This was published 6 months ago
How do I recycle the porn stashes I’m finding in my late parents’ home?
Q: While clearing out the family home after my parents’ deaths, I keep discovering stashes of pornographic material. I’ve been surreptitiously taking DVDs and tapes to recycling locations but feel very self-conscious. Any advice?
A.M., Ryde, NSW
A: Your question made me think about future generations who’ll never be able to get rid of their dead parents’ pornographic material. Every time they Google their parents’ names, they could come across Mum’s Tinder profile from her 20s – a bathroom-mirror bum-selfie and the message: “Swipe right if you like music, travel, movies and face-sitting.” Or they’ll find one of Dad’s nude pics on Biggies.net. He got 47,000 views. A proud legacy in the family name, immortalised in landscape mode for the world to see.
But you just need to deal with old-school, hard-copy porn: DVDs, videos, magazines, maybe a shoebox filled with strange accessories that you had to pick up with rubber gloves and tongs (which, conveniently, you found in the shoebox as well). At least this stuff is easy to dispose of: bin it, break it, burn it – ideally, all three – but no need to take it to a recycling station because I’m not sure there’s much recycling demand for a DVD of Naughty Nightshift Nurses IV or a homemade VHS tape titled “1986 Footy Grand Final Highlights” with no footy on it, nothing grand, and a very disturbing final highlight.
For the rest of us, this is a wake-up call to declutter our belongings before we die so we don’t burden, embarrass or deeply traumatise family members. It’s called Swedish Death Cleaning and it doesn’t just have to be hidden porn. It could be your dope stash, your teen poetry, your The Big Bang Theory box sets, or your collection of antique, porcelain clown-dolls with creepy, painted faces and flesh-eating grins.
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Danny Katz is a columnist for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. He writes the Modern Guru column in the Good Weekend magazine. He is also the author of the books Spit the Dummy, Dork Geek Jew and the Little Lunch series for kids.