Many EYB and CookShelf members struggle with the same problem: more books than will fit on the available bookshelves. When adding more shelves is no longer an option, hard decisions must be made. When a new 'must-have' cookbook is calling your name, another book must go to make room for it. Finding a process for culling the collection becomes essential.

I don't have hard-and-fast rules governing when I will part with a cookbook. Instead, I have loose guidelines. If I make multiple recipes from a book and none of them lives up to expectations, it becomes easier to put that one on the "donate" pile. I'll give 1 or 2 disappointing recipes a pass, but the third dud usually seals the cookbook's fate. On the flip side, if I find one recipe that is sensational, I will probably let a few more mediocre recipes slide. If the ratio becomes too lopsided, I will eventually copy the great recipe(s) to my computer and let the book go to a new home.

Although it rarely happens, if I page through a cookbook and do not mark a single recipe with "I want to try this", that book is probably not going to stick around for long. If, however, I find a bunch of recipes that look interesting but each one requires trips to several stores to locate all the ingredients and days of prep, I become less attached to that book. However, that alone is not a deal breaker because I'm an optimist: I believe that one day I will have unlimited time to shop for esoteric ingredients and do fiddly cooking tasks. One day...

How long a cookbook sits around before I try a recipe is another factor, especially if it's a subject area that I cook from often. If I have one book that's a real winner, it becomes less likely that I will turn to another book in the same genre for a similar recipe. Occasionally I will have a cook-off between books to determine which stays and which goes. I'll make the same or similar dishes from each, and stack them up head-to-head. The problem arises when I do mix-and-match cooking, taking seasoning inspiration from one book but using a technique from another. How do I choose between them? Technique often wins that fight.

The area I really struggle with is when an author has a large number of cookbooks, but not all of them appeal to me. I like to have the 'whole set', even if I actually use only three out of a dozen books. I have given away entire sets rather than break them up. In those cases I copy the recipes I really like and store them on my computer.

There are times when the decision to part with a cookbook is not that difficult. Sometimes you grow out of a cookbook - one that once seemed vital now feels simplistic, so perhaps that can be passed along to someone who is behind you on the learning curve. Still, it can be painful to part with a book that made you a better cook. Maybe a book was given as a gift but it never quite fit into your cooking style, so giving it to someone who will use it makes sense.

Even though I have established processes to help me manage my cookbook collection, frequently I decide that the best decision is, in fact, to get another bookshelf. There are still rooms in my house without cookbooks, after all. What are your strategies for deciding when to part with a cookbook?