These are a really great size. They are large enough to hold quite a bit, but small enough to fit on a bookcase - and pretty enough to do so. I actually wanted them for a storage closet to hold a bunch of loose items that tend to get piled and don't stack well (such as candles and light bulbs). I was able to put them in a corner and stack. It works great for me because I put items in them that I don't need to access a lot. Since I had the vertical space, this is what worked best for me. The down side is that the bulky rope has to have knots on the inside to keep them in place, so, because of the thickness of the rope, it takes up some interior storage space.