Much to my parents’ disagreement, I love order in my life. I could be the psychologist and bore you with incidents and experiences growing up that make me want certain things in a certain order or tasks done a certain way, but they would probably just be excuses for my craziness. We’ll just say that I am meticulous about some things because it is something that I have total control over. Life may be unpredictable, but at least my books will be in perfect order. The paperbacks (fiction) are alphabetical, and then the hardcover (fiction) books are alphabetical. The non-fiction is organized into the topics—no I do not go as far as the Dewey Decimal System (I don’t have a big enough collection for that). My “library”—as I call it—is in the guest room of my parents’ house…aka my dad’s office. My dad often places his stuff on one of my library shelves, which is a big no no. I not only take his “stuff” off the shelf, I then have to go the hundreds of books to make sure that nothing else invaded or messed up the order of the books.
A few other quirks I have:
My closet has to be organized so that there are the pants part (denim on one side, dress pants on the other), a top part (tee-shirts on one side, blouses on the other), a coat part (casual coats on one side, dress coats in the middle, winter coats on the other side) a dress part (formal dresses on one side, summer dresses on the other), and a baseball jersey part like every all-American girl’s closet should have.
Colored pencils and crayons need to be organized like a rainbow in their boxes (when you are looking for a certain hue of blue, it is a lot easier to find if the blues are together) and pencils, pens, and highlighters need to be kept in their separate piles, and all need to be facing the same way—it does not matter that they are in a drawer that no one will see.
The kitchen is a big stressor for me. The fridge should only have magnets that a) match b) have meaning or c) a and b. Photos or a few important notes can be on the fridge, but none of these should overlap because then it is too much of an overload for my mind. I collect magnets from places I visit, so that my fridge when I move out has just meaningful magnets with meaningful pictures underneath them. The organization of the contents in the fridge is also very important. Things like orange juice or pickles cannot be next to the milk, nor can they be next to each other. I think about (the impossibility) of them mixing and it turns my stomach. I also don’t like raw meat anywhere near anything. AND mayonnaise does not belong in the fridge; it belongs in the trash! Cutting boards in the kitchen—there should be one for raw meat and however many for anything else. Dirty dishes should be cleaned, but if I am lazy (which, unfortunately, I often am) they should be rinsed and in the sink (by this time, it’s easier just to finish washing them, dry them, and put them away). At no time (unless doing the dishes that minute) can there be water in the sink. The sink in the kitchen should be turned on and off with your wrist.
My toiletries also have certain places. My floss, toothbrush, toothpaste and any other teeth-related objects cannot be in the same drawer as anything else. My extra towels and cleaning supplies are under the sink, but they cannot touch one another.
My special quirks don’t stop at my house. No I have freak-out sessions away from the house. After filling up my car with gas, I have to use hand-sanitizer on my hands, the steering wheel, the door handle, the keys, the radio and anything else I may have touched. I have been told that hand-sanitizer doesn’t really kill anything and that it may even just kill the good germs, but it is a psychological thing I must do. Door handles in bathrooms must never be touched. I love when they put the trash bin next to the door. When they don’t, I have to use my shirt as a protection barrier between my hand and the door handle. I hate to break this to you, but there has not been days that I do not see someone just walk out of a bathroom without washing their hands. Just thinking about that makes me want my hand-sanitizer.
So there you have it—I am very obsessive compulsive. I am also very scatterbrained. In other words I describe myself as having an obsessive-compulsive brain without the capability to uphold it. I often find my closet in disarray, the orange juice next to the milk, dirty dishes in the sink and when I start my “who put the...” tantrum, my mom informs me that it was me—and it often is me who did it. I like things done a certain way, but I rarely put them in that way.
This is the reoccurring theme in my life: I spend a good week or nine organizing and reorganizing my room, the kitchen, my bathroom and my library. It stays organized for a time. Sometimes it’s a month and other times it’s an hour or two. Slowly—or quickly—entropy takes place and everything becomes out of sorts. I deal with this until it drives me absolutely berserk and then I spend a week or nine putting everything back in order.
Funny side note: in one of my need to be organized frenzies, I took everything out of the kitchen and out then put it back in a way that made sense to me—at the time. “At the time” is the key thing here because after a year and a half of it being organized this way, I still have no idea where anything is.
Today is exactly two-weeks since I have been away from Dublin and organizing my life back home is keeping me sane—or insane depending on how you want to look at it. I have literally cleaned out my room five times and organized the library twice. I haven’t gotten to my bathroom, the kitchen, or the laundry room yet, but in time I’ll get there. I strive for perfection in my life especially when I don’t know where it is headed. I need order to anchor me and so I organize.
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