Where do you start when it’s all too overwhelming? Everything has a sentimental value to me and I’m drowning in stuff and grief.

Start by collecting together incoming or found items into a specific location, or grab a set that’s already together to make it handy. Pick anywhere — even an available cardboard box against the wall in your kitchen! Make it convenient, even obnoxious in its obviousness. Then, whenever you have a moment, especially if you are feeling well and capable, sit down for five minutes to appreciate what you collected together, and lovingly dispose of items every time you feel able. If it helps you, take a photograph of the item(s) instead of saving them physically, or write in a journal that you keep in the box, with a list of items and what they meant to you taking the place of the physical stuff. When you have a few more moments there, group similar items and jot down notes (masking tape and a permanent marker is a good start); you can mark dates and categories, whatever comes to mind. If your brain cuts out when sorting, those visual clues help. Seeing a group of like items from the same time period may help you decide what serves as an appropriate emblem, and what is lovely but unnecessary, since you have other cues to remember!

Ultimately, you are longing for space. You won’t lose all the meanings you’ve imbued into things just because you are saying goodbye to items you’ve previously valued — that meaning is inside you and it will continue to seek and find spaces to fill with its own expression. Space allows you to breathe — and when you breathe better, you remember more… and make new memories, too.

Another thing that has helped me is to keep a bye-bye box for things you want to give away, but feel torn about. When it’s full, either dump it straight into a black plastic garbage bag and carry it straight out of the house or else add items to your out-of-the-house bag one by one, asking yourself, “Have I been missing this item in particular? Looking for it? Worrying and regretting it’s absence? Or did I not actually notice?” It’s ok to put it back into the bye-bye collection box until your next evaluation.

Peace be upon you from the Master of all the Heavens.

It doesn’t matter where you start. It matters how. Chunk it down, do one room at a time. Ask a friend to help you. Schedule breathing, crying and walking breaks. It doesn’t ever go away, the grief, but over time you have more breathing space between

Well… I just go and put on some music or fiddle with something or play my piano or smth or even if that feels overwhelming then I just sit down on the cold floor, anywhere but not the couch and just let myself breathe and there will be this debate in my head on what I should do I organize them from small to big and then start the work only focussing on one thing and taking breaks and as soon as I’ve got the momentum I just slowly pick up on the bigger and harder tasks which won’t feel overwhelming anymore cuz it will not be that much of a mess as you must have finished the smaller task