Things to Leave Behind

I once produced a television segment about de-cluttering your life.  Actually, I pulled together four such masterpieces – breakfast TV is a Groundhog burial site of repeated content (there’s only so many questions you can script for a candid in-studio chat with Elmo, but the shameless media whore keeps visiting Australia anyway).

In any case, brekky TV was often about becoming a brief, unwilling expert in a topic I couldn’t give two shits about – the salt content of cereal, the perfect Valentine’s Day gift, the reasoning of climate change sceptics … the annoying part was always the information I’d retain.  But no matter what, the rules of de-cluttering wouldn’t stick.

I’ve never been good at throwing things out.  Nothing proved that more thoroughly than packing up my life recently to move overseas.

There was an alarming range of inexplicable, dust-gathering crap.  I’m not talking generic crap, like every magazine I ever bought, or several large boxes of miscellaneous seashells – it was character specific, to say the least.

I’m a jeans girl by nature – in fact I’d say there are some people in my life who’ve only ever seen me sporting god’s gift to trouser material.  But my heart isn’t made of denim, it’s made of dreams and aspirations (and, on a biological level, some other stuff I’m sure), which explains why I found two separate piles of jeans labelled with these post-its:

'Fits, but not comfy' - thanks for the heads up Past Self

'Aspire to Fit (what the hell was I thinking?)' - now Past Self is trolling me... such a bitch

Yes, the piles were substantial, there were far too many pairs of pants… several of which had never been worn.  But there was also the belief that those post-its were so important to their accurate storage that they stayed with them when I moved inter-state two years ago.

Those weren’t the only notes addressed to me that I held on to – I had also stored every abusive missive anyone had ever left on my car windscreen.  I don’t know why… some of them have awful spelling, which was probably amusing at the time.

Still, I’m glad I did, because this particular message….

...helped jog the memory regarding the mysterious can opener in my collection.

Which I now recall purchasing in a fit of whimsy and leaving on my dashboard whenever I parked behind that same car.  Because there’s no higher former of comedy than a prop-based gag targeted at one person you’ve never actually seen, on the off-chance they’ll see it, remember something that pissed them off enough once to leave an angry note… only to be charmed by this jesting response.

That’s how my brain works sometimes.

Of course selling my car as part of Operation Hemisphere Change meant saying farewell to a wide array of novelty items I’d avoided throwing out for years.

I don’t know what I’ll do without that pen from that New York bar I got wildly drunk at once in 2007.  Will the Yaris even start without the hammer that lived under the passenger seat (in case the vehicle veered off a bridge and into a body of water)?  And who would even bother owning a car without keeping a monkey* and a top hat in it?

Eventually, the nostalgia of magical, but admittedly worthless objects from every moment of adulthood gives way to a brutal rhythm.  When trying to distil your life into a single suitcase, culling gets real.  The strange rat king of necklaces that has been slowly growing for 15 years goes in the bin, along with the hand soap from a bizarre little ghost hotel just outside of Bologna, and the yellow folder so optimistically labelled ‘Ideas’ that has remained empty for its entire existence.

As void of contents as the day it was made

Then there are the things that shouldn’t be hard to throw away at all.  Yet, when it came to my leg and arm braces, I paused.  Briefly, ridiculously, I wondered if I might still need them somehow.

At the very least it felt like they needed a ceremony.  Or a bonfire.  Instead they got a wheelie bin.

The things we hold on to often make so little sense.  Like the clothes worn to a funeral – bought on a frantic, blackly comic shopping spree because I hadn’t packed anything mourning appropriate.  I’d consciously chosen not to.  I thought it would be bad luck.  Because that’s also how my brain works sometimes.

I know I’ll never wear them again, and yet they were put in storage.

We accrue so much traveling through life.  Even when you know it would be better to let it go, it can still be hard to truly leave some of it behind.  Especially when it’s the kind of stuff that doesn’t need to be accounted for with removalists or airline baggage limitations. 

Often you don’t even notice you’re carrying it.  Some things will be with you forever.  And sometimes it’s a broken hairbrush you’ve had for 14 years.

Don’t worry, it’s gone to the great big Hairbrushery in the sky.  Because ‘Hairbrushery’ is a word.  It’s Painefull, for ‘fancy landfill’.

Painefull Out

* = Fyi, the monkey’s name was Jo.  I know that would have been a burning question.

There Was Movement At The Station... Geographical Movement

Some are creatures of the night, others are creatures from the lagoon, I am a creature of habit.  My natural habitat is a minute-perfect morning routine (including a staggered snooze button strategy), a permanent and excessive stock of tea bags, and jeans, always jeans.

I’m no longer allowed to order breakfast at my favourite café, because the slightly terrifying woman who runs it assumes it will be ‘the usual’ (and I’m too scared to argue).  A former housemate once declared himself flabbergasted when I didn’t shower, brush my teeth and dress in the usual order, throwing out the entire ecosystem of how he in turn knew to step around me.

My life of habit has also probably been assisted by staying in the same share house rental property for eight years.

Conventions are like annual plumbing-based house floods, eventually they just become compulsory.  Patterns are like neighbours whose names still escape me (unless they’re birth certificates happen to read ‘Cat Man’ and ‘Bin Lady’), they’re there whether you look for them or not.  Routines are like an oven that perpetually burns everything it touches, ultimately you just surrender and set them to music.

Eight years as a Gen Y who stayed in one address – I was either lazy, or rusted on.  Or, you know, both.

It was going to take an act of god, an interstate job, or an offer of royal engagement to pry me away… and to be honest, if a prince wasn’t willing to move into my share house, I’d have to question his commitment to the relationship.  Anyway, option B panned out before that became an issue.

I live in Melbourne now (Brunswick, The Land of Recreational Jugglers, to be exact, but I’ll get to that).

After the supreme trauma of uprooting my habit-laden existence, I thought the least I could do is offer a guide for other novice movers like me (I think there are two of you out there).  And so, without further ado, I present:

6 Painefull Steps to a Relatively, Sort of, Almost Painless Moving Experience*

1. When booking a mover, give extra points to the organisation that offers to transport your stripper pole.  That’s just thoughtful.

My air compressor AND my stripper pole?  How do they do it?

2. Invite some friends around, give them tea, and permission to throw out any items of clothes you own that they have long secretly hated.  Don’t be alarmed when you have no clothes left, though do be aware that if you give them scissors on request, they will use them.  When you find them using said scissors, take a photo, send it to your mother – at least someone in the family will derive joy from the event.

3. Get a tall friend to check the far, hidden corners of the built in wardrobe.  Don’t look too closely at what they find.

4. It’s an obvious one, but it has to be said: definitely, definitely pack your novelty top hat.  No matter what your mother says it will come in handy, I swear.  Eventually.

5. When the movers arrive several hours late, in the middle of the night, and inform you they can’t drive their truck into your street, and instruct you to hire another smaller truck, move everything yourself, then store it in an easily accessible storage facility they can pick it all up from in 3 days time… have Layla on hand.  She will scare the BEJEEZUS out of the movers, make them her Sherpa bitches, and promptly tell them to grab the bed because “We’ll just carry it all 100 metres up the hill to where you parked”.  Watch the removalist's blinking terror with satisfaction, and become deliriously pumped to an internalized soundtrack of ‘Sisters Are Doin' It for Themselves’.

6. Co-opt a bearded nephew to share driving duties down to Melbourne.  The beard is useful as it will help you acclimatise to the SHEER VOLUME of beards that will surround you once you arrive in Brunswick.

It turns out this is what a bearded nephew looks like when you make him wear your novelty top hat

Painefull Out

* = Steps require ownership of scissors, a tall friend, a top hat, a Layla and a bearded nephew.