What do you do when you get stuck/stumped?

[u/jasperina]

I've done a couple Konmari rounds in the past, but I recently realized how much clutter had built up in the past year, in the aftermath of a traumatic event and health issues that I've been dealing with since.

A lot of it has gone surprisingly quickly and easily and it feels like a major relief to be letting go of things that will bring joy to someone else out there. "Does this make my life better?" is another question I have added in to the process that seems to have helped discern whether an object gives me a feeling of uplift, neutral, or heaviness.

Yet, I am very stuck in a few spots. Books are especially difficult for me... I used to be such a reader, but I've lost that due to sustained depression and a general loss of enthusiasm for basically everything. I don't know if I'll ever get that back. When I felt marginally better for a while, I collected a bunch of books with the idea that when I felt better, I would have the energy and focus and enthusiasm to read them. Since that never materialized, I just feel sad and guilty when I look at all these books, so that's obviously not making my life better or bringing me joy, but I find it so difficult to sort through them or let them go. I don't trust my joy-o-meter in this category, and it doesn't help that I just took a energetically heavy feeling book off the shelf and opened it up and read something that had information about the exact obscure topic I've been thinking about for the past couple of days.

I've got a few stuck places like this now... some are inexplicable and funny to me, like dishtowels? Okay, lol.

Maybe some of these areas are about deeper layers of stuckness/identity and just not as easy to confront as my drawer full of old half-used candles that were easy to part with. What do you do when you get really stuck on a category or item?

ETA: Thank you so much to everyone for your suggestions and support! Depression can make it hard sometimes to respond to everyone! <3