The thing you cannot bear to discard may need a story recorded more than a box reserved.

Some objects are kept for what they carry rather than what they are, and the carrying is done by a memory that lives only in you. Stored in a box, the thing survives and the meaning does not. Writing down whose it was and what happened around it preserves the part that matters.

Take one thing you have been unable to part with and write three sentences about it. Name who it belonged to and one moment it holds. Then decide, without hurry, whether the object still needs the shelf.