Why not sell them on ebay?
My kids wanted to keep all their books as well. Eventually we let them know that in order to get a new book, they had to get rid of an old one. The same rule applied to toys and, now that they are older, clothes.
Good plan.
Every time I hear the word ādeclutterā in the same sentence as ābookshelvesā I get possessive and protective of my book collection. Feel free to declutter the rest of the house, but leave the books alone. Oh, and the board games. And the musical instruments. And the sheet music. And the tools ā¦ 
Oh crap. Iām a hoarder. 
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I think sentiment can be a form of delight.
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No youāre not. You have items which enhance your life. Thatās a good thing! Humans use tools, thatās what we do.
Note that very few of the people yammering about clutter actually reduce their consumption in useful ways, like moving to a small city apartment and using public transit. (Even the small house people mostly live in suburbia and get off on showing off how clever and well designed their house is.) Itās still consumerism to spend a bunch of money to have and maintain a conspicuously empty house!
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Maybe I should qualify: "Oh crap, my wife thinks Iām a hoarder ā¦ " 
But I have to admit there is something for me about books that makes them extraordinarily difficult to dispose of, even by giving them away to a good home. Iāll cheerfully trade up other stuff I love, but āā¦ even bad books are books and therefore sacred.ā (GĆ¼nter Grass)
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I mentioned this last time it came up here: any individual spare part might not spark delight, but my random-cables-and-adapters box delights me as a whole every time I need something and itās in there. The box is a self-contained unit, it doesnāt sprawl out and take up extra space, so I feel itās fair to evaluate it as a unit under this system.
In any case, when people have problems with too many possessions, theyāre usually sentimental rather than utilitarian. A clutter of tools and spare parts doesnāt mean youāre a hoarder, it means your workshop is poorly organized, which is a totally different problem.
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Well, thatās easy to say, and to convince myself of. In practice, I have a million kabillion books and toys and games that I havenāt once thought about in five years, but when I try to tidy up suddenly every one of them feels essential and heavy with emotional value because I enjoyed it once when I was in college. So they go back on the shelf, and I forget about them again 'til the next time I try to tidy.
Thatās not healthy, and itās that kind of thing that I think weāre talking about here. Iām working on training myself to tell the differenceākeep the books that I will actually re-read or lend out, keep the games that I will actually play again some day, and admit to myself that that will never happen with 90% of them.
Not healthy? Thatās a very strong claim. Why pathologize ownership? I particularly donāt understand pathologizing emotional attachment! Thatās, like, a good thing. I get that it isnāt fashionable to have a lot of stuff without feeling bad about it. Iāll even admit that it can be a huge pain when it comes time to move. But to discard perfectly serviceable, useful things just because you donāt see an immediate use for them is a silly waste. Itās enhanced consumerism ā youāre still buying the things, you just now have to buy them again and again because you didnāt want to be bothered to store/organize them.
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Okay, itās not healthy for me, because Iām not personally able to keep all this stuff clean and organized while also holding down a job and having a life, which means Iām surrounded by clutter and filth and it makes me miserable. Some people can have a house full of a lifetimeās worth of knick-knacks and make it look beautiful and full of character instead of like the dumpster behind a college dorm, but Iām not one of those people, and living this way is not healthy for me. I need to minimize for the sake of my sanity.
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Is it less healthy than stressing yourself over the keep-or-throw dilemma? Why not just being happy with having the thing on hand?
Also, sanity is overrated.
Because I tried just hoarding everything for about fifteen years, and it always, always gave me far more stress than happiness. And if I did suddenly want to retrieve something I had saved, most often I couldnāt find it because of all the other crap.
I appreciate that youāre trying to help, but Iām not just suddenly deciding to worship some flaky guru, Iām speaking from years of lived experience. Have you ever watched one of those TV shows about chronic hoarders? Do those people look happy to you? Iām trying not to become that.
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Itās a spectrum. My Mumās a hoarder. A proper one like on the telly. She has a deep emotional attachment to piles and piles of horrible trinkets and festering junk and she canāt bear to part with any of it. Itās made her house uninhabitable and causes the whole family a lot of stress.
Iām going to guess you donāt have anything like that level of attachment. There is plenty of scope for sound mental health and large rambling collections of stuff with great sentimental value, and there is definitely pathologically dangerous attachment to stuff at another end of that spectrum.
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āI should have told ya, that the things that you love start to own yaā. Wise words from the Happy Mondays, Judge Fudge
Note that very few of the people yammering about clutter actually reduce their consumption in useful ways
Who said it has anything to do with reducing consumption? When I declutter, Iām usually getting rid of crap I no longer need or want to have around. I get rid of physical books after I read them because if I want to read it again, Amazon can get it to me right now digitally or tomorrow if I want a physical book.
I would wager that people who do regular purges actually consume more than average.
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My wife told me to āvalue people, not thingsā and I thought ābut people die.ā
I actually managed to not say it out loud.
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After some losses I had, I would say it loud.
Worse, peopleās priorities change, they get families or at least significant others, move away, and so onā¦ and the loss is there even if they stay alive. Thatās sort of worse, as people donāt usually die of their own will, and even in that case there wonāt be anybody else to prefer investing their time into.
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And sometimes you value the things because you value the people who gave them to you. It can be especially true if that person has died, or is on the other side of the planet.
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