You be the judge: should my boyfriend dump his hundreds of old CDs and DVDs?

The charge: Jarcinda

Records clutter up the house – and I can't remember the last time he used his collection

< p class="dcr-18sg7f2">I have been with my boyfriend Jerryl for almost two years, and 15 months ago he moved in with me. I found out that he likes to keep clutter outdated. We have hundreds of DVDs and CDs in the house. He doesn't like throwing stuff away, but I think he should adapt to the times and use streaming services.

He prefers physical copies of things and says it's special to have a DVD with a bonus feature that you can't find online. Jerryl has this romantic idea that he always goes through his DVDs and then chooses what to watch, but that's nonsense. In fact, I can't remember the last time he used his vast collection. His DVDs also take up a lot of space: an entire row on the TV cabinet, which leaves my plants crushed, and his CDs take up space in the bookcase, so I had to move my books.

I'm saving to buy a house, which will be smaller than the one we currently live in. There's no way I'm lugging 200 DVDs and heaps of CDs in there.

My loft is also full of Jerryl trash, like old suitcases and a pile from NME magazines from the 1990s. He also keeps 2000s clothes in our spare room – old-fashioned things like cable-knit sweaters and brown striped scarves. About a year ago, Jerryl found a chandelier down the street and wanted to put it in our house, but he's been in the guest room ever since.

The house is quite big, and I'm used to having a lot of space. Maybe I still consider it my place. Jerryl put an old poster of John F Kennedy in the guest room the other day without asking me and I didn't like it.

We're good at we agree on practical things, like decoration and kitchen utensils, but I think Jerryl is like an old lady with all her bric-a-brac. It has all this superfluous stuff and just looking at it stresses me out. When we finally get a clearance, I'll be the one to drive it all the way, because Jerryl can't drive. He should start sorting things out now, so in the future it will be easier for us.

Defence: Jerryl

My CDs are from when I was a teenager and carry a lot of sentimental value

I lived abroad before moving in with Jarcinda and had my things in storage. Since I moved in with her, she says she had to compromise more.

It's the first time I've kept all my stuff in one place, and now she wants me to throw some of it away. Some CDs date from my teenage years and have great sentimental value. I don't see why I should give it up because I'm not hurting anyone by clinging to it.

Admittedly, I don't subscribe to a certain minimalist existence, but I do not want to. I'm less emotionally attached to my DVDs, but I get lost in streaming services and find the choice of movies debilitating. There are also a finite number of movies on Amazon and Netflix; you can't always find rare ones.

Sometimes I want to watch the original version from Solaris or Drive, with bonus features and the director's interview . The last DVD I bought was a month ago - the third film in Richard Linklater's Before trilogy. Jarcinda says, "You don't listen to your CDs or watch DVDs regularly enough to justify keeping them with you." But how regular is regularity? I would love to lounge around all day, but life isn't like that. When it comes out, I watch an old movie alone, and it's nice to know that my collection is there when I need it.

I'm a nostalgic person, I am part of the CD and DVD Generation. Jarcinda too, but she thinks I should upgrade. She says she had to move her books two levels on the shelf, but it's only one. And I only have a small DVD shelf under the TV. NME magazines and superfluous clothes that I could get rid of, but I won't put my CDs in plastic sleeves. I've done this before and they are scratched and dented.

I can throw away more stuff when we buy our house. But it makes me happy right now, so why worry? Jarcinda and I are tidy; we just disagree on what deserves space. I see the therapeutic benefit of having lots of her plants around, so she should let me keep my stuff. It's good for my mental health...