Dealing with Bereavement:

The extra belongings may have been given to you. You may have inherited them. This can make it even harder to know how to resolve it. A professional organiser can map out a route with you through this new and challenging territory.

I worked with a client whose mother had marked out each item in her home allocating it to one of her children. This was, perhaps her way of ordering her home. Dividing it up equally. However what she had actually done is left her whole life to them to sort out.

It's very difficult for us to face the end of their life. It is the only thing we are really sure about but we know nothing about what happens -if anything-when we die. We all have our beliefs which sustain us through difficult times and we have ways of dealing with grief. However what we also have is a lot of belongings which have sentiment attached to them - the most difficult part of clutter clearing. the items might be valuable as well.

So I begun work with her in the house that her mother had lived. So the issues that faced us where these. Did any of these items bring joy to my client? Some did and some were just memories of the life that she had had with her parents in happier past times. She loved the crockery that her mother had used. It was pretty, feminineandinstantlyenjoyable. Thatcouldbe used instead of the crockery that she currently had. The mugs were a mish mash and had no emotional connection. They went.

And, of course, some of the furniture-well this was more difficult. There were some beautiful pieces but they were not going to fit into her house. A big chest which had been in the hall of the house she grew up in - and underneath had been all sorts of treasures. This was indeed a wonderfully historic piece of furniture. However, she realised, it was totally impractical in her current house. Something she spoke about that she had realised years ago was that she was very clumsy so she had taken steps to ensure that ends of beds, ends of sofas, and tables, were soft and unlikely to cause her any damage if she bumped into them by accident. So that item had had to be put in the pile of to be auctioned off.

There was a lovely round table and she had memories of playing card games with the whole family around it although they were not totally happy ones. But it was a lovely table. Thinking through what she already had in her own house, this was an item that was going to be pondered some more. Could it fit and if so where? What would leave her current house to make space for it. Did it give her joy or was there something else there? We discussed it at length.

When we had gone through the entire house and assessed each piece, she said she felt a lot clearer about what she was doing. By discussing this with a clutter coach who was not connected in any way with the items, it had given her clarity to decide what to do.