Cleaning up, for me, tends to be an effort in moving mess around. The first few hours of cleaning seem to generate more mess than they remove, and being all ADD-y and having the attention span of a gnat, it's rare that I'll get beyond those first few hours. I'll decide to clean up invisible messes (the one under my bed, the one in my pantry, the one at the bottom of the wardrobe), and as a first step pull everything to where it can be seen. Then I'll lose interest.

In the best case scenario, I'll get things done, but rarely the things I intended to do. In much the same way that I find it vitally important to read physics texts when I have a gender studies essay to do, and that I used to find it vitally important to read slashfic back in the day when I had physics assignments to do, the prospect of cleaning up fills me with the urge to alphabetise my bookshelves instead of picking up the reams of paper that are typically all over my floor.

Today was a sad day. Nearly two years ago, I bought a bright, patterned backpack, which I referred to as my happy-pants-bag, out of the bargain bin at the camping supply store on campus. Oh, how I loved that bag. I sewed a giant Sesame St patch onto the front, and never had trouble finding it in an exam room. It was great. Needless to say, I was devastated when the bottom fell out of it after about a year of hard use. I ignored the holes for awhile - what's the loss of a few pens, after all? - but when they progressed to the point that my glasses were falling out, it was time for a new bag.

I went back to the camping place. I rummaged in the bargain bin. I was enormously surprised to find another, identical happy-pants-bag there. It served me well for another year, and a couple of weeks ago it started to disintegrate, too. I went back to the camping place. It's not there anymore.

Anyhow, for a week or so I've been the bored owner of a plain, dull, black backpack, which I fully intend to tart up as soon as I figure out what I want to do, and today I decided to bite the bullet and install my stuff. Not in my usual way, either, which generally consists of upending one bag into the other. No, I was going to throw out the useless junk, put stuff that didn't need to be in my bag away - the whole nine yards.

What an undertaking it was. There wasn't so much junk as I'd thought - a few bus tickets, some receipts, a phone number with no indication of who it belongs to - but an astonishing array of the little bits and pieces that make life bearable (and bags mysteriously heavy).

Dozens of loose pens and highlighters - also a perfectly serviceable pencilcase with a box of pacer leads, a tiny padlock and a bulldog clip in it.

An empty water bottle.

Folder and course brick. Three novels - two for uni, one for fun.

Discman and headphones. No CDs.

Phone.

Two sets of keys - 'B' for Beck and 'E' for Ethel.

One set of glasses and the case for the other.

Tiny tape deck - has made a real difference to the haphazardness and incomprehensibility of my lecture notes. Listening and writing not so much my forte.

Wallet.

One lemon. No, not in any sort of metaphorical sense.

Last year's student card with the photo cut out for use in this year's student card (still invalid due to not being laminated or having a photo attached).

Payslip from work.

Bud earphones that I can't use, due to having one ear pierced in such a way that the earphone is either uncomfortable, or too precarious to bother with.

Two kinds of cigarettes and three ways of lighting them.

Notebook-cum-journal-cum-scrap paper.

Glustick.

One AA battery - dead.

One watch battery - status unknown.

Phone number written on a post-it, with no identifying marks whatsoever. Am not game to phone it in case it's the Lebanese bus driver named George that tried to pick me up last year by telling me that he 'ran over a woman once ... not very much, just over her foot'. I got off the bus at the next stop.

List of people that people phoning my house have been looking for ('Uh, hello, is this CARE Australia?')

Tiny key - no idea where from. Does not fit tiny lock found in pencilcase.

Sheet of paper with three potential thesis topics on, plus link to dirty website courtesy of an engo mate.

Mobile - always on, always on silent, never answered.

Too many bus tickets to be worth counting.

One muesli bar. Cherry flavoured. I hate cherry.

One sock. Total mystery, beyond saying that I lose socks at a rate of knots. Seriously, I currently appear to have two pairs of socks. One pair of which is made up of two mismatching socks. I swear I had more at one point.

It is probably not to my credit that I put almost all of this stuff into my new bag.