This, my friends, it part of what remains of three Ikea Benno CD towers shortly after an hour of fevered dismantling yesterday afternoon.

The discs have been crated up and put away in a quiet corner; shelves, wooden dowls, hex screws and allen bolts have been consigned to the Dutch refuse authorities.

There's been a lot of talk about the death of 'stuff' in recent weeks, but this is my first venture into the digitally empowered world of decluttering inspired by one too many relocations in the past two and a half years. Living in the centre of Amsterdam also requires a smaller furniture footprint. Something had to give.

For the time being, the book shelves are safe, but with a Kindle and iPad in the house, I don't see too many mainstream print and paper purchases in the coming months. Reference books, which probably have to work hardest to justify their existence, are still safe. The really hefty volumes: photography, cinema, history have a lifetime preservation order.

Actually, there's more to this than content going digital. Although I've ripped most of the CDs to my hard drive, I'm writing this while listening to the first CD I ever bought*, not on an MP3 player, not on iTunes but on a laptop streaming from Spotify. In other words, getting rid of stuff depends on a suitably elegant user experience to replace the void.

Meanwhile I'm wondering how the furniture designers of Almhult will respond. As we start to shed physical media, reversing a trend that started with printing press five hundred years ago, they're going to need something a bit more lucarative than this three dollar iPad stand made from spare Ikea parts.

* Not telling.