Hello Sue,
Coming home to an empty house is one of the hardest things, I agree. Some people leave a light and/or the radio on so that the house isn't completely dark and silent when they get in and find that helps. I put flowers in the hallway, as I found that welcoming and reassuring somehow.
I recognise what you say about watching TV programmes too. My mum's favourite programme was on TV soon after she had died and whilst one part of my mind was watching and enjoying it, I found myself also in floods of tears at the same time because it made me so aware that she wasn't there to watch it with me.
The car. Oh yes! It is hard to comprehend how a hunk of metal can come to mean so much to us, but it does! I hung on to my dad's care after he died until it was nearly falling apart - only because it was his and I could picture him driving it and remembered how much he liked it. Now I drive the car I used to drive my mum around in and am all too aware that she always occupied the seat next to me and at the same time I feel both close to her there and aware of her absence. It is comforting to still have a car she travelled around it in some way. I lost her almost a year a half ago now, but still find it very hard to let any of her things go. I don't mind getting rid of things she didn't use or wear very often, but anything I can picture her in or that she used a lot, I still can't let go. It is a long slow process for us all and a painful one, I'm afraid. I am sure it is all part of grief. We try to hold on to some part of the person we have lost and can't let them go easily. The things that were there are like some extension of their presence and so take on a significance in our eues and hearts that doesn't really make sense, except it does to us. And it's somehow more than sentimentality. It's like if we have their things around, it's like we haven't completely lost them.
Take your time and go at your own pace. It will gradually become clear what you need to keep and when you are ready to let something go. There's no rush. Take care of you for now. That will be hard enough..xx