An Unmade Bed…
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Gina wrote recently of her love for a clean, uncluttered top of the fridge. She hates to have stuff up there, where some folks might not even notice.Â
Py cannot stand to have any miscellaneous items in the car. Car must be clean and uncluttered at all times. The house? Not such an issue for him (as long as the bathroom is clean, he’s OK).Â
Maya’s Granny likes to have all of her books alphabetized. Not sure if she still sorts her clothes the way she used to…with different colored hangers for different seasons or whatever…
My sister likes to have EVERYTHING very clean, organized, and put in its proper place. (Easier when you have 3,000 sq feet like she does, than just under 1,200, like we do. Then again, it’s probalby more important when you live in a small place…but I digress.) She recently gave birth to her second child, and as a sort of ‘nesting’ gift to her, before her new baby was born, her husband let her clean and reorganize his tools. Tools that she almost never uses. But she had been itching to get at them for years. She’s a happy woman now, with a very tidy house AND basement.
Me? An unmade bed drives me nuts. It will call me from across the house to make it. I might leave my shoes all over the place, for any unsuspecting person to trip over; I leave lunchboxes up on top of the fridge; heck, I might go months at a time without cleaning the oven. But the beds.must.be.made. (I assure you, this is news to my mother. When I lived at home, my room was a pig sty. So those of you with teens, don’t give up hope. They may yet learn a bit of OCD in their future.)
How about you? What is your OCD, housekeeping or otherwise? That lawn that must be perfectly mowed? Floor that must be scrubbed? (if you’re the floor scrubbing type, please let me know. I have a floor that needs you. I’ll cook you dinner. ;) )
23 Comments
C-Lo
J- Were you listening to our show yesterday? We did a show on this very subject! I will tell you that Py is also OCD about keeping the station kitchen VERY clean. He is the only one that keeps it clean at work. Bless his heart!
For me, I am OCD about my recycling bin. I have to clean/rinse out all items that go into the bin AND everything in there must be perfectly lined up. Bottles must be upright, cans stacked appropriately, etc. Now that I see this in writing, I realize how truly OCD it is 🙂
J
C-Lo, No, unfortunately, on the route I drive, I can’t get the station. 🙁 I have to listen to the other one. So I never get to hear you guys anymore. That sucks.
I think Py’s OCD at the station is that he doesn’t want anyone else’s germs. At home, I guess he doesn’t mind our germs. 😉
Your recycling bin sounds like something you’d find at my sister’s house. You definately do NOT want to see ours. We rinse things out, but that’s it.
Ml
Wow, I thought I was the only one who was OCD about unmade beds. I have to make the bed every single day! The kitchen must be clean every night before I go to bed or else I can’t sleep. I was also that way about the car until I married Lew. He’s likes to store all kinds of shit in the car. It drove me crazy, but I’ve learned to deal with it…somewhat.
Py Korry
Before Maya, my OCD was a bit worse at home. I remember when we lived in SF, my mom would comment that it was clear our apartment was occupied by a couple without kids because it was so clean!
Nowadays, I go through phases of OCD at home, but it’s just every now and then… 🙂
Jessica
Oh geez….I’m OCD from A to Z (just ask my husband and son). Per my recent post, I am MUCH more concerned with my house than my car. I’ll let things pile up in my car for weeks before I clean it out (not trash, mind you – just ‘things’). Our bed continually goes unmade because my husband is still in it when I leave the house in the morning. I love the look of a made bed (as well as crawling in one) but I have to admit that if it is disheveled, it doesn’t bother me as much as dishes in the sink.
I’m a deep cleaner – surface clean (for company’s sake) isn’t truly clean to me. I absolutely know this stems from my childhood where my mother was still in bed when I would come home from school…the household chores and the laundry undone. Early on in my life, I equated a messy home with being out of control of your life. Couple that with my general embarrassment and you’ve raised an obsessed neat freak.
Tabitha
My OCD is the dishwasher. It MUST be loaded in a very specific way. The rest of my house is an absolute mess. But don’t mess with the arrangement of dirt dishes in the dishwasher.
Oh, and my whites. Must ONLY be washed with whites. I totally go ape-s#$% when I see one white sock (or more) in with darks. Aaagh!
Shelliza
I have a lot. I clean everyday, because I’m always worried Connor will pick something up and eat it. Leave it to a toddler to find all sorts of stuff.
My BIGGEST peev is dirty laundry. We have small laundry hampers and I hate to see them pile up. Needless to say, I do at least 2 loads everyday. I’m looking for a floor person too:)
Eternal Lotus
Oh dear, so many… I may to do a separate post. Like Jessica, general cleanliness in the house equates with general cleanliness of the mind for me.When the house is messy, I feel scattered.
Dot
I know we talked about this yesterday. I’ll tell you something funny, I get in a cleaning mode when I’m gonna have people over. But, I just want the surface cleaned because I want people to believe I’m not a slob. So if I’m putting miscellaneous things away like shoes thrown in a closet, clutter shoved into a kitchen cupboard, books strewn behind my armoir door. It drives M NUTS. He would rather I put things where they go. Notice I say he would like me to do that. But it takes more time. So I do it my way. Out of site, out of mind. Just don’t check my cupboards!
Sheryl
My OCD… my music CD’s. The cases are alphabetical and each case has a little label in the lower right hand corner with a number on it. The number corresponds to it’s living place in the mega-cd changer. I have a couple hundred CD’s. I guess my tupperware lids are the slight OCD… they are separated by shape (square or round) and in two separate bins by size.
Beenzzz
Kitchen has to be clean, bathroom countertops and sinks can’t have hair, and my car can’t be cluttered. I also have to clean my windshield everyday because a little spot of dirt or water on it will drive me nuts. 🙂
Jenny
I cant stand a dirty bathroom. There is nothing worse than germs in the toilet or shower or sink. You clean yourself here, so shouldnt the room be clean? So I have a policy of bleaching the bathroom all over as often as I can. But since you love making beds, can you make mine? I leave it a mess everyday and my comforter and sheets are all balled up in one pile because that is the end result after I toss and turn in my sleep.
ally bean
I’ve always suspected that I’m a weirdo and now I know for sure that I am. I really don’t care about what is unmade, dirty and/or cluttered. I figure that I’ll get to it when I get to it. So sometimes this house is immaculate for weeks on end, and then I get busy and the house is dirty for weeks on end.
Although thinking about it more, I realize that I do keep a very clean kitchen all the time. So maybe I’m not so weird after all!
Gina
For all my gum flapping about the fridge, I could care less about an unmade bed. I figure it’s gonna get all unmade again, so who cares?
I get crabby also with dirty sinks.
Maya's Granny
Unmade beds? Who woulda known?
Actually, when I visit you all of the beds are always made, so I kind of suspected that you had changed since you were a teen.
No, my clothes are no longer on color coded hangers. I do still separate the bottoms from the tops and arrange those by color (in rainbow order, from dark to light within a single color), but the hangers I gave up when I moved to a place where you can wear the same clothes year round.
Tracy
Hair on the bathroom floor. Yick.
Melissa
Mine is the kitchen. I can’t stand the counters having crumbs or coffee grounds on it. I can’t stand cups left in the sink. I am the kitchen Nazi. I don’t even let the dog in the kitchen, cause a dog hair may get somewhere in my kitchen.
The beds never get made though and I could care less about toys and shoes everywhere.
Andie D.
My hub’s the OCD one, so by default, I’m the one who lets the messes pile up. Unless he made those messes, and then, well, I’ll get all SORTS of OCD on his butt.
Yes, we have issues. 😉
Cherry
UGH… why don’t men (at least my man) see the crumbs or the sticky stuff on the kitchen counter? If you spill something? wipe it up! Even if you don’t think you spilled something… wipe it anyway, there is likely something there.
We have a rule in my house. If the kitchen is a mess, then I won’t cook. Sometimes I am amazed at how I can be at work pretty much all week and never really see the kitchen and I walk in there Friday night or Saturday morning and it’s a mess. Hmmm I wonder how it gets that way?
ortizzle
When I am really busy, which is most of the time, I am afraid to say I don’t make the bed. Which is probably why I feel quite organized on days that I do.
The one thing I can’t leave messy or dirty? Kitchens and bathrooms. If I visit someone’s house and see either of those, I am outta there fast. (This doesn’t happen nowadays, but it did in my college days).
Michelle
I’m that way about everything and I’m sure there’s a clinical term for it. I can’t relax when things are cluttered, not put away, dirty, etc. I am constantly telling myself that kids, by nature, are dirty and not to get too tense over the black smudges on the walls, the schmuck marks on my windows, the kiss marks on the T.V. screen. But I can’t leave them there.
hellomelissa
i clean the kitchen counter way too often, but otherwise i’m not a freak. after reading the wood floor refinishing post, j, you probably think i’m lying! and a bigger house ISN’T easier. ours is 2200sf up from our 1500sf old house, and i just throw in the towel and say “uncle” some days. then i go play with my kids.
ann adams
Clutter doesn’t bother me or else I’d go nuts. I’m obsessive about dirty dishes, dirty laundry and garbage. If I do nothing else, I do that.
And I’m a little obsessive about the things that are mine. Books, cds, dvds and even my spices are alpha and I’m good to put things back where I found them.
My pet peeve? The one which will send me over the edge someday? The little pull-off strip from a plastic gallon milk container. I find them everywhere except the trash.
My grown kids have a running joke about it. They save them up and bring them here to distribute.