I see why Marie Kondo says leave the sentimental stuff till last. Her reasoning is that by that time you will have fine-tuned your decision- making muscles and joy-detector and it will not be too difficult.
So perhaps I won't jump the gun here. I was tempted to finish the sitting room completely by decluttering the letters and cards in these drawers but it is so hard and guilt inducing to throw them, and the recommended 'read your letters and keep the ones that spark joy' would take me weeks!
I am struck by the number of long letters I have received - 4,5,6 pages. We don't write emails that long do we? And I found it helpful to realise that I must have written an equal amount, so I asked myself Would I expect the friends and family I wrote to to keep all my letters? Would I be hurt or offended if they had got rid of them? The answer is No so that kind of gave me permission to part with many. I thanked them of course :-)
The rest went back into the drawers - stuffed not with clutter but with love and friendship and goodwill.
I can live with that!
Drawers full of love.
And back to following MK's rational order of things....