Socks, 50 cents

Two years ago, I got it into my head to weed the odd socks out of my life. I placed a basket on a chest of drawers, and every time I came across an odd sock while folding the laundry, I put it in the basket. If, after several loads of washing, its brother turned up, then well and good. But if it didn’t, then that odd sock was transferred to the “rags bag” (actually another basket) to await use as a cleaning cloth. The months rolled by, but the number of socks in the odd socks basket never diminished. How was this possible? Finally, my boyfriend revealed that the odd socks basket was where he went for a pair of clean socks each morning.    

Many people tend to mention the words tattoo and regret in the same breath. But tattoos, if anything, speak of the futility of regret. We can’t change our past, whether we are physically marked by it or not, so why bother yearning to?

Before I became a confirmed op-shopper, I used to hang on to receipts for everything. I wanted to be able to change my mind; wanted to believe that nothing was set in stone. I kept the tags on new clothes until the very last moment before the very first wear, and read new books as if they were fragile artefacts. The receipts were all filed away, together with a repertoire of excuses for getting away with exchanges and refunds. But I never try to return clothes or books I've bought from an op shop. Well, I do "return" clothes and books to op shops all the time, but these returns are otherwise known as straight-out donations.



Bra inserts, 50 cents

Men don’t see enough breasts. From magazines to late night TV, it’s always the same breasts: rounded and sticking straight out. I’m surprised more men don’t fall about in disbelief when they discover that a date’s breasts aren’t rounded or sticking straight out but are perhaps conical or pointing down or two-thirds areola. Or that one breast is slightly larger than the other. This last little feature is quite common but isn’t generally an issue for a woman until she puts on a v-neck top and finds that the neckline is sitting askew. Luckily, a single bra insert can straighten things out.

Packet of briefs

I have twenty-five pairs of underpants. I didn’t think I’d ever have to tell anyone that, but then I got chatting to a couple from my children’s kindergarten and they wanted to know how I managed to get away with doing just two loads of laundry a week. The husband, in particular, found my response a revelation - he’d thought seven pairs per person was some sort of legal limit. Of course, I didn’t tell them that I bought my underpants from op shops, so I didn’t have to explain that packets of unused underpants weren’t actually all that hard to find.