Advice----Sweet Yet Sour

    Dear No Clutter Nancy, I do agree that clutter can be a problem.  So definitely it would be easier on surviving family members if the deceased had tidied up their affairs in anticipation of their demises.  You write that after your uncle died, you had to spend lots of time sorting through your uncle's paperwork, and also lots of money to clean out his place, (presumably his home.)  You suggest that people over  the age of 55, and those in ill health, start the decluttering process as soon as possible, so as not "to leave a mess" for the survivors. 
    But........Do those facing death, either on a timely schedule, or because of unexpected illness have to contend with thinking about protecting the living from the untidiness of their deaths?  The dying are going to leave everything behind; do they need to erase all the evidence of a long life before they exit it?  So what if there's a bunch of stuff left behind, and somebody has to deal with it in some way.  The dead are gone.  If nobody wants the stuff, how much of an expense, really, can it be to get rid of it.  If  you resent the time you took off from work to go through the mountains of paperwork, you should have just stuffed it into garbage bags and destroyed it.  Some people pay for the experience of panning for gold; consider the paperwork-perusing a treasure hunt.  If you hadn't had the hope of finding something of value amidst the jumble, you would have just dumped it, right?   While it's true we are born into the world with nothing, and leave the same way, why should it be contingent on the dying to make the passage smoother for others by obliterating the traces of the majority of their living days?   I should think the process of dying is struggle enough.