At the beginning of this year I had only two goals.
These were simple and achievable and designed to enhance my quality of life only very incrementally.
I wanted to start forming good, everyday habits; nothing drastic and certainly nothing complicated.
My first goal involved sunscreen and my face in combination.
Having read that New Zealanders age 10 million times faster than anyone else in the world because of the nifty wee hole in the ozone layer I decided that it was in the best interest of my skin to commit to a slightly slimier face.
So far, in spite of the distant scream at the back of my mind telling me that it's too late and my skin has already soaked up all the UV it could ever need, I've been pretty good at sticking with this seemingly simple daily routine.
I inevitably look at myself in the mirror every day anyway, so I might as well be rubbing oil into my skin while I'm doing it.
Sticking to my second goal hasn't been so easy because it involves a moderate level of motivation and organisation.
I have never, in all my 21 years of living, been able to keep any bag tidy.
I promised myself in December 2014 that 2015 would finally be the year that my bag would be free of extraneous chewing-gum wrappers, receipts, half-eaten muesli bars, unopened mail, foreign currency, dusty tubes of lipstick, and used tissues.
Never again would my bag being kicked over in class cause me such an acute sense of shame.
Things were going OK.
On New Year's Day I emptied the contents of my satchel into the bin and started from scratch.
For a time I was throwing out receipts as I acquired them and I wasn't embarrassed when somebody would ask to get something out of my bag.
But it is March now and my resolve is weakening.
About a month ago there was a red wine ooze in my favourite leather satchel and rather than properly cleaning it up I simply waited for it to dry and resigned myself to writing in notebooks that give off a distinctly vinegary odour.
Last week I did throw out a half-eaten, fluff-coated chocolate bar, but it wasn't until after it had imparted all of its stickiness on to my coin purse.
My only solace is that I am not alone.
As I have been sitting writing this column my flatmate has been very slowly and sadly sorting through her rucksack ephemera.
For a while she was standing by the sofa gazing at a small, red rosette wondering where it had come from, why it was in her bag, and why she was having so much trouble parting with it.
It is probably safe to say that those of us with health hazard handbags are generally of the hoarding variety.
By my philosophy you have to be absolutely certain that you aren't going to need something before you toss it or give it away.
This philosophy, however, is obviously pretty flawed because it can be quite difficult to apply when you're talking about chewed gum in a bus ticket stuck to the bottom of your bag.
Sometimes, if you can convince yourself that everything in the bag is a lost cause, it is easier to just discard the entire thing and start anew.
Writing about how revolting my bag is has, unsurprisingly, not made me feel any more inclined towards cleaning it out.
In fact, I'm going out tonight and I am already considering what items will survive a trip out to Port Chalmers in a backpack riddled with blusher powder that was spilled sometime during October last year.
Millie Lovelock is a Dunedin student.
