Useful or Beautiful

Today has been a crazy day with impending deadlines for work and personal stresses. While taking a break from the hustle and bustle I noticed the most recent item in my RSS feed.

“Have nothing in your house that
you do not know to be useful,
or believe to be beautiful.”

- William Morris

(originally via mnmlst.com/quotes but I found it via swiss-miss.com)

My wife and I are actively downsizing our home and have had several ongoing conversations that go something like this:

Spouse 1: 'Honey, does this go in the Goodwill pile?'

Spouse 2: '...... No, [insert relative] gave us that for [insert occasion].'

Each of us has played both of those roles; sometimes it's hard to get rid of the things that don't follow Mr. Morris' rule of thumb simply because of who gave them to you. How do you have those hard 'time to get rid of it' discussions about the things that aren't so beautiful and definitely not useful?