Has anyone ever decluttered and regretted it (books particularly)?

[MuffinMclay]

I'm a great hoarder of books (have approx 5000), most of which are double-stacked on horrible Ikea bookshelves in our sitting/dining room. They looked nice in our old house, where the shelves fitted perfectly into various alcoves but here the overall effect is awful.

I'm in the process of redecorating and am sorely tempted to get rid of most of them and try being a bit more minimalist (apart from all ds1's coloured plastic tat, obviously).

Will I regret it? The alternative is to put them all into boxes in the attic for a year or so until we move to somewhere bigger.

I don't need most of them, but it feels wrong to let go.

Nell12 I don't think books make a house look unattractive - visit my library house to see that. But the OP says that her house looks awful and she doesn't like the effect of having too many books.

I wouldn't sacrifice my books for style. No way. Sort them out, maybe. Throw out the ones you aren't sentimental about. Maybe put some of the ones you want to keep for x, y and z reason, but aren't likely to reach for any time soon and box them away in the loft or something. But don't chuck out your books for a minimalist look. (I secretly judge people who have nice clean surfaces and glass display shelves with pretty ornament, but no books!)

Keep books that are hard to replace or really special (the sort you have to re-read at 3am when you can't sleep!) and get rid of anything you can easily replace. Does that help?

I regularly take any I don't want to an Oxfam bookshop - ones bought for a light holiday read, didn't enjoy, know that no-one in the family will ever read again, etc. it is getting harder to contain them though, especially now that dd is just as much a bookworm as me - I tell myself that the once belonging to me that i am holding on to are so she can have them when she is a bit older!

I get rid of chick lit and train trash after I've read it but keep hold of all other books. My computer screen is propped up on books and I have some 'shelves' made out of blanks of wood held up with piles of books!.

My parents house is worse, my dad's a researcher and has literally tens of thousand of books, plus when my grandad died my dad simply moved his entire book collection into their house because he couldn't contemplae getting rid of them. There are bookshelves lining entire walls floor to ceiling.