I recently discovered I am in the possession of rubbish bags that are scented with lavender aromas. This both surprised and annoyed me all in the one go. I understand and appreciate the innovators at GLAD who are putting lab time and man power into taking bin liners to the next level – it was the generally excessive lengths consumerism seems to be reaching that was actually bothering me.

This is one of my latest Single Life discoveries: my care and attention for materialism has sunk to an all new low. I can buy anything I want, except, yes, the one thing I really want. In response to this my brain seems to have launched a counterattack on the purchase of unnecessary items. This is not ideal. Number one: it means I can’t temporarily fill voids by acquiring expensive shoes. Number two: my brain is inadvertently robbing me of the result of materialistic void filling: a burgeoning killer wardrobe filled with hyper quality goods – and it would be getting a pretty healthy injection at the moment. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll be the first person to drop a bomb on a man bag or a pram when I need to, I’m just currently sick of buying things for myself.

Over the years I have consistently sported a well-balanced talent for throwing money at a myriad of different items along the goods spectrum. I’m a woman: handbags and clothes have featured well. Then there’s home wares: cushions in three shades of beige and exorbitantly priced candles that I buy to burn. Checking prices has also never been a strong point: one morning I went in for milk and rolled out with a receipt for $40 and nine packets of Jack Link’s Beef Jerky. This was a point-of-sale display accident but in my oblivious daze I happily handed over the cash. I have an aversion to using discount vouchers of any kind.

A few weeks ago in an attempt to rectify my surprise new war-on-goods persuasion I set myself a spend challenge. The aim of course, to see if I couldn’t get some materialism back on the games board. I settled on an upward limit somewhere between over-the-top and relatively reasonable and gave myself a pass to blow it on whatever I liked. The challenge didn’t go well. I got bored in less than twenty minutes and removed myself from goods world: all the beautiful shiny things just seemed a little pointless. Madonna would be appalled by my behaviour. Clearly I hope this phase passes. I have DJ’s vouchers to spend.

Me and my sister have a thing. It’s a shared sibling future vision that marks the utopia of ultimate happiness and trumps over all else: the barbeque. At the barbeque, we’re with our men who we are madly in love with. While they hang around doing man things we do things like lean back in our chairs with our feet up on the edge of the verandah and sip red wine watching kids go wild. If I happen to be minxing around the kitchen ripping up cos lettuce and washing dishes in Helmut Lang, that’s fine. I don’t care what I’m wearing, I’d just like to make it to the barbeque.

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This is what my Mum told me last time she was in my kitchen, shaking me back and forth in a lovingly exacerbated way after watching me do something that would normally be described as OCD.  We’d had a few wines though so she told me to stop being Australia’s Greatest Ever Rock Band instead.

For as long as I can remember I’ve dabbled in a bit of the AC/DC: a comfortable fringe dweller in the healthy garden variety camp of obsessive behaviour.

At different junctures of life, I’ve picked up and put down different AC/DC activities. As a 3 year old, for instance, I enforced strict guidelines around the process of sock putting-on.  Perfect toe corner placement was of the highest imperative and when someone else is in charge of putting your socks on (that was my Mum) achieving the strived for perfection could prove quite the gruelling task for both parties involved.  After sock obsession, it was even number light flicking, chased closely by the somewhat less jubilant need to follow every good night with see you in the morning in a telepathic effort to guard against the death of an irreplaceable loved one in the night.

Today, I’m valiantly committed to wasting precious seconds of my days turning things on so I can turn them off.  If I’ve got the people-free space at the station and can bothered to do it, I like to position myself directly in the centre of the facing billboard while I wait for my train. I could write a book about the adventures of furniture alignment.

Clearly, I’m dealing with AC/DC tendencies that lend themselves largely to the pursuit of balance and perfection.

A bit like my friend at the Neatest Ever Ezy Mart in the World. Me and one of my girls had the pleasure of stumbling upon this Scandinavian-stark-white-clinic-like establishment a few weeks ago in between drinks. We perused the store, marvelling at wares like we were on a tour of the Palace of Versailles – reaching out but knowing we shouldn’t touch. Standout features include a 12×8 Allen’s lolly wall that would rival Tetris in an alignment challenge and armies of obedient chocolate bars that could only get that plastic-sheen perfect through polish. We did discover a few cleaning products that were out of place in the back room, but we straightened them up for him. As we reluctantly made our way out of this wondrous suburban phenomena, Ezy Mart man assured us that it wasn’t just us – he gets many compliments from many patrons. A proud band member of the AC/DC elite.

I went to high school and later university with a clever, very funny girl who one day at lunch recounted to a group of us her routine of the moment: The Tea Challenge. I can’t recall all the exact details but it essentially involved a highly organised sequence of mandatory tea-making steps and a monumental race against time – the kettle boil was her deadline. I’ve never graduated to anything quite that elaborate, but I could certainly relate. I have another friend who cleans the soap with soap.

Recently as I was taking an excessive amount of care distributing knives and forks evenly across the different sized compartments of the plastic cutlery thing in my dishwasher, I had a thought: is Single Life aiding and abetting my AC/DC? A reflective years-gone-by Obsession Analysis revealed interesting results. The boyfriend and men decades of the Teens and 20’s dished up a distinct lack of attention or time for obsession-fest. Rewind to the 80’s though and there’s carefree single little me in my 3’s with all the time in the world to create and defeat The Sock Challenge Daily. Today, it’s carefree single me in my 30’s up against all-new and exciting challenges. The carefree part’s a little more debatable though and granted, my concerns have definitely shifted from socks.

Hmm. Of this one I was unsure. Could that really be the AC/DC elixir? A chaotic husband and unaware children who innocently rob me of my supreme genetic disposition to achieve a five star level living environment, all-encompassing attention to creating soul-calming symmetry and a general aesthetic beauty in as many relevant scenarios as possible?

I know spent Wives and worn out Mums like to escape to day spas and weekend retreats to eat raw food and do yoga. If anyone’s looking for me, I’ll be at the Ezy Mart.

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