Springtime is a perfect time to begin decluttering your home, given the theme of renewal and freshness. But what happens when some items you’d like to toss have special meaning or a connection to difficult memories? You may be experiencing past trauma when trying to get rid of items that no longer serve you, due to grief, unresolved issues with loved ones, or memories connected to the item that you aren’t quite ready to part with.
Professional organizer and founder of Organize For Love, Rebekah Love believes that organizing while grieving can be utterly exhausting. “Decluttering while grieving is exhausting because it’s physically and emotionally laborious. Just like you can’t stuff your mourning into a timeframe, you can’t expect to declutter a space at the same rate. You want to consider the space you have to store the items you want to keep,” she says.
Suppose you’re grieving someone who passed or a failed relationship, but still have their items. In that case, she suggests decluttering your home alongside a mental health professional, like a grief counselor, or a coach that specializes in EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), is ideal and recommended. “This is not a process (decluttering) to take on alone or in isolation. Consider taking on a physical activity or doubling down on moving your body. For every item you touch, you’re also accessing the memories attached to it; by the 100 items you may touch in one session, that’s heavy. Release that energy and allow your emotions an opportunity to move through you and not remain stagnant in your body,” Love suggests.
Marie Cloud, premier interior designer, says, “Navigating decluttering when it intersects with trauma can be deeply emotional, especially when grief or cherished memories are involved. One helpful approach is to create a mindful environment before you begin—set an intention, acknowledge your feelings, and prepare a comforting space with calming music or soft lighting. Allow yourself to take breaks when emotions overwhelm, honoring your feelings while making the process more manageable.”
Cloud suggests focusing on curating rather than eliminating to balance decluttering while preserving memories. “Choose a few meaningful items and find creative ways to incorporate them into your space, like framing a piece of fabric from a loved one’s clothing or creating a memory box. Photographing cherished items before letting them go can also maintain a sense of connection without physically keeping everything. Repurposing sentimental items, like turning old T-shirts into a quilt, can give them new life while preserving their essence,” she shares.
Additionally, Cloud recommends creating a digital archive of photos and documents to preserve memories while reducing clutter, and having a safe and supportive community around you to help. “Sharing stories or processing emotions with someone who understands makes letting go feel less isolating. Having someone there to listen can make the experience more manageable and meaningful,” she says.
Kobe Campbell, a licensed clinical mental health counselor, believes that there are profound parallels between decluttering our homes and processing the deeper matters of the heart. “When we wake up and look around at the things we’ve accumulated—items we may no longer need but struggle to part with—we are reminded that things are never just things. The objects we purchase, collect, and hold onto often serve as emotional placeholders, representing security, nostalgia, or even self-worth,” Campbell shares.
She adds, “Just as our homes require regular upkeep, our emotional well-being demands intentional reflection and inventory. Decluttering is not just about organizing physical space—it is a deeply therapeutic practice that mirrors our inner transformation. The process requires us to confront attachment-based decision-making. In this phenomenon, we struggle to part with items not because of their usefulness, but because of the emotions we’ve attached to them.”
According to Campbell, here’s the psychological impact of clutter:
Research shows that cluttered environments significantly affect mental health. A 2016 study in Current Psychology found that high levels of clutter correlate with higher stress hormone (cortisol) levels, greater procrastination tendencies, and increased emotional dysregulation. Similarly, a study published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin found that people who described their homes as “cluttered” or “messy” reported higher levels of depression and fatigue compared to those who saw their homes as restorative spaces.
For individuals with anxiety, depression, or PTSD, clutter can serve as a subtle but powerful emotional trigger, reinforcing feelings of chaos, overwhelm, or stagnation. At the same time, research has shown that tidying and organizing can activate dopamine release, the brain’s reward system, offering a sense of accomplishment and motivation.
Campbell shares her tips on how to declutter while dealing with grief:
Start Small & Build Momentum
Decluttering is more than a household chore—it is a mirror into our inner world. When we struggle to let go of things, it often has little to do with the objects themselves and more to do with the fears, beliefs, and emotions we have attached to them. Understanding this can help us declutter with compassion, intentionality, and greater self-awareness.
If you’re ready to begin decluttering not just your home, but your mind and heart as well, here are some strategies rooted in psychological research and emotional processing techniques:
1. Break Down Your Goal & Start Small for Visible Progress
Instead of overwhelming yourself by tackling your entire home, start with one high-traffic area—your bedroom, closet, or bathroom. Research on habit formation shows that visible progress strengthens motivation, so choosing a space you interact with daily allows you to witness transformation in real time. This can activate the reward centers of your brain, reinforcing your commitment to the process.
Action Step: Choose a space you engage with daily and set a timer for 20–30 minutes. Stop when the time is up, so the process feels manageable rather than exhausting.
2. Reframe the Role of the Item: Keep What Aligns With Your Present Self
Many people approach decluttering with the mindset of “What should I get rid of?”, which can feel overwhelming. Instead, reframe the process as one where you keep things based on the role they currently play in your life rather than the role they once played in the past. Allow yourself to release items that don’t align with your present. This perspective helps you focus on curating rather than eliminating, making the process feel empowering.
Action Step: Hold each item and ask, Does this represent who I am becoming? Does it bring me peace, joy, or function today? If not, it may be time to let it go.
3. Address Attachment-Based Decision-Making With Radical Honesty
If you’re struggling to decide whether to keep or release an item, ask yourself:
- Does keeping this item reflect who I am today?
- Am I keeping this because it’s useful or because I’m emotionally attached to what this represents?
- If I lost this today, would I spend time, energy, and money to replace it?
- What story am I telling myself about releasing this item? What story would help me feel empowered?
We can form emotional attachments to objects to mirror our attachment to people. This is why letting go can feel uncomfortable, even painful. Recognizing this can help you navigate decluttering with self-compassion rather than guilt.
Action Step: If an item is difficult to part with, write a short reflection about what it represents and what emotions come up as you consider letting it go. Then write about what its absence will make space for physically and emotionally in your life.
4. Release the Scarcity Mindset
People commonly hold onto clutter for fear of needing it later. This is called scarcity-based attachment, where we believe that letting go of something might result in future regret. The truth is we often overestimate the future need for items that would serve us best by being discarded. Get curious about what you think will happen if you release this item. Instead of focusing on will I need it later, ask yourself if you regularly need it now, in your day-to-day.
Action Step: If you’re hesitant to discard something, write down what you think releasing this item will bring up for you. Then, store it in a box out of sight for 30 days. If you don’t reach for it within that time, you likely don’t truly need it. If you don’t feel the negative emotions you anticipated you would, you were probably overestimating the value of that item in your life.
5. Allow Yourself to Grieve What You Release
Decluttering is, at its core, an act of emotional release. Some items hold deep meaning, reminders of people, places, or seasons of life. It’s natural to feel grief when parting with them, but letting go does not mean losing the memory. Sometimes we think we need the item to hold on to the memory, but we don’t. The principle of Object detachment teaches us that we can hold on to memories attached to things, even when we discard the things. We can capture images, or write journal entries about items that hold meaning to us, but add more stress to our day-to-day living by remaining in our possession.
Action Step: Take a picture of something meaningful to you that you feel led to release. Once you’ve released it, add that image to a journal entry or a photo album.
Decluttering as Emotional Healing
Decluttering is not just about making your space look nice; it’s about reclaiming mental peace and emotional clarity. Just as we heal emotionally by processing and releasing old narratives, we create clarity in our external world by letting go of unnecessary physical weight.
By engaging in this process mindfully and intentionally, we invite greater peace, clarity, and emotional renewal into our lives. Although the process may be uncomfortable at first, ultimately, it is an act of self-care and self-trust.
Let your home reflect your inner healing, a space that supports who you are today, rather than holding onto who you used to be.
