A family wrote to a monk asking what to do with a dead person's clothes: a wardrobe full of good ones, and a houseful of relatives telling them what to do with it. Their questions, in their own words: "Áo quần của người đã mất có phải đốt đi không? Nếu cho người khác mặc vậy người nhận áo quần ấy có bị làm sao không?" Do they have to be burned, and if we give them to someone to wear, will anything happen to that person? The Venerable Thích Giác Quang answered on phatgiao.org.vn that clothes never worn may be left for someone else to wear without obstacle, while the old clothes, the bedding and the things used in the illness he directs to be burned. Nobody asking that question is asking how to declutter. They are asking whether they are allowed.
This page answers the questions that come with it. How long you may wait, and who actually decides. Whether you may wear his coat. What the third day, the fortieth and the hundredth really ask of you, in each tradition's own words. Whether anything has to be burned. What to do with the letters, the photographs and a diary half filled. How to divide things between brothers and sisters without a fight. What happens to the medicines, the papers and the phone. The families and names in the examples are invented, and where a rule depends on where you live, the country is named in the sentence.
There Is No Deadline, and Who Actually Gets to Decide
Almost every tradition that touches this has a date attached. In Russian households the fortieth day. In the question put to one Muslim scholar, the third. In Vietnamese Buddhist guidance, the hundredth. Read each tradition's own teachers and the date turns out to be the part they do not insist on. What people are waiting for permission to do, they already have permission to do.
Archpriest Aleksandr Dokolin, rector of the St Alexis hospital church at the Moscow Patriarchate's Central Clinical Hospital, answers it as plainly as it can be answered, in the Orthodox magazine Foma: "Можно раздать вещи как до так и после 40 дней." Things may be given away before the fortieth day or after it, and, he says, at any time. He adds that he has no idea who invented the rule. Archpriest Ioann Emelyanov, answering the neighbouring question there about throwing a dead person's things out, calls it "чистое суеверие", pure superstition.
So the calendar is not deciding. Who is? The fatwa site IslamQA, asked whether everything a person owned must go to charity before the third day, rejects the premise: "This idea is not correct, rather the clothes and belongings of the deceased are part of his estate, and his heirs are entitled to them."
The one part of the job with a real clock on it. Rent does not stop when a tenant dies. Wherever the person lived, a rented home is the one thing here that costs money for every week it stays full, so talk to the landlord early. Shelter England states the English version: "A tenant's death does not automatically end most tenancy types" and "A tenancy is property and passes to the tenant's personal representatives." Check the rules where the person lived. Nothing else has a deadline, and next spring is a good answer for the wardrobe.
When a shut door is worth mentioning to a doctor. In DSM-5-TR, the American Psychiatric Association's prolonged grief disorder is not diagnosed in an adult until twelve months have passed, and it needs three symptoms nearly every day for a month. One of them is "avoidance of reminders that the person is dead". So a shut door at six weeks is not a disorder. But if a year has gone and you still cannot go in, that is worth saying to a doctor or a bereavement service.
Before You Sort Anything: Four Things to Do First, Including the One Box Nobody Opens Yet
1. List and value before you give away. Four actions, and one afternoon with a notebook covers them wherever you live. Walk every room and write down what is in it. Photograph anything that might be worth real money before it moves. Keep the receipt for anything you sell. And ask whoever is administering the estate whether a valuation is needed before anything leaves. Nothing says you must keep what you list.
What one country asks for shows why it matters. In England and Wales, GOV.UK lists among the assets to be valued for an estate "household and personal items, including antiques, electrical goods, furniture, jewellery, paintings, and stamp collections", valued "on the date the person died", and even with no Inheritance Tax due, "you'll also need your estimate if you want to apply for probate". The part that travels is the test HMRC's Inheritance Tax Manual sets: "the price which the property might reasonably be expected to fetch if sold in the open market at that time". Not the insurance figure, and not what it meant to him.
2. Find out whether a child is one of the heirs. One line in that IslamQA ruling belongs on a checklist: adults of sound mind may give their own share in charity, but "As for a minor, no one has the right to give his share of these things or others in charity." Ask before the bags are filled.
3. Make the box with no date on it. Anything you cannot decide about goes in it, without discussion, and the lid goes on. A sorting day stops dead the first time somebody picks up a watch and nobody can speak. Write the date on the lid and look again in a year.
4. Agree who is in the room and what today's job is. One message, sent before anybody books a train.
Hi all. Saturday at Dad's, 10 till 2, and the job that day is only the kitchen, the bathroom cabinet and the papers in the desk. We are not touching his clothes, the photographs or the garage. Nothing leaves the house, nothing gets thrown away and nothing gets promised to anyone. If you want something, write it on the list on the fridge and we will talk about all of it together in a few weeks. I will bring lunch.
Love, Ruth
Three clauses do the work: one job, nothing leaves, nothing gets promised. And one word on motive. A woman asked the Orthodox question and answer site azbyka.ru whether she could sell a dead relative's television and furniture. The priest answered that death is not defilement and things are only things: "поступайте с ними по своему усмотрению." Do with them as you see fit. Then: "Вообще же старайтесь не «избавиться» от усопшего, но пережить его уход и молиться о его упокоении." Try not to get rid of the person. Try to live through their leaving, and to pray for the repose of their soul.
The Sorting Sheet: Nine Categories and What Usually Happens to Each
No house sorts well in one pass, because the nine kinds of thing in it ask eight different questions, and one row asks nothing at all. Work one row at a time.
| Category | What usually happens to it | The question to settle first |
|---|---|---|
| Clothes and shoes | Kept, worn, given away washed, remade or let go | Is anyone waiting for permission to wear something |
| Jewellery and watches | Valued, photographed, then divided | Was anything promised out loud while he was alive |
| Papers and documents | Boxed whole for whoever handles the estate | Is probate or its local equivalent still open |
| Phones, laptops, tablets | Kept charged and untouched for now | Does anyone have the passcode |
| Medicines and medical kit | Back to a pharmacy; kit back to its supplier | Is anything sharp, controlled or rented |
| Letters, photographs, diaries | Boxed now, read later, divided last | Is anything addressed to someone still alive |
| Furniture and appliances | Kept, taken, sold or given to a furniture scheme | Does anyone still live in the house |
| Tools, hobby kit, collections | Valued as a set, then sold or passed on | Is the set worth more whole than in pieces |
| Food, toiletries, cleaning things | Binned or donated unopened, in the first hour | Nothing. The one row with no decision in it. |
Work it in three passes. The bin pass takes food, packaging and broken things. The value pass lists and photographs anything that might be worth money, and leaves it where it is. The decide pass takes one category at a time, with the people who have a claim in the room. Two rules hold it together: nothing leaves the house on the first day, and one person writes down what was agreed. For the same work done on your own things instead, our guide to Swedish death cleaning is the opposite direction of travel.
What to Do With a Deceased Person's Clothes: Keep, Wear, Give, Remake or Let Go, and Is It All Right to Wear His Coat
Clothes are where almost everyone starts and almost everyone stalls. There are five outcomes, not two, and most wardrobes use all five.
| Outcome | Good for | The practical note |
|---|---|---|
| Keep as it is | One or two things, chosen on purpose | Keep it where you see it, not bagged in the attic |
| Wear | Coats, sweaters, shirts, scarves, work boots | A tailor costs less than a new coat |
| Give away | Anything good that nobody here will wear | Wash and press first. See below for why. |
| Remake | A patterned shirt, a dress, a uniform, a tie | A quilt, a cushion, a bear for a grandchild |
| Let go | Worn shoes, stained work clothes, underwear, socks | Textile recycling where you have it |
Underwear, socks and anything intimate go straight out, and nobody needs permission for it. No charity resells them and washing does not change that, so this is the one row with no decision in it.
The worked example. Marta sorted her mother Hanna's wardrobe eight months after the funeral, alone, which is how she wanted it. Forty-one items: two kept, four worn, twenty-nine given to a charity that resells interview clothes, three sent to a quilt maker, three past using. The numbers were the easy part. The camel coat she nearly gave away she kept, because the test she settled on was whether she would reach for it in November rather than whether it was precious, and she would. The blue dress she nearly kept she gave away, because the only thing she wanted from it was a photograph of her mother wearing it, and she already had the photograph.
A husband's or wife's wardrobe is the hardest one, because you are the only person deciding and you also have to live in the room. The order that works is the ordinary one: the shirts you will wear yourself, then the good suits somebody will wear, then the rest when you are ready. No month exists by which a widow or widower is expected to have finished.
Is it all right to wear his coat? Archpriest Sergiy Vasin, rector of the Nativity of the Theotokos church in Bobyakovo, Voronezh Region, answers about himself in Foma: "У меня, например, есть вещи, оставшиеся после моего папы, раб Божьего Георгия, Царствие ему Небесное, которые я с удовольствием ношу и вспоминаю часто о нем." He has things left from his father, he wears them gladly, and wearing them is how he remembers him.
A woman wrote to azbyka.ru in the first nine days after her sister died, asking whether her pregnant sister could wear the dead woman's clothes. The reply does not hedge: however many days have passed, a special attitude to the things of the dead is ordinary superstition, and "Беременность или другие состояния тоже на это никак не влияют." Pregnancy and other conditions make no difference to it at all.
In Jewish practice, a woman sorting her dead father's belongings asked her rabbi about the clothes. Rabbi Rashi Simon answered, on Kesher's Ask the Rabbi: "In general, there is no impediment to using the clothing of the deceased." The practice about shoes is "albeit not actually forbidden in halakhah" and rests on Rabbi Judah the Pious of Regensburg, who died in 1217. He endorses the narrower reading: it covers the shoes worn at death, and other shoes may be used without hesitation.
In Sunni Islamic rulings there is a permission, a limit, and a real difference between two fatwa sites. Shaykh Saalih al-Fawzaan, quoted on IslamQA: "It is permissible to keep the clothes of the deceased for a family member who can wear them, or to give them to any needy person who will wear them, and they should not be wasted." On that ruling, keeping them purely for memory's sake is not permissible, and possibly forbidden if blessing is sought through them. Islamweb is the more permissive of the two: "It is permissible to keep and use a dead person's clothes or belongings", with no restriction on keepsakes, and the one thing it bars is seeking blessing from them. If your family follows these rulings, the box kept simply because it was his is the part to ask your own scholar about.
Vietnamese funeral guides carry a taboo in writing, and the kind of document matters. One funeral provider's list of kiêng kỵ says the living avoid sleeping in the bed, wearing the clothes or using what the dead left over: "người sống cũng kiêng nằm giường thừa, mặc quần áo thừa, dùng đồ thừa của người chết để lại." It sits there beside burning pomelo peel at the door and not letting a cat or a dog jump over the body. It is custom recorded by a funeral business, and no Buddhist teacher quoted here states a prohibition on use.
How to prepare what you give away. Archpriest Dokolin says to wash and clean things first, because they are not junk you feel guilty about putting out for disposal: "Грех не в том, что я выбросил вещи умершего человека, а в том, что я не смог их подготовить для того, чтобы других людей заинтересовать в их использовании." The failure is not in letting something go, but in letting it go in a state where nobody else can use it. What cannot be used at all, says Archpriest Vasin, may be thrown out, burned or buried, by any method you like.
Does the research help? It helps by refusing to convict you. A 2023 systematic review in Death Studies screened 319 studies and included 79, and its abstract says: "To date, the literature has been unable to confirm whether retaining, rather than relinquishing, bonds is helpful." On that evidence nobody can tell you that keeping the coat is a mistake. The one finding that earns a caveat is that keeping possessions has been associated with heightened grief when compared with memories, an association in a literature that cannot yet say which way it runs. Be gentle with yourself about the sweater.
What Custom Says, by Household: Nine Customs Across Five Traditions, and Where Custom Is Not Obligation
Nine customs, from Orthodox Christian households, Russian folk belief, Sunni Islamic rulings, Jewish practice and Vietnamese sources. The table has four columns. The first names the household and the custom it was asked about. The second is the clock as families keep it, and four of the nine have no clock at all, two of them fears rather than waiting periods. The third is what that tradition's own named teachers say about it, which is usually not what the folklore says. The fourth is what the tradition asks of you as a rule rather than a custom, and across all this reading only two things turned up there.
| Household and the custom asked about | The clock in folk practice | What its own teachers say | Rules rather than customs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Orthodox: nothing may be given away yet | The fortieth day | Dokolin: before or after forty days, at any time | None |
| Orthodox: the room must not be cleaned | The fortieth day again | Efanov: no household task bears on the soul | None |
| Orthodox: giving things away as alms | Folk rule says after day forty | Vasin advises sooner, "до 40 дней", and asks the receiver to pray for him | None |
| Russian folk belief: sins travel with things | No clock, a fear instead | Dokolin: nothing to do with our faith | Oil from unction goes back to the priest |
| Sunni Muslim: everything must go to charity | Before the third day, as asked | IslamQA: not correct. It is part of the estate. | No giving away a minor heir's share |
| Sunni Muslim: keeping clothes as a keepsake | No clock | al-Fawzaan: for someone who will wear them, not for memory alone. Islamweb permits keeping and using them. | None. Ask your own scholar. |
| Jewish: the shoes, and then the clothes | No clock, one kind of item | Rabbi Simon: no impediment to using the clothing | None. Custom, not halakhah, and only the shoes worn at death. |
| Vietnamese Buddhist: waiting before deciding | Forty-nine days, a hundred for possessions | Giác Ngộ: forty-nine days is a Mahayana account | None. A hundred days is "tốt nhất", what is best. |
| Vietnamese taboo on a funeral provider's list | No clock, an avoidance of use | No Buddhist teacher quoted here states it as a prohibition | None. From a business, not from doctrine. |
What the forty days really restrain. A reader named Ekaterina asked Foma whether a dead person's flat had to be left until the fortieth day, and Archpriest Andrei Efanov answered that no household task has any bearing on the fate of the soul, that the rule belongs with ideas reaching us from pagan times, and closed: "И убирайтесь совершенно спокойно." Clean in complete peace. What the period does ask is nearly the opposite of a ban on tidying: Archpriest Emelyanov and Archpriest Vasin both describe the first forty days as a time for less household bustle and more prayer. What it restrains is weddings and serious decisions, not bin bags.
The strangest thing in the table. The tradition the fortieth-day rule claims to come from often argues the other way, and not gently. Archpriest Valentin Mordasov, quoted on azbyka.ru, calls the rule a "поверье, внушенное диаволом", a belief instilled by the devil, then asks when one would plead for someone on trial, before the hearing or after it.
The two real rules. Archpriest Dokolin names the Orthodox one: "Например, нельзя отдавать елей после соборования." The consecrated oil left from the sacrament of unction is passed to nobody, because it belongs to the prayer said for that one soul, and it goes back to the priest. The second is the Islamic bar on giving away a minor heir's share. That is all that turned up. The strongest thing that is not a rule is the Jewish practice about the shoes worn at death, which the rabbi explaining it says is not actually forbidden in halakhah, and which families keep anyway, the way people do keep good customs.
There is a positive form this takes, and it is not decluttering. On azbyka.ru Archpriest Dionisy puts it as an instruction: the things may and should be given away, asking those who receive them to pray for the person who died. Priest Evgeny says the same in the language of almsgiving, as милостыня. The coat is not being disposed of. It is being given, in his name, to someone who will be asked to remember him.
The Burning Question, Answered Plainly: What the Practice Is For, When It Is Done, and What Happens If You Keep Something Instead
In many Vietnamese households the clothes are burned, and the custom is explained two ways at once, which pull against each other. The first is generous: burning them sends them, so the person is not short of anything. The second is defensive: the clothes are thought to carry misfortune. A funeral provider's own guide to the custom records both, and records families now choosing a third option, giving the clothes to people who need them.
What Buddhist teaching says about it. The burning Vietnamese Buddhist newspapers are asked about most often is vàng mã, the votive paper goods. A reader named Văn Long asked plainly: if the person has already been reborn, what is the point of burning clothes, money, houses and cars for them? The advisory board of Giác Ngộ, the Buddhist newspaper of the Ho Chi Minh City Sangha, answered that the custom is a folk belief carrying Chinese folk influence, and that orthodox Buddhism does not hold it. Turn the effort into merit instead: chanting, precepts, giving, offering, then dedicating the merit, which they say reaches the person wherever they have been reborn. For families not ready to stop, they allow a token amount and warn against large or costly burnings.
On burning real clothes rather than paper ones. Minh Hạnh Đức, writing in Giác Ngộ, reports a newer practice: garments newly bought in real cloth and burned as offerings in place of the paper ones. The verdict is one phrase: "việc làm này hết sức lãng phí." Extremely wasteful. The test offered there is worth keeping: "việc làm ấy phải có giá trị thiết thực, phải thật sự hữu ích cho người quá cố." It has to do some real good, and it has to do that good to them.
And the dead person's own wardrobe? The Venerable Thích Giác Quang, answering the family in the first paragraph of this page, divides the wardrobe in two. The clothes never worn may be left for someone else to wear without obstacle. The old clothes, the bedding and the things used in the illness, where he names infectious illness above all, he directs to be burned. That is the strongest version of the practice any teacher quoted here states, and notice what it is not: not a rule that good clothes must burn, and not a reason to fear the coat you have decided to keep.
The hundred days, honestly. One Vietnamese Buddhist article does ask families to wait. On phatgiao.org.vn, Minh Thiện writes: "Trong 100 ngày sau khi chết không nên phân phát hay định đoạt các vật dụng tài sản cá nhân của người đã mất." In the hundred days after a death it is better not to hand out or decide the fate of personal belongings, because the one who died is held to be still attached. Note the form of the words: advice about what is best, not a prohibition. The same article gives a test more useful than any calendar: "Quan trọng là động cơ vì lợi ích của người đã khuất thì sẽ không có chướng ngại gì." What matters is the motive. Act for their good and there is no obstacle. Families treat the forty-nine days as settled fact too, where Giác Ngộ is more careful: immediate rebirth in Theravada, an intermediate state of up to forty-nine days in Mahayana. If your family keeps them, keep them. They are not a deadline you can fail.
And if you keep something instead? Nothing is inherited from a coat except the coat. A short sheet for the conversation, rather than for the wardrobe:
| Where your household stands | What the sourced guidance supports | What you can say |
|---|---|---|
| We burn, and want to go on burning | A token amount, nothing costly or dangerous | "We will do it as Grandmother did, and keep it small." |
| We burn, but the wardrobe is full of good clothes | Burn a token item, give the rest where it is worn | "One thing for him, the rest to keep someone warm." |
| We would rather give everything away | Donating, or merit dedicated to him instead | "This is in his name, and they will remember him." |
| A relative says keeping anything is unlucky | The taboo is on funeral-trade lists, not in teaching | "I am keeping his coat, and I am not afraid of it." |
| We are inside the forty-nine or hundred days | Advice about what is best, with motive as the test | "Nothing goes yet. We will list it and decide after." |
The Hardest Things: Letters, Photographs, and a Diary Half Filled
Paper goes last, not because it matters least but because it is the only category that can stop a family for a year. Box it whole, label the box, and come back when the rest is done.
| What you have found | The question it raises | What to do this year |
|---|---|---|
| Loose photographs in a drawer | Who is in them, and who will know in ten years | Keep them all. An evening with the oldest relative and a pencil. |
| Albums | They cannot be divided without being broken | One household keeps each album whole; others get copies |
| Letters other people wrote to him | Are they his, or the writer's | Keep, and give any back to a living writer who asks |
| Letters he wrote and never sent | Was it meant to be read | Read it with one other person, and not at midnight |
| A letter addressed to a living person | Nothing. This one is simple. | Hand it over unopened, even if you think you know |
| A diary, half filled | Read it, leave it, or decide next year | All three are defensible. Say out loud which you chose. |
| Something that would hurt someone to read | Whose decision is it | Not yours alone if that person is alive. Wait, and ask. |
People often want to write back, and a letter to the person who died is one of the oldest things a grieving person does. Writing a letter to someone who died covers that, including the letter a person writes after finding one in a drawer. If the sorting falls near the date itself, there are words for the day in what to say on a death anniversary, and if it falls in December, the first Christmas without a loved one is for the household facing it.
Dividing Things Between Brothers and Sisters Without a Fight: A Worked Method in Four Rounds
Families assume the house will be the hard part and the kitchen will sort itself out. University of Minnesota Extension has run a programme on exactly this since 1999, called Who Gets Grandma's Yellow Pie Plate, and reports the opposite. Decisions about personal belongings, which it calls non-titled property, are often more challenging than decisions about titled property or financial assets, and it says they may lead to family disagreements.
Its research names six things to settle before you start: "Understand the sensitivity of the issue of transferring non-titled property. Determine what you want to accomplish in the transfer. Decide what is 'fair' in the context of your family. Understand that belongings have different meanings for different individuals. Consider distribution options and consequences. Agree to manage conflicts if they arise."
Note the third. Equal value means the totals match, which is fairest on paper and coldest in the room. Equal number means the same count of items each, which ignores that one ring is worth the whole kitchen. Everyone getting what they most care about is the one families usually want, and it needs the rounds below. Families fight because they never said which definition they were using.
Round one: the uncontested round. Everybody writes down, privately, up to ten things they would like, with one line of why. The lists are read out together, and anything named by one person only goes to that person at once. The round is designed to clear most of a house before anybody has to argue.
Round two: the story round. For each contested item, each claimant says in two sentences why they want it. No rebuttals, no interruptions. The point is that a reason said out loud can be heard by the person it is said to, which cannot happen inside a pick order.
Rounds three and four: the pick order. What is left goes into a draw for first pick. Round three is the pass down the order. Round four is the pass back up it, so whoever picks last on the way down picks twice in a row at the turn. Anyone may pass, and every pick goes in the notebook. Whatever nobody picks is sold, given away, or kept in one place for a year, with proceeds split as the estate says.
The worked example. Walter died in February, two years after Iris. Four adult children: Ruth, Saul, Nadia and Tom. Round one cleared the house except for twelve things. Round two settled five of them, and the pick order settled the other seven. Saul drew first pick, then Nadia, Tom, Ruth.
| Item | Round | Who has it | Why it settled |
|---|---|---|---|
| Iris's engagement ring | Two | Ruth | Named in Iris's own note, which Saul had not seen |
| The clock from the hallway | Two | Saul, and a recording of the chime for Nadia | What Nadia wanted was the sound, not the clock |
| Walter's chisels | Two | Tom | The only one who still works wood, and he said so |
| The photograph albums | Two | Ruth, with copies for the other three | Nobody would break a set, and Ruth has the shelf |
| Iris's sewing box | Two | Nadia | Saul withdrew once he heard why she wanted it |
| The dining table | Three, first pick | Saul | Drew first, and has the only room for it |
| The bureau | Three, second pick | Nadia | She had wanted it since she was a child |
| The garden bench | Three, third pick | Tom | Chosen over the barometer he also wanted |
| Walter's watch | Three, fourth pick | Ruth | The one thing she had asked for out loud |
| The brass barometer | Four, the turn | Ruth | Her second pick came straight after her first, at the turn |
| The record collection | Four | Tom | Taken whole, because it is worth more as a set |
| The piano | Four, passed over | Sold | Nobody had a wall for it; proceeds split four ways |
Two notes. If one of you cannot be there, they send a round one list and a proxy, and somebody walks the house on a video call before the picks. And if a widow or widower is still living, nothing here is yours to divide: the household is theirs to run, and the method is for later, if they ask for it.
Archpriest Dokolin, asked about relatives arguing over who gets what, answers with one instruction and it is not a procedure: "сохранить добрую память об усопшем через мирные отношения между людьми, а значит уступать." Keep a good memory of the person through peace between the people, which means give way. The point of the method is not to get the right objects to the right people. It is that the people are still speaking at the end.
Medicines, Papers and Devices: Dispose, Keep or Hand On
Medicines, in two countries. In the United States the Food and Drug Administration puts it in order of preference: "The best way to dispose of most types of expired, unwanted or unused medicines is through a drug take-back program", at a drop-off location or by prepaid mail-back envelope. Only medicines on the FDA's flush list should be flushed. Failing a take-back option, most can go in household rubbish once mixed with coffee grounds, dirt or cat litter and shut inside a closable container. Then: "Scratch out all your personal information on the empty medicine packaging."
In England the route is shorter. NHS guidance asks patients to "return your unwanted and out of date medicines to your pharmacy for safe disposal", and is emphatic about the alternative: "NEVER dispose of your unused or unwanted medicines down the toilet." Those are two countries, so check what applies where you are. The table is the three-way for everything else.
| What you have | Dispose, keep or hand on | First move, and what not to do |
|---|---|---|
| Ordinary tablets, inhalers, creams | Dispose | A pharmacy or a take-back point. Never the toilet. |
| Strong painkillers and sedatives | Dispose, and in person | Hand them over at a pharmacy. Do not post or bin them. |
| Needles, lancets, a sharps bin | Hand on | Back to whoever supplied the bin. Never household rubbish. |
| Hospital bed, hoist, oxygen, wheelchair | Hand on | Call the service that delivered it. Do not sell or give it away. |
| Bank, pension, insurance and tax papers | Keep | Box whole for the estate. Shred nothing yet. |
| Deeds, certificates, wills, passports | Keep, then hand on | To whoever administers the estate, who may need the originals |
| Junk mail, catalogues, old statements | Dispose | Recycle, after one pass for anything with an account number |
| A locked phone | Keep | Ask the family for the passcode. Do not reset it or guess. |
| Voicemail with his voice on it | Keep, today | Save it to a file today, and do not cancel the line before you have. |
| Messages, chats, social accounts | Keep for now | Leave them until you know what each allows. Do not delete to tidy up. |
| A laptop or tablet | Keep | Copy the photographs off first. Do not wipe it before that copy is checked. |
Our when I die file checklist is what the papers should have been in all along, and each device row is a day's work with a page of its own: unlocking a phone after someone dies, saving a voicemail, what happens to messages when someone dies, and our digital legacy planning guide. The voicemail is the urgent one: a disconnected number is reused eventually.
The Things You Wish He Had Written Down, and the Hour That Fixes It for Your Own Family
By the end of a sorting weekend every family has the same short list of questions it cannot answer. Did he want this kept. Who was this for. Was the medal in the desk his father's or his grandfather's. Was the toolbox meant for the neighbour who borrowed it every summer. Nobody is left who knows, and the not knowing is heavier than the deciding.
Walter's children were the exception, and that is the point of this section. Iris had left a sheet of paper in the bureau, eleven lines in ballpoint, and it ended two arguments before they started. Three of them, in her own words:
The engagement ring: Ruth. She asked me when she was nine and I never forgot.
The brown suitcase in the attic: do not open it with the children in the house. It is my sister's letters.
The dinner service: nobody has to keep it. I only kept it because my mother watched me unwrap it.
Every one of her lines answered the same four things, and that is the format to copy. All eleven, as four columns:
| The thing | Where it is | Who it is for | May it be sold |
|---|---|---|---|
| The engagement ring | Jewellery box, top of the wardrobe | Ruth | No |
| The good tablecloth | Linen drawer, dining room | Whoever hosts Christmas | Yes. It is only linen. |
| My mother's prayer book | The drawer of the bureau | Nadia | No |
| The stamp album | Box file under the stairs | Nobody. Sell it. | Yes. None of you collect. |
| The chisels, his name on the handles | Green toolbox in the shed | Tom | Not while he is using them |
| The brown suitcase | The attic | Nobody yet. Read it first. | No. My sister's letters. |
| The sewing machine | Spare bedroom | Dorothy at number 14, who taught me | No |
| The dinner service, twelve settings | The sideboard | Nobody has to keep it | Yes, if none of you wants it |
| The fifty pounds I owe Mr Okafor | Envelope in the bureau | Pay him before anything else happens | A debt, not a thing |
| The garage key | Hook inside the meter cupboard | All four of you | No |
| The Christmas decorations | Two boxes in the attic | Whoever hosts Christmas | Yes, whatever is left over |
You can write that list this evening. Eleven lines took Iris twenty minutes, and you have just spent a weekend inside the problem they solve.
What a list cannot do is say why. On Goodbye App you can write that part as a letter to the people you love, or record it in your own voice, which is the version a family plays twice. Each letter goes by email to the people you choose, on a day and at an hour you set, and stays private until it is sent. It is free, on the web and Android. A letter carries words and one recording rather than pictures, so the photograph of the ring on your own list goes in a scheduled post instead.
If you would rather start with the words than the inventory, our guide to writing a legacy letter is the long version, and recording your voice for your family takes ten minutes. And if the house you have just sorted leaves a parent still living, the questions you now wish you had asked are in questions to ask your parents. Ask them this month.
Common Questions
What do you do with a deceased person's clothes? You keep, wear, give away, remake or let go, and most wardrobes end up using all five. The table above says what each outcome is good for, and the only one with a rule attached is giving: wash and press first.
Is it all right to wear a dead person's clothes? Yes. A priest on azbyka.ru calls any special attitude to the things of the dead ordinary superstition, however many days have passed. An archpriest says in print that he wears his own father's clothes gladly, and a rabbi says there is no impediment to using the clothing of the deceased.
Is it bad to keep a dead person's things? No, and no teacher quoted on this page says otherwise. The one caution is practical rather than spiritual: keep the two or three things you chose on purpose, where you can see them, and notice if what you are keeping has become a shut room rather than a coat.
Do I have to burn my father's clothes? No. Writing in Giác Ngộ, Minh Hạnh Đức calls the burning of real clothes for the dead extremely wasteful and sets the test that it must do real good to the person. The newspaper's advisory board treats the burning of votive paper goods as folk belief rather than Buddhist teaching. If your family keeps the custom, keep it small.
Can we sell his things, or is selling different from giving them away? You can sell them. The priest asked exactly that about a dead relative's television and furniture said to do with them as you see fit. Two practical differences: the money belongs to the estate and should be split the way the estate says, so keep the receipts, and a sale is the one route with no second life for the thing in it. Sell the valuable things and give away the usable ones.
A relative says his things carry bad luck, or someone they consulted has told them so. What do I say? That the fear is folk belief and not teaching, which is both the honest answer and the kind one. The archpriest asked whether a dead person's sins travel with their belongings said the idea has nothing to do with the faith. You do not have to win the argument either: "I am keeping his coat, and I am not afraid of it" ends it.
One of my brothers has already taken things. What now? Say it once, without an accusation, and write what he took on the round one list as his. Most early taking is grief and tidying rather than theft, and treating it as a first pick keeps the process alive. If something valuable or titled has gone, that is a question for whoever is administering the estate.
Do I have to tell the others what I kept? Not as a confession, but write it in the same notebook as everything else. One list everybody can see is what prevents the sentence that sours a family for twenty years, which is "I never knew she had it".
What about his wedding ring? It is the one item almost nobody wants divided and almost everybody has a feeling about. The usual answers are that the surviving husband or wife keeps it, or wears it on a chain, or it goes to the child named after him, or it is kept with hers. Decide it before the pick order rather than inside it, and say the reason out loud.
How long should you wait before clearing out a dead person's belongings? As long as you want. The one exception is a rented home, where the rent keeps running, so deal with the tenancy early and leave the wardrobe until next spring.
I cannot face clearing out my mother's room. Is that normal? Yes, and for most people it eases. If a year has passed and the door is shut because you cannot open it rather than because you choose not to, mention it to a doctor or a bereavement service, since avoidance of reminders that the person has died is one of the symptoms listed under prolonged grief disorder in DSM-5-TR, which is not diagnosed before twelve months in adults.
Every person has a legacy®
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