Oh! This is just what I needed to see today. We have moved house recently and have been lugging around so many boxes of things for the past 12 years. Thanks for the giving me the courage to have a purge!

This is the one Apartment Therapy tenant that I have always disagreed with. I love my books, and I love houses full of books. For me they are not clutter, because I 'use' them all the time: browsing through them like coffee table books, lending them out, looking up author's names or specific scenes, or just re-reading for pleasure. I know that I actually do this because I packed up most of my books into boxes and put them in the garage a year ago (anticipating a move that was later put on hold), and I've spend the last year breaking into boxes in search of particular books. I had a meeting with my husband, asking him "Are we the sort of family that gets rid or books, or are we the sort of family that buys more bookcases?" We both agreed we were the later. When a hand-me-down book case came our way, and I was able to unload three boxes of books. It was like Christmas morning!