Take our Depression Test

Find a therapist to heal from grief

Sorting through your person's belongings can be emotionally overwhelming, but there are ways to simplify.

The only roadmap you need to follow is the one that feels right to you.

As with most things in grief, enlisting help makes is a bit more bearable.

The other day, my niece asked if she could see something I have in my basement. A simple question, yet I found myself stuttering through flimsy excuses to avoid revealing what’s happening in the lowest level of my home. It’s not that there’s anything nefarious down there; it’s that over the years I’ve accumulated three unfinished-basement rooms full of other people’s belongings, rendering the cellar essentially unnavigable.

The first time I was tasked with sorting through someone’s things, I was in my 20s. Days after my 90-something grandmother died in her sleep, my mother and I boxed up the contents of her small apartment. We were more task-oriented than emotionally vulnerable, since the building management had set a deadline, and we moved almost everything to storage in my mother’s home.

The last time I had this responsibility was three years ago, after my 17-year-old daughter, Dalia, died. This time, every item, from mismatched socks to nail polish, held meaning. Where we bought this sweatshirt or that hat; how we snuggled under the pile of fluffy throw blankets, every stuffed animal’s........

© Psychology Today