When I was in high school my room was something that could have been featured in a Hoarders episode. Clothes everywhere, unmade bed, no rhyme or reason to anything in there. My parents just shut my door and gave me frequent sighs of disgust.
Somewhere between 17 and 27, I did a one-eighty. Now, disarray in my living area throws me into a tailspin to the point where I can barely function if there is a mess. I also freak out if I don't make my bed EVERY day. I actually got to the library one time last year and remebered that I hadn't made my bed (that, in itself, is surprising), so I drove home and made it. Otherwise, I would have thought about it all day and likely gotten very little done.
I am aware that this is not normal. Most likely, it verges on either such extreme anal retention it's diagnosable, or mild to moderate OCD. But, it also helps me maintain a sense inner peace.
I know that because of this necessity for organization to the utmost, I am a difficult roommate. I harp on cleanliness details others don't see (or don't care) and I drive people crazy with my OCD ways. That's why my current living situation of living with a guy is ideal, for the following reasons: a) guys inherently have no sense of DEGREES of cleanliness. They can walk into a room and survey that it is either one of two things: decent or disgusting. Anywhere in between is gray area, and off of their radar as to whether or not it's inhabitable. As my brother once said, "if it's not growing something, I probably don't clean it." While this statement sends me into panic attacks, he sees nothing wrong. And most guys don't. b) if you have anal retentive tendencies like me, you expect that a guy will never recognize the cleanliness factor that you expect to attain. While at first this seems like a negative statement, it actually works out quite well. Because my roommate could care less if the white counter has a coffee stain on it, he also rarely recognizes the overpowering smell of Clorox from where I spent 20 minutes trying to scrub the stain out. He also doesn't care if I rearrange items in the living room, move stuff around, or clean incessantly for stress relief.
This is not to say I don't get frustrated that he doesn't recognize cleaning - dishes in the sink is one of my pet peeves, and frequently I'm loading dishes from his dinner the night before just because I can't stand it. But, strangely, it doesn't really bother me because I know that he just doesn't see that something like "dishes in a sink" would actually bother someone. That's kind of where they live, right?
This week has been a bit different though, because we have a house guest. Also, for some inexplicable reason, water started pouring down the wall and into by bathroom and all over my floor last night, so I now have 3 or 4 towels spread out over my room. In short, my house is wreck. I had to stay home today to get a maintenance man to check on the water leak, so I couldn't escape the disarray. I realized, with equal feelings of horror and enlightenment, that I can't live in any form of disorganization. I never thought I was one of those "a place for everything and everything in its place" kind of people, because that always seemed so rigid and boring, but truthfully, I am.
In other news, I can't wait to clean tomorrow.
