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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