My Mom Is ‘Death Cleaning.’ What She Decided To Leave Me Was a Surprise.

More than 1,700 readers had something to say after I wrote about the "Great Stuff Transfer"—the furniture, dishes, and everything else that will accompany trillions of dollars in wealth as older Americans pass their legacies on to younger generations.

Some scoffed at heirs complaining about clearing out a home with hundreds of thousands of dollars in equity, and amounted it to "dismantling and erasing" a life. Others described spending months trying to sell or even give away possessions, with one reader suggesting proactively getting rid of possessions before you die is “one of the kindest things you can do for your heirs.”

What surprised me was how quickly a story about the cost of dealing with all that stuff turned into a fight over what, exactly, constitutes the inheritance: Is it the home and money an heir ultimately receives? The objects a parent spent a lifetime acquiring? Or the memories attached to them?

My mom, it turns out, has been thinking about those questions for years.

"I don't want you to be burdened by any of that," she told me when I asked about the possessions she expects me to inherit. "I don't want you to keep anything that doesn't make your life happy."

The not-so-morbid act of 'Swedish death cleaning'

My mom is all too familiar with what that burden feels like. She's had to sort through her grandmother’s and parents' homes after their deaths—a process she called "a very emotional thing to do."

Some furniture has proved harder for my family to let go of because my grandfather built it himself, but my mother draws a distinction between preserving his work and preserving him: “Yes, he made it, but it's not him.” (Sandy Conte) My great-grandmother labeled the jewelry she passed down with notes explaining who had given each piece to her, a practice my mother now continues with the objects she expects me to inherit. (Sandy Conte)

Research suggests that there is a measurable cognitive cost, as well as an emotional one.

A study of recently bereaved adults found that those experiencing more intense grief performed worse on measures of executive function, attention, and processing speed even after researchers accounted for depressive symptoms.

Perhaps it's because she has had to pay this price, that my mom says she often thinks about all the stuff I will one day be responsible for sorting through.

"It's just so overwhelming," she says.

So, her solution has been to take on some of that burden herself, by “Swedish death cleaning,” or döstädning.

The practice was popularized internationally by the late author Margareta Magnusson, who encouraged people to pare down their possessions while they were still alive rather than leaving someone else to confront them after their death. And while my mother's maternal side is Swedish, she insists her purging practice is rooted in a much more basic instinct.

"I don't really like to have a lot of clutter," she says. "If I've gone all this time and never looked at it or cared about it, I guess I really don't need it."

But my mom is also an outlier. People become progressively less likely to shed belongings after age 50, according to research from David Ekerdt and Lindsey Baker. Among those over 70, they found that about 30% reported doing nothing in the previous year to clean out, give away, or donate possessions, and more than 80% had sold nothing.

They called the collection of possessions people accumulate over a lifetime a "material convoy." And, as Ekerdt and Baker point out, that convoy eventually becomes an intergenerational matter: "Its disposition must be undertaken sooner or later by someone," they write.

The Great Wealth Transfer is also a transfer of things

And sooner or later is rapidly approaching families across the country.

U.S. households are expected to transfer $124 trillion worth of assets through 2048, according to estimates from Cerulli Associates.

Much of that wealth has been built through things like stocks and real estate—relatively easy holdings to value because they have established resale markets. But the value of everything else—the furniture, jewelry, collectibles, and other possessions passed down alongside them—is proving much harder to determine, especially because one generation prizes what the next may not.

An Edmond de Rothschild analysis released this month warned of this great repricing. Some of the assets accumulated by older generations are expected to lose appeal as they reach younger heirs, according to the bank's analysis. At the top of the list are items such as traditional furniture and out-of-vogue collections like antique tableware.

A drafting table my grandfather built for my mom that I would love to inherit but have nowhere to put Another piece of furniture my grandfather built—the china cabinet isn't my style, but I can't imagine every parting with it because of the meaning behind it.

In a random national U.S. sample, marketing researcher Carolyn Curasi found that a majority of adults hoped loved ones would care about their cherished possessions and believed those possessions reflected their family's identity. But older consumers worried that younger relatives would not care about the cherished possessions they hoped to transfer.

My mom says she's watched that change happen.

"When your dad and I got our place, everybody gave us their old stuff," she says. "That was our how we got started—with everybody else's old stuff, because there wasn't Target and Ikea."

Now, she says, "Nobody wants old furniture. If you want a couch, you just go to Target and you get one for cheap."

It's the strange divergence at the heart of the Great Wealth Transfer: As possessions change hands, the market will determine what they're now worth. And for many heirs, that reevaluation will have to happen before they can decide what to do with the far more valuable thing containing them—the home itself.

When an heirloom becomes 'just plates'

While many headlines cast this as an entirely new problem, my mom says she has experienced that divergence herself, explaining it through her own mother's china.

"I have specific memories of helping my mom wash the china after a holiday," she says. "Hand-washing it, hand-drying it, putting it away—it was special."

Her siblings didn't share that ritual with their mother, "so it's just plates to them," she says.

That affects not only what items seem like assets worth keeping, but also the monetary value heirs assign to the objects, research shows.

In one experiment, researchers Katherine Christensen and Suzanne Shu asked people to imagine selling a vintage car previously driven by their deceased grandparents. When a potential buyer shared the car's family heritage, sellers were willing to give that buyer an average 31% discount from their initial asking price. A stranger, meanwhile, received an average discount of just 12%.

The findings help explain something seemingly irrational about heirlooms: Stories have economic values of their own.

How do you pass down meaning?

That's where the act of Swedish death cleaning—or at least my mother's version of it—gets interesting.

As she pares down her belongings, she also documents the things worth keeping.

She has photographed antiques and written on the backs where they came from. Her own grandmother labeled linens with the names of the people who made them and jewelry with notes explaining who gave each piece and why. My grandfather even wrote directly on a piece of furniture to record that it had been made for his daughter.

My mother says a person “can't possibly keep everything that was special” to someone who died as a memorial to them. Eventually, she says, “you have to build your own life and your own memories.” (Sandy Conte) “You actually get to see it and touch your stuff and enjoy it for a minute and have your memories,” she says, while also realizing “some things you're not as attached to as you thought you were.”

They all have, in effect, annotating the inheritances they left behind while making peace with whatever didn't make it to the next generation.

In my mom's words: "None of this is me. You have all of me. Right here, right now."

And if I eventually need money more than I need one of her possessions, she wants me to use it.

"If this ring can get you there," she says, "sell this ring."

At the end of our conversation, I asked whether going through her possessions and talking about what she will eventually leave me felt morbid.

Not really, she says. Instead, she describes it as "another step of parenting."

"You have to prepare your children for when they're without you."