What to do with a loved one's belongings

There is no correct time, and almost all the urgency comes from other people.

The one real constraint is a rented property, where the tenancy decides. If that is the situation, box everything without sorting, put it somewhere, and do the deciding later. Sorting under a deadline is how things get thrown away that cannot be got back.

Do not do it alone

Not because it is too sad — though it is — but because of what happens in a room by yourself: hours pass, one drawer is done, and you are exhausted.

Two people, short sessions, with a break and a specific end time. Someone slightly outside the family is often the most useful person in the room.

Four piles, one rule

Keep. Things a specific person wants, for a reason.

Give. To friends, colleagues, neighbors. A jumper to someone who will actually wear it is worth more than a box in a loft.

Donate or sell. Most of it. Charity shops, house clearance.

Undecided. The important one. Anything that stalls you goes in this box, the box gets taped and dated, and it does not get opened for a year.

The rule: nothing leaves the house on the first day except obvious rubbish.

The things nobody can throw away

Every family hits the same objects: the diaries, the glasses on the bedside table, the handbag with everything still in it, the half-used bottle of scent, the shopping list in their handwriting.

These are not sentimental clutter, and treating them as a problem to be solved is what causes the regret.

Two practical answers. Photograph them. A good photograph of the shopping list keeps the handwriting after the paper goes. Keep one, not all. One notebook, not eleven. One shirt, not the wardrobe.

Splitting between siblings

The most reliable source of lasting family damage in the whole business, and it is rarely about value.

What works:

• Agree the process before anyone takes anything.
• Take turns choosing, rather than negotiating item by item.
• Say out loud why you want something. Most conflicts dissolve when the reason is spoken, and two people wanting the same thing usually want it for different reasons.
• Photograph anything that goes, and share the pictures. A great many disputes are about not having seen something again, not about owning it.

Papers

Keep, at minimum: certificates, wills, deeds, anything to do with the estate, military and medical records, and photographs with writing on the back.

The writing on the back of photographs is the thing most often lost. A shoebox of unlabeled faces is unusable within a generation; the same box with names on the back is a family history. If you do nothing else with the papers, scan the backs.

What to do with what you keep

The trap is that keeping means storing, and storing means a box in a loft that one person can reach.

Whatever is worth keeping is worth being seen: the photographs digitized and shared with everyone rather than held by whoever ended up with the box, the letters read aloud once, the recording of their voice copied off the old phone before the old phone dies.

A thing nobody can look at is only a slower way of losing it.