"I wonder," I thought as I lifted the lid on the rubbish bin, "if that could be that piece of salmon I tossed in there last Thursday night?" It was. You would think that for more than $30 a kilo, Atlantic salmon left to steam for a few days would smell better. You'd be wrong.

So I weaved down the hallway with my evil-smelling garbage bag. I should have taken the stairs to the basement garage bin but took the lift. I always take the lift. It's my way of getting my value out of the body corporate fees. Back in my apartment, I took a cautious sniff and guessed that the smell probably would dissipate over the next 48 hours if I slept with the doors open.

Odours have been taking on a new significance in my life and it's beginning to worry me. Is it symptomatic of people who live alone that after a number of months they become odour sensitive?

Last week I found myself on my hands and knees in the bathroom, a position with which I am not totally unfamiliar. In younger days it usually involved clasping the toilet with both arms and making bagpipe noises after a particularly social Friday evening. These days it means I'm sniffing around like a Customs dog, searching for the smell I think I can detect coming from the shower drain but which I can't pinpoint.

Rather than find the source of the smell, I found two 5¢ pieces and an empty toilet roll. Then I think that there's a smell coming from the laundry, or maybe the washing machine, but I can never be sure. My treatment is to douse everything in disinfectant, consuming several litres of the stuff every few weeks. I have known female germ freaks in the past, lovely women but given to obsessive behaviour in the matter of real or imaginary germs. I was becoming one of them.

And then there was the matter of the new bed quilt cover, which looked wonderful on the bed. After a few weeks I decided it had to be washed. It wasn't dirty, but I decided it had to be washed. Here I was, a man who once recycled underpants if they passed the sniff test, now washing a bed quilt cover that wasn't dirty. (If you are unfamiliar with the procedure involved in administering the sniff test, I'm not about to enlighten you.) No one told me that when a once perfectly smooth bed quilt cover comes out of a washing machine, it dries with a surface like a prune, if you can imagine a blue and white prune the size of a queen-sized bed.

The carpets are now a constant source of grief. Armed with a can of spot stain remover, I stalk the apartment, can in one hand, vacuum cleaner in the other. Spray the cleaner on the dirty, filthy germy bits and vacuum them off. Within days, other spots have reappeared. Most of these seem to appear on that piece of carpet which lies between the kitchen and the lounge suite opposite the television set. Is there a pattern emerging here? Obviously, someone is breaking in at night while I sleep, cooking a meal and eating it while watching television.

Don't even begin to talk about the surface of the overhead kitchen cupboards. If you catch the light at the right angle, you can see dirty, filthy handprints all over them. The sort of imprint that a grease splattered palm might make while cooking and reaching for a plate or glass. Out with the Spray and Wipe!

A sure sign that I'm undergoing a sex change is a new found obsession with use-by dates. I used to apply the underpants sniff test to milk cartons to see if the contents were consumable. Now I check the date and if it has passed, I toss out the offending item. Any food more than a few days old is consigned to the bin. If only I could learn to empty the bin.

I've become so organised I have rows of former wine bottles filled with chilled water in the fridge. Not all the wine bottles, however, contain water, as my 19-year-old girlfriend discovered on a recent dry and dusty day while visiting from Sydney. She'd taken three gulps before I realised she was knocking a hole in a bottle of sauvignon blanc.

"Sorry, sweetie," she said, licking her lips and tightening her grip on the bottle. "I didn't realise it was a 2003 Cloudy Bay." I'm losing my blokiness and it worries me. If I start wearing an apron in the kitchen, I'm seeking professional help.