The Scoop and other useless wastes of money: Swedish Death Cleaning 2026, items 1 - 7

Before I was diagnosed with two hips' worth of advanced arthritis, I just thought I had fat-dude back trouble. It was COVID lockdown, and I bought this useless item called The Scoop. It promised to loosen up my tight core, or tighten up my weak core. One of those. It was heavy and unwieldy, while also somehow being made of a large percentage of cheap plastic that clunked about with jerky-jerk motions. During the hip surgeries I stored it away, assuming that once my body was functional again I'd be able to use it properly. But no. It sucks.

When I'm feeling stressed or anxious, a routine situation, I clean and I organize. There's a lot going on in the world. War. Other atrocities. The people in charge have created multiple nightmares to line their own pockets and destroy anyone who gets in their way, and we all just have to live inside their grinder. I'm doing a lot of cleaning and organizing.

I have the book The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning. Thanks to the word "gentle" in its title, is entirely unrelated to this Swedish thing or this other Swedish thing. For the record I'm a fan of all three, but for now I'll focus on the gentle.

I read the book a few years ago and began the long, slow process of getting our objects in order. One of the pieces of advice in the book involves assigning processes to people you know in the event of your untimely demise. In my and Alonso's life, that means our niece, who lives in Los Angeles, is the Swedish Death Librarian, in charge of what happens to all our books. This is the biggest responsibility because it's the stuff that takes up most of the space in our home. Other friends are in charge of other things. Friend and neighbor Gary Cotti demands to be the custodian of a vintage Helmscene lamp depicting a lush, serene Cypress Gardens.

Neither Alonso nor I am anticipating death anytime soon, even though last week we had colds and that physical slow-down was quite annoying, so the process of Death Cleaning is ongoing. During the pandemic and the hip troubles, items accumulated. That shit's gotta go.

There is a thrift store down the block. That's one drop spot. There's also one of those little free library boxes around the corner from us. Some books have gone there.

More fun: the Free Wall. It's this little stone wall between our apartment building and the next. People sit on it and smoke. I like to place objects in need of new homes on it, especially if I think the thing is useless. If I take it to the thrift store, they'll price it and sell it and someone will feel cheated. If I put that thing on Free Wall, sometimes with a little note that explains how that thing needs to be repaired, no one has been tricked into parting with their money.

Some things that have been moved along:

1. A giant cotton tote bag – A couple of toddlers could fit in this thing, which I guess would make it a fun toy for a couple of toddlers. I also assume that if that guy who played The Mountain on that show needed something to take to the farmer's market for one hundred pounds of potatoes, he could use it for that.
2. Duplicate records that Amoeba turned down – One of them is an old Christian rock record that's still in my collection. I'm not naming names because after this artist fled that genre, they put out a string of really good albums and composed the score to a popular television series. Anyway, one of my friends said, "I found this in a thrift store for you!" The copy I already had was in worse shape, so I kept his better addition even though I'll never listen to it because it's bad. I keep it around for the hauntology of it all.
3. Three champagne flutes with those long stems – We've managed to shatter every stemmed wine glass we own and now we use small empty jam jars and everyone gets to act like they live in Europe. We also broke most of the champagne flutes, so I decided I didn't give a shit.
4. Outlet-mall boxer shorts, never worn – Don't shop at Neiman Marcus Last Call. Especially don't buy boxer shorts there if you have large thighs. It's like buying something new that's already broken.
5. Dyson handheld vacuum, mostly dead – The battery on this thing stopped holding any kind of charge. I put it on the Free Wall with a note: "Fix me." I walked back upstairs to our apartment and began washing dishes. I can see everything that goes down on the sidewalk in from my kitchen-sink window, and I watched some dude carry it off. Good luck to that man!
6. A very sturdy white plastic bin from The Container Store, 1998 – A plastic so hardy it will be here until time runs out. And I cleaned it thoroughly. It's ready to go live in someone's storage unit filled with Beanie Babies. Wait it out until there's a return on that investment.
7. A promotional pillow for the film Hoppers – One large, soft slab of synthetic poison. It will wind up in a shredder somewhere, then sprinkle itself into a water supply. It becomes a Coca-Cola and finally lives nestled in your balls.