My mom, and to a lesser extent myself, have some attachment issues to old stuff. It's not quite like "Hoarders" but it's worse than it has to be, with lots of b

My mom, and to a lesser extent myself, have some attachment issues to old stuff. It's not quite like "Hoarders" but it's worse than it has to be, with lots of books and boxes and boxes of books, shelves buried behind boxes, etc. Basically, all the stuff we have is a method of remembering the past, and if you are very sentimental, some of it crosses over into "If I get rid of the object, I lose the memory". Trashing stuff then becomes difficult because I have to get past that towards the practical element of "this is just clutter 99% of the time and it impedes my future self", on top of concerns like "I don't want to just trash it if it has value" which make it 10 times as difficult to eliminate stuff. I'm attacking the problem now with a slow-paced weekly streak to clean and organize things. I don't necessarily throw things out every week, but I do document what I have and how to categorize it. That way I can make a decision without having to open a box and bring out the stuff.