I knew exactly what she meant: with my wife four months pregnant she was already finding it tricky moving around the books that filled our flat. We needed to sell the flat so we could buy a house with a nursery. And more space for books.

“Look,” she continued, “I’ll be blunt. If you want to sell your flat, you should put most of your books into storage. You’ll have to pack them anyway for the move, so that’ll be an item off your to-do list.”

We were doubtful, but she was insistent – and in the end, we were glad we put our books into storage. The flat sold within two months of us packing up 38 metres of books, and here’s why.

A few books look great – too many books do not

We got advice from an interior designer, who looked at the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves either side of our fireplace and said a very wise thing: ‘If you look at a shelf and think that looks a bit empty , you’re on the right track.’ The spaces on the shelves made the room look appealing instead of… cluttered.

Home viewers do not see your books the way you do

A property that people want to buy and the property you live in day-to-day are very different. It might be convenient and comforting for you to have your books to hand; but a property buyer – even a book-loving property buyer – does not have the same emotional attachment as you do, and those floor-to-ceiling book shelves are oppressive to many viewers.

Books make your rooms look smaller

Books gobble up the space – particularly if they are crammed in. Extra furniture makes it difficult for a buyer to eyeball the size of a room, and to visualise what it will look like when they live there. Putting our books into storage opened up the space in the flat and made it easy for potential buyers to understand what they were looking at.

The move to storage benefitted us in another way, too.

Storing our books made the move much easier

Instead of unpacking and shelving 50 metres of books within the first few days after moving, we picked up a few boxes at a time from the self-storage unit and did it in stages. We even found ourselves returning a few boxes to storage – for example, it made sense to pack away books relating to hobbies and crafts that I wouldn’t have time for once the baby arrived. I knew I’d want them again one day, though, and they’d be waiting for me safe in a climate-controlled self-storage unit.

Books are very much tied up in our identity as a family and they will always be part of our home, but once we’d experienced the freedom of using self-storage as our own private archive department, we never looked back.

With your books safely in storage you can save money on your self-storage insurance with us at www.storeandinsure.co.uk