In this case we should learn to do with less.

As a rule our houses are crowded.

If we are able to buy a few good things, we are apt instead to buy many only moderately good, for lavish possession seems to be a sort of passion, or birthright, of Americans.

It follows that we fill our houses with heterogeneous collections of furniture, new and old, good and bad, appropriate or inappropriate, as the case may be, with a result of living in seeming luxury, but a luxury without proper selection or true value.

To have less would in many cases be to have more--more tranquillity of life, more ease of mind, more knowledge and more real enjoyment.
There is another principle which can be brought into play in this case, and that is the one of buying--not a costly kind of thing, but the best of its kind.