Melissa Rivers kept a number of "strange" items to remember her mother.

Melissa said: "I kept her toothbrush cup. I kept the stuff from her night table. I kept the stuff from the side of her bathtub. I kept strange things like that."

Melissa, 48, is auctioning off some of her mother's belongings at Christie's in New York City from now until June 23, and despite her initial reluctance to get rid of the possessions, she now wants them to be enjoyed by someone else.

She told People magazine: "At first I said, 'I'm not getting rid of anything. I'm keeping everything!'

"But little by little, you start to weed through it. Now I want someone else to love her things and enjoy them."

And while she was sorting through her mother's estate, Melissa was astonished at how much of a secret "hoarder" she'd been.

She said: "I learned that my mother was a big-time maximalist.

"If you're rich and a hoarder, you're a 'maximalist.' I'm not talking newspapers on the floor and tunnels with cats, but man, she had stuff stashed everywhere! She never met a tag sale she didn't like."

Melissa recently admitted she still hasn't fully "healed" since her mother's death.

She said: "I'm not quite in the healing phase. I think it's coming. I think I can see the light at the end of the tunnel but I am not quite there yet."