Reading: Women of the Silk by Tsukiyama. This novel is set in China of the 1920s and 30s and concerns a young girl who is sold by her peasant family to a silkworking factory. There she becomes part of an idyllic community, the sisterhood of silkworkers. Although I'm enjoying the novel's glimpse into a little-known world, I find Pei, the protagonist, an uncompelling character. I think this is due to Tsukiyama's unengaging style. Too often, she tells instead of shows.

What to Discard?

With the colder weather we've been having, the temperature of Stephen and Matthew's room is positively arctic at night. We dress the boys warmly with undershirts under their fuzzy sleepers, cover them up with woolen blankets, and open the door to their room when Tab and I go to bed, but I worry that it is not enough. Time to set up the space heater in their room.

In order to do this, Tab needs to move their chest of drawers to the other side of their small room so that the heater will not be too close to the wall or to furniture. This means I finally had to do the long-postponed clean up of the bookshelves in their room so I could store the dozens of books and magazines scattered all over the room.

This project was one of the many on the list I made way back last spring when I decided to get our clutter under control. As I wrote back then, the problem is that we have too much stuff and too little space to put it all in.

This is especially true when it comes to books. Although I've curtailed book buying due to lack of funds, I have amassed a sizable collection over time. It took me from late morning until mid-afternoon to get them organized. I had to stack the books two levels deep on the shelves in order to get them all to fit.

I must say, though, it certainly looks better in there. With the piles of books and magazines off the floor, there is more room for the boys to play. The shelves are tidier than they have been in years, the books all neatly lined up at attention instead of lying languidly here and there.

Yeah, we have way too much stuff, but it wasn't always that way for me. I lived a spartan existence in Portland, Maine, with no furniture of my own in my small apartment except a futon and my great grandmother's rocking chair. When I moved down here in 1987, I could fit all of my possessions into the back of a small U-Haul trailer. Even then, I realized that was the last time I would ever travel so light.

Sometimes I look around at our houseful of furniture, books, and toys, and I long for that simpler existence. I feel weighted down by the accumulated mass of our material possessions. But how does one choose what to keep and what to throw away? Certain objects become imbued with memories and emotions; parting with them would mean excising family history. Do I throw out the countless knickknacks and mementoes of trips and friendships? The dog-eared copy of Good Night, Moon that was Daniel's first favorite book? The striped one-piece suit, sized 18-months, that made Matthew look like a character out of Dr. Suess?

Few of my books evoke those kinds of emotions, but I still hate to part with any. As I gaze at rows upon rows of books, so many of them old and dear friends, I take the kind of satisfaction a miser might in regarding piles of neatly wrapped coins and stacks of bills. I did manage to find a few books I could throw out: a 1993 Writer's Market, a Middle Atlantic bed-and-breakfast guidebook (copyrighted 1990), and a book about buying life insurance that I never opened.

Well, it's a start.

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