Kim says I have OCD. I say I like a really, really cleanly swept front porch and toilet paper points. These are personal preferences. If they were disorders, I would wake up in the middle of the night and check all the bathrooms for scraggly paper. Or I’d worry about everyone else’s toilet paper. I’d obsess about the debris on my neighbor’s front porches, or keep a broom in my trunk.
I just like to keep things orderly at my house.
Lauren says no one can figure out how I do the toilet paper point thing. She says people talk about the fact that at my dinner parties, I can remain seated and somehow magically, the offending untidiness in the bathroom repairs itself.
According to About.com Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, 30% of those with OCD go on to be substance abusers: double the rate of the general population…
Now that I live in a condo, I don’t have to worry about Live Oak effuse on the veranda. But I have balconies. And there’s a hallway. Jon Jon gave me an industrial strength leaf blower for my birthday (did I mention my children are droll and ironic?) and I put it to good use very early in the mornings. I also took a recommendation from Dee (who says bleach is the universal panacea) and scoured my neighbor’s door area (at four one morning) because there was some black mold-like stuff growing on the walls near the baseboard, and when you get off the elevator it’s THE FIRST THING YOU SEE.
I also don’t really like trash in trash cans. The photo above was taken in my master bathroom. I have a new cleaning lady, and this was her gift to me. The only problem is that I CAN”T — USE IT, so I leave an unadorned roll of toilet paper in the linen cupboard, and I have to do a sort of Russian Cossack thing, pants around my ankles, to get to it when I’m done going to the bathroom…