Why can't I get rid of the guitar I never play?

You call it clutter, but clutter is what's left when a decision is finished. This isn't finished. Every time you see the guitar, the shoes, the paints, you're re-running a choice you already made, as if running it again might change the answer. Here is what's actually happening: you are asking an object to hold a feeling you haven't let yourself feel all the way through. The guitar isn't guilty of anything. It's just wood and string. The grief is yours, and it's been assigned to furniture. You are not doing this alone, which changes the shape of it. A partner or a pod watches you keep these things and may read it as indecision, or nostalgia, or hoarding. Usually it's none of those. It's a debt you owe yourself — a closing statement never written. Name that, together, and the objects stop being evidence in a trial that never ends.