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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 complex backstory. I could take as much time as I wanted, and I did. At least half of Dalia’s things remain exactly where they were the morning she died.

In between my grandmother’s death and my daughter’s, I lost both of my parents and my two sisters. Each time, I was the one left to decide what to keep, donate, toss, or store.

Along the way, I learned a few things about how to approach—and just as important, how not to approach—the assignment. The good news is that, with a little forethought and understanding, the task can become a privilege and a meaningful way to honor your person rather than simply another thing to cross off the to-do list. But that doesn’t mean it will be easy, so keep the following in mind.

You know all the people who say, “Let me know if there’s anything I can do”? Here’s something. Ask someone you trust to help you go through the stuff. Enlist others to buy boxes, make dump runs, or research donation sites. Remember, people want to be useful. Giving them something to do helps you both.

Remember that your person’s memories don’t have to be yours.

My oldest sister had dozens of photo albums that I couldn’t bear to look through or throw out after she died. I decided to box them all up and bring them to my house to be dealt with “another time.” That time came two full years later, when a friend of mine was helping me organize my home office. “What are these?” She asked, stumbling over the boxes in the back corner of my closet. I’d forgotten about the albums altogether. What I ultimately found were pictures of teenagers I didn’t know on a road trip and college friends I couldn’t identify at football games and a whole bunch of other memories that didn’t belong to me. You’re not betraying your person by throwing out their memorabilia, just like you’re not honoring your person by keeping their items in a box in a closet.

But if you want to hold onto certain items, “just because,” go for it.

There’s no right or wrong about what you decide to keep and what you choose to toss. I’ve kept binders of medical notes about my daughter. Will I ever read them? Probably not. But they’re an important snapshot of a chapter of our lives that I’m not ready to discard.

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There’s no formula you have to follow.

You can be precious about keeping everything (provided you have space for it), or you can hire someone to haul it all away. When I started going through my mother’s belongings, I spent hours trying on her shoes, her dresses, her coats. By the end of the second week, I didn’t have any more energy or physical space to devote to the cause. I went from sentimental to pragmatic, shifting my strategy to match my mood.

Consider sharing meaningful items.

No matter how much you love your mother’s scarves or your father’s ties, there are likely only so many you want to keep. But the very things that remind you of your person will be meaningful to other people, too. My father was a classical music aficionado, with dozens of recordings of Verdi’s Requiem. I planned to give one to several of the important people in his life. The truth is, those recordings are all in a box in my basement more than 10 years after my father’s death, but writing this is inspiring me to finally distribute them.

Which brings me to my final caution: Beware of boxing things to be dealt with later, lest your basement begin to resemble a museum.

Chances are you’ll reach a saturation point and start packing things up “for another day.” Remember those boxes from my grandmother’s apartment? They’re still unopened, nearly three decades after she died, nestled beside boxes of belongings from other people I’ve loved and lost, stacked on shelves that can only be reached if I climb over inherited furniture. Timing and emotional saturation may make packing things away inevitable. But do yourself a favor and put dates in the calendar to revisit what you’ve stored, perhaps as a way to mark death days or birthdays in years to come.

It’s an honor to be entrusted with what remains of someone’s life. The sweater she wore, the music he listened to, the dishes they used for special occasions can all help us feel close to them. But they can’t do that from a box in the basement.

© Psychology Today