I have been trying to buy replacement sports bras and a BBQ recently. These exercises are ridiculously hard – not because there is nothing available, but because there are far too many things available.

I bought a first sports bra in 1992 when I went to the United States and discovered the existence of sports bras. They were a revelation – a bra that functioned when you were exercising and was as acceptable to be seen in as a swimsuit. When I bought my first one, and for a considerable number of subsequent years, all I remember having to think about was the size and colour of the garment. There were very few options.

Today it's a different experience. I mostly purchase items online because we live rurally. Clothing is always a bit trickier to buy than other items because it needs to fit. However, sizing and returns assist in that process. I embarked on an online search – I'm pretty good at online searches. Could I find the simple sort of sports bra that I have bought for years? I could, but it took a lot of searching. I could find multitudes of sports bras with all sorts of complex strappy backs and different cuts for the front and different amounts of support and different amounts of padding and a wealth of colours and new sorts of sizing systems but all I actually wanted was a simple black sports bra like my ones that are now five years old or more.

Finally I found what I thought I was looking for, searching for the existing brands I own. What a relief, three plain black Nike sports bras purchased online to be delivered by a courier. They arrived. I unpacked them. I discovered something I had never considered – sports bras may have removable pads in the chest or non-removable pads in the chest. I don't know when pads started to be added to sports bras, although I know I have thrown a lot away. I had no concept that pads might be sewn in creating a bra that feels more like a piece of body armour than a supple undergarment.

I looked at returning the bras for a different model, but Nike had nothing further of the type I wanted. Off I went to search online again with the new knowledge that I must investigate whether padding is sewn in or removable. Finally, UnderArmour appeared to have something approximating what I want, if not identical. Unfortunately, I can't tell you whether my search is yet successful because it takes four weeks to get their goods from Australia. I remain hopeful.

My search for BBQs has paralleled the bra search. We have a simple BBQ with the metal body of the BBQ set in a nice wooden wheeled frame. It's twenty years old but that isn't an inherent problem, except the BBQ is no longer reliable and an unreliable BBQ is very little use. Sometimes the gas burners work and sometimes they don't and, despite the simplicity of the workings of a BBQ, we haven't been able to figure out the issue.

I thought it would be easy to buy another very simple 3 burner BBQ, perhaps even buy something that would slot into our existing stand to minimise what we had to purchase. I needed to think again. If you want a BBQ that slots into something, you pay $1500 or more for a very large BBQ that fits into an outdoor cooking set-up. Okay, that wasn't a goer, how about a simple BBQ on a stand? If you want a wooden stand you can forget that too – stands are now either black or very shiny silver metal. Who wants to polish their BBQ? Not me!

Okay, no slot-in BBQ, no simple wooden stand. We go to the hardware store because the online search isn't working well. There are thirty BBQs at Mitre10 and they should be ordered in rows according to price because what we want is the cheapest one that cooks things adequately. However, the cheapest BBQ is way larger than what we have – it has four burners rather than three and a stand the size of a small hovercraft. We give up for the time being.

Along with a plethora of things for sale, which presumably are intended to make you want to buy more given the multiplicity of choices, society is continually bombarded with images of dream homes. I think dream homes are about as realistic as dream careers – nothing is actually a dream when it comes to living in it or working in it. They all have their upsides and downsides. However, I have been participating in the dream home concept in that our home is on a House & Garden Charity Tour for breast cancer this weekend. As part of the thank you package for letting eighteen hundred people go through your house (which included bathroom products I neither need nor want and gave to the volunteers, and pet food our cats don't like so will have to give to other cats), I got two free tickets to tour all the other homes.

My friend and I treadled around eight different homes in the Dalefield-Arrowtown-Gibbston area. We had a great day with stunning blue skies and little wind. We had a great time, made particularly great by our tour being on bikes. We didn't see anyone else biking – bad luck them we thought as people negotiated in and out of very full car parks.

Many of the houses were recently built stunning set pieces. Really stunning. Super super stunning. The houses had huge views. Huge expanses of mown lawns. Huge tall windows which were sparkingly clean. Huge hallways. Huge televisions in every room.Huge bedrooms where there were  beds with mattresses so thick I can't imagine any princess could feel a pea, and ten pillows and cushion of every possible shape reclining on the many layers of covers. Three kitchens and an outdoor cooking area. An indoor pool with five inflatable rings and three swiss balls beside it. A garage with bicycles on wind trainers and running machines facing projection screens despite there being quite pleasant scenery when you go out the door and a walking and cycling track two minutes distant. A five hole putting green stretching in front of the house. Hectares of mown grass. We discovered that there is special plush grass for plush houses.

At the end of the day of touring houses I came home and felt happy. I'd seen a few interesting ideas of how to build and how to decorate. However, mostly what I had seen was not where I wanted to live. I returned to unmown grass, no televisions, no garage door, Moana the moa looking at our swimming pond which is not icy blue but where you are surrounded by trees and sky, beds with the one pillow you need to sleep on, a single kitchen which is not black and lacks a butler's pantry, a multitude of down jackets in bright colours for every season and activity to go with the bicycles and boots in the car port. What a relief to remember that what I have is exactly what I want.