When we were planning for my father to come home from the nursing home, we had his room decorated so all the furniture and his belongings went out in the garage until that was done. We have moved different furniture back because it better suits his room and his needs now, and have only really moved back in the clothes he wore in the nursing home though those are gradually being replaced by things that are more 'him' rather than their 'practical' choices - I would rather he liked what he wore and felt comfortable than doing what is practical for me - and as he was away for eight months, he doesn't remember anything of what was there before just what is in his room now.
I have been sorting through his stuff in the garage - he was a hoarder so there is a lot - and I am doing ten minutes or so a day, quite dispassionately. I've washed stuff for the local Hospice shop, some stuff can go on eBay and the rest will go in the bin and I think that the way I can do this, without being upset, without wanting to keep every single item he has ever valued, touched, bought, wanted, kept for no seeming reason etc. is solely because he is still alive. The things, the clothes, in of themselves have no real value to me anyway just as mine wouldn't to anyone else, but I have him and I *know* without a shadow of a doubt that this task would be so amazingly different if I was doing it after his death. I have kept a suit, and good shoes, a signet ring his mother gave him, his Naval Association tie and his medals for ... but, beyond that, pretty much everything else is either recycled in one way or another or in a bin liner and this is right for me and my mother and our now. The memories and photos I will have from this period and before are worth so much more than 'stuff' and I don't want to spend the rest of my life in a mausoleum of junk and un-necessary things just because, back in the day, my Dad or when the time comes, my mother wore them. They are just things though maybe there'll be something that smells of him that gets kept later but I truly think this way, this time, is so much easier than it will be later when I think I might be the worthy successor to his hoarding crown.