Published in On Our Selection News on October 13, 2016

Downsizing is hard.

I’m trying to condense all my stuff down to roughly enough to fit into my car boot.

But for someone who comes from a line of hoarders and manages to find sentimental meaning in nearly object she comes across, this is very difficult.

As a teenager my diaries were poorly kept and only really written as bonus material for my estate to sell to hungry fans after the globe mourns my tragic yet flamboyant death and the end of my brilliant career. So I don’t have as much of a written record of the ways I wasted my youth as I’d like. When you’ve got a serious sidefringe to maintain, you don’t have time to write about your day. Hence why I have several bottom drawers full of what things like packaging, old badges and cheap, broken jewellery.

I’m a little forgetful, so sometimes stumbling across these significant mementos/worthless junk every now and then reminds me of days gone by. They remind me of the time I made my friend a helmet out of cheese for her birthday. They remind me of that time I had a party at my aunty’s house while she was overseas and someone caught a possum with their bare hands. I needed that crap.

My hoarding was fine when it was confined to the walls of one bedroom. But as a roving disappointment moving from place to place, my stuff has now spilled to more than one room, and even to more than one address.

And with a big move just on the horizon, it isn’t wise to have my earthly possessions strewn across the countryside like the contents of a wheelie bin hit by a passing car.

I have a bag of clothes I need to get rid of but “haven’t got around to yet”. Having a dig through this clothing in limbo, I’ve pulled out a dress that had chains for straps, one of which droke at da clubz one night and was fixed by tying a straw between the two metal links. I have a frilly sock with a hole so big I can almost fit my fist through it. There’s a pair of second-hand jeans I turned into high-waisted shorts I wore so much the inner thighs are nearly translucent.

I can’t see myself wearing this stuff again, but I can’t bring myself to part with them.

I can’t sell this gear, partly because I don’t want to but mostly because my junk is worthless. It’s literally falling apart or covered in dust or faded beyond recognition. What I would pay for that object, with memories staining the fabric in off-putting brown splodges, would not be in line with the Average Joe’s price expectations. No one in their right mind would buy this garbage.

So I’m stuck with this gear that is too ratty to donate to charity, too much of an insult to sell and something I would feel bad about putting into landfill.

I’m stuck.

But hey, if you want to make an offer on my old Schoolies singlet with “Fannie” written on the back – let me know.