Wednesday, January 14, 2009

A common thread?

Those of you who know me know that I might be just a teensie weensie bit anal about cleaning. Which, I find kind of humorous as I look around our house. This place is by NO MEANS museam quality clean - I mean - it looks like people live here and stuff but it certainly isn't dirty either. My general rule is that I like to keep our home so that someone can drop by any 'ol time and things look reasonably presentable to company.

There is always plenty of disarray around here though - I live with a handyman. But, I'm not complaining about things being in disarray from him working on projects in the house. I can't tell you how lucky we are (or how much money we have saved for that matter) because he can do so much stuff around our house. Weirdly, I'm not nuts about the house STAYING clean. I don't clean with the expectation that things are going to remain pristine, it's just something that needs to be done. It's a good thing too because..........

Pottery room/yarn room in major transition - check
Wonderful porch overlooking our pond turned into a woodworking studio - check
Upstairs bedroom still packed with boxes waiting on shelving to be built - check
Sewing room full of a new disassembled shower waiting to go live in the bathroom - check
Front porch full of pottery making stuff - check
Dye kitchen looking like someone does a lot of dyeing in there - check

However, I still feel the need to sweep the house. Every. Single. Day. I have, however, promised my husband that the first day that I sweep and don't get up 1/2 pound of animal hair -- I will quit sweeping everyday. It hasn't happened yet. Mr. Man does SO MUCH around here for us I guess I just kind of see keeping the house clean as "my thing" that I do for our home. I love cleaning because I just think about how fortunate we are to have this wonderful home to take care of - so I never see it as a burdon at all.

And, I am an organizational addict. My business records are an accountants dream (all records are filed by month and paperclipped in date order). I love lists. I love checking things off of lists. I love Excel and have designed this fancy-schmancy spreadsheet for all our business transactions and ordering that does all kinds of calculations and let's you look at things a zillion different ways. My favorite store in the world is Staples. Seriously. I received an order from them yesterday and one of the things I ordered was magazine holders. I spent time organizing some of my knitting magazines by title and date. See?


I'm fairly certain that I drive my husband nuts.

So, what's my point in telling you all of this? Well, I'm not sure other than as I talk to other knitters it seems a large number of this have these OCD qualities. Not necessarily about cleaning, maybe about other stuff. Let's see how true it is - confess all your OCD qualities right here on my blog.
Let's hear it.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have, HAVE to keep the kitchen clean. When I try organizing, like you do, hubby just moves everything back the way he wants it. It is irritating. I could write a book about that.

Anonymous said...

If all was right in the world I would get a month off to just work on the house. I have drawn up blue prints for the layout I want for my office. The huge bookcase is in place and next will be the storage bench and shelves for under the window. If I could just get everything in its place I feel like all would be right with the world. I just need to get to that point. :)

I have asked the boy to use his engineering skills in our kitchen to "5s" it with "visual tooling." I think it finally hit home when I told him that our fridge doesn't work for me because I can't see all the food and if I can't see all the food I forget it's there, same for the pots and pans. He was like "oh! You want me to treat you like one of my operators!?" I said Yes please! I have only been asking for a year and a half now. :) Hmm and I will stop rambling on your blog. :)

Farmer Jen said...

Well, maybe the converse is true too. I am not a knitter/chrocheter, yet, just a wanna-be, and my house is a very cluttered mess most of the time. I would love to have some of your organizational and cleaning enthusiasm. My house is fairly clean, but very cluttered with too much stuff lying around. You are an inspiration!

Hockey Mom said...

I'm not OCD, I'm an ADD knitter. As I'm knitting, I'm thinking of all the other things I want to knit.

But I do need to get my studio in shape. I'm dealing with the mess by picking up and knitting what's lying around rather than organizing it first.

Anonymous said...

I like the *idea* of being organized more than I do the follow-through to get there.

Batty said...

Not at all! I organized all the back issues of my cooking magazines by title and date. Then, I did the same for my knitting magazines. But I'm a former cataloger who now works as a taxonomist, so Mr. Batty is more or less used to my organizing sprees.

Turtle said...

they used to think i had add, then saw no it's ocd. (this is a funny thing to hubby) when it was really bad he would have friends over and say," hey watch this" and toss something on the floor knowing io would have to pick it up...the old blocks being in order bit. Sadly i do not feel my house is clean or organized but friends insist it is. I have gotten more mellow with a few things in the last 5 years though...age maybe?

mel said...

My house is generally fairly "lived in" - the problem is that when I decide to clean, I CLEAN i.e. like my grandmother, a fantastic homemaker, taught me - I clean good!! But the time and energy investment in doing it right (rather than just doing a decent job more often, thereby having a cleaner house in general) is so great, that I just can't manage it very often ;)

Esther said...

I hate cleaning and dusting but I can get quite OCD with tidying.
My hubby has car magazines every where and it drives me crazy that you can't buy magazine binders in this country.

I'm also a book-keeper so household accounts are filed and computed the same way as everything else.
And I file all emails. I work with a lot of volunteers for a non-profit. Someone needed to reference a 2+ year old email. Out of 5 people I was the only one who had it. And I found it in 30 mins even though I had to go to back-up.