Yesterday I purged my room. I just grabbed everything in my bed room and dumped it in a big pile in the living room. Everything on the floor, on my desk, on my shelfs. I cleaned all my dusty furniture, rearranged it and then sat down to sort through all of my junk. I tossed out all the things i had kept for no reason. It was harsh. There is now a pile of things that can be scavenged by other family members, before it is donated to the salvos.

The Pile is made of:

Books I do not like (mostly from a writing competition i won in grade 7, the prize was a box of horrible young adult fiction). You guessed it… Christmas Presents I did not ask for. Talia and Luke (one or both?) gave me a beautiful wooden book with hand made paper inside as a Christmas present. I wanted to keep it but… who was i kidding, i couldn’t use it to write in, it was too pretty, and what is the point of having it sitting in my shelf doing nothing? They gave me another giant hand-carved book which is also useless as it is too good to write in… i haven’t become enlightened enough to throw that away though. A silver neck chain thing my mum bought me for Christmas. I don’t were it, i never asked for it, it has no purpose. A very cool photo frame given to me years ago… i still haven’t put any photos in it, and i never will because I’m just not a photo frame person! I hate posing for photos, I hate taking photos, I don’t desire to look at photos. sorry - thats just the way i am. The web cam, another Christmas present i never wanted, an old MP3 player that was expensive but is now obsolete, living in the dusty shadow of my video I-pod. All gone. A lot of very pretty wooden things, statues, bottles, candles I had them all sitting along my desk. But they served no purpose, i didn’t feel happy when i looked at them, they just took up space, so why was i keeping them?

I felt very depressed admitting that I actually did not want any of my Christmas presents. That i actually hadn’t wanted most of them to begin with. I am very hard to buy for and for many years I haven’t even given my parents a wish list because i just didn’t want…anything. And I wish they hadn’t bought me anything. Just made a donation to some starving children, which is something i would have really enjoyed.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the cost of something has nothing to do with its actual value. My web cam was rather expensive, but it was worth less than nothing to me. But for my eighteenth my brother Hayden made me a beautiful card which didn’t cost him anything but is now one of my most treasured possessions. I would pay hundreds of dollars for each of my three Melina Marchetta books, and they only cost about $20 each.

So this Christmas, I am trying to get people things that have real value. And i want people to do the same for me. I don’t want to be stuck with another stocking full of waste-of-moneys, so I’ve diligently typed out a list for Santa of all the things i really crave but cannot buy for myself due to the frugal anticipation of my trip to Israel. The list is pretty much… books. I’m not going to kid myself anymore. I love books. I crave books. I hoard and treasure books. The feeling of finishing a good book, is like sexual climax. I want to be an author for goodness sake! Books are not a waste of space, they are not useless objects like so many other things are, they are emotions and thoughts, and people and worlds all inking into paper. They are little portholes into other dimensions! Imagine that! I have a little collection of port holes!

I still have a while to go before my room is perfect. I have to create a system to file all my necessary papers away. And i still haven’t purged and reorganized the wardrobe. But i am already feeling much freer. I am slowly moving towards my goal of ultimate material minimalism. My ideal state is to be able to fit all my worldly possessions into one bag. Then i will be able to go where the wind takes me. Travel to France on a whim, boat up the amazon river. Things you cant do when you have a house and a dog and cupboards full of things i cant let go of. Plus… I feel that the emphasis people place on material possessions is really deluded. almost as if everyone is brainwashed, and i wouldn’t be surprised. Like my friend Gem said, “If your not happy now, do you really think buying a new TV is going to miraculously change your life?” (psst, the answer is: no).