Kondo, to show that the job is never finished.
At home, Magnusson never missed an opportunity to tidy up, her daughter said. If you admired a cushion or a book in her apartment, she was apt to insist you accept it as a gift. Jane Magnusson recalled rescuing a first edition of Ernest Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises" that her mother might otherwise have discarded or given to a stranger.
Don't wait until you are old to get started, Magnusson counseled. If you have trouble closing drawers or closet doors, she wrote, "it is definitely time to do something, even if you are only in your 30s." On the other hand, she added, it is never too late to get started.
Begin with bulky items, like underused furniture, she advised, and move on to clothing. "Very soon your home will become so much easier to look after," she promised. That leaves more time for pondering old letters and photos. "It can be both a lot of fun and a bit sad to go through photographs and letters, but one thing is certain: If you start with them, you will definitely get stuck down memory lane and may never get around to cleaning anything else," she wrote.
People who begin the purge when they are still energetic "might even discover the added bonus that it will feel wonderful to visit a dump and throw worthless things as far as you are able to," Magnusson noted. "I found I'd kept my memories and I now lived in a smaller, simpler way."
The success of her first book led to another, "The Swedish Art of Aging Exuberantly," published in 2022. A third book featuring more humor and wisdom related to the approach of death, to be completed by her daughter Jane, is in the works.
Fishing for crabs
She was born as Margareta Elisabeth Bothén in Gothenburg on Dec. 31, 1934. Her father, Nils Bothén, was a gynecologist and obstetrician. Her mother, Carin (Lindquist) Bothén, was a nurse.
Margareta recalled summers on Sweden's western coast: "We would crush a clam with a stone and fasten it to a string. We would lower the bait into the water and lie belly down on the dock for hours waiting for the little crabs to arrive and start to feed."
She studied art at Beckman College of Design in Stockholm, where she graduated in 1956, and married Lars Magnusson the next year. His career as an executive for ESAB, a maker of welding equipment and other industrial products, took the family to Annapolis, Md., Singapore and Hong Kong before returning to Sweden.
She kept up her painting and occasionally exhibited in galleries. As a mother, she wrote in her second book, "most of the time I shot from the hip, making it up as I went along." When two of her sons got into a fight on the front lawn in Annapolis, she ended it by spraying them with a garden hose.
Her husband died in 2005. She is survived by their five children and seven grandchildren.
After her husband died, she wrote, "I kept myself busy every way I could think of. I bought a leather jacket that I thought looked good. I joined social media; I started a blog about art." For a few years, she lived in Stockholm, where she had more choices for viewing art and attending concerts.
She loved striped T-shirts and had a dozen of them -- perhaps too many, she conceded, but she adopted a Marie Kondo tip on folding them in a way that took up less drawer space.
Fake interest
Magnusson opposed drastic efforts to resist aging: "Plastic surgery does not make you look younger -- to me it just makes you look like you have had plastic surgery."
To get along with grandchildren, she advised: "Don't tell them about your bad knee, again. Don't guilt-trip them about not calling enough. Just ask them questions. Listen to them. Act interested even if you are not. Give them food and tell them to go enjoy their lives."
Old people who can no longer take care of pets should consider nurturing plants, she believed: "Having even a small thing to look forward to, something other than yourself to care for, is important whatever age you are."
Shredding old documents was a pleasure. One problem was that her well-organized husband had stapled many invoices and other documents together. She had to remove all those staples before shredding. "If there is one thing I have learned from death cleaning," she wrote, "it is that I hate staples."
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March 19, 2026 10:00 ET (14:00 GMT)
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