How do I de-clutter?

It's got to me again! I've spent most of tonight (whilst intermittently getting distracted by other peoples blogs or skim watching TV) clearing a tiny corner of my living room, lounge, or whatever else you might want to call it. I do this periodically and never finish the whole room. In fact I do it in every room and never finish any of them. Having moved (years ago) from a very small house with a very large cellar, to my minute (but could look good if I didn't smoke in here and got rid of all the clutter) one bedroom flat with no extra storage space, I still haven't managed to get rid of enough stuff to have room to move about in here.

Anyway, to waffle on a bit more, the reason I started this time was so that I could move my shiny new widescreen laptop (it might be a laptop but it's not an overly portable one) off the chair that I'd moved directly in front of the sofa to somewhere a little bit safer. I've managed that now (it's still right by my favourite sofa spot), but on looking around I've got a very nice laptop space but have just moved everything else onto the floor, table, old PC desk (with the old PC still there) and various bookcases. In fact I haven't really made a whole lot of difference!

The problem is I find it really difficult to get rid of things. Over the past year I've managed to move out 20+ black bin bags of old clothes, and get rid of other stuff, but as fast (well, probably not that fast) as I do that, I replace it with even more stuff.

Books are one big problem. I never used to be able to get rid of any. In fact I abandoned a load at my mum and dad's many years ago (and they're still there, and I keep adding to that collection), I also took a load to one of the local market stalls at one point. I do still however have 3 bookcases full that I can't bring myself to get rid of. As an avid reader the collection kept growing so last year I joined the Read It Swap It site thinking that I could stop adding to the collection by getting rid of a book every time I got a new one. That doesn't work, I still buy new books and will often swap the ones I don't want to keep for ones to add to my favourite authors collection. I think I need a new job that pays enough for me to be able to buy a huge house so I can have a room set aside as a library!

Anyway, I've started again, and told people here this time, so let's see how far I get. If anyone has any advice on how to let go of things (I always think they might come in useful at some future point even though I will happily acknowledge that I haven't used, looked at, thought about, them for ages), please let me know. I really do need to just dump loads!

Sorry, not an exciting post I know. Maybe when I do manage to declutter I will find more interesting things to post about...