I think when I decided to come up with the name of this blog, I should have thought a bit more carefully because it seriously should be called "Fit, Sulfite-Free, and Extremely OCD." I would like to preface that my levels of obsessive compulsiveness has reached new heights as I have grown older. I don't really know how it began and when it got bad. What I do remember is when my little brother was younger (about 7 years old) us moving from one town to another within the same state caused his brain to go into a state of panic and he developed a compulsive fear of getting sick, which then caused him to spend an ungodly number of hours in the bathroom washing his hands and avoiding anyone who might have sneezed or coughed. And living in a perpetual state of cold and snow in a small mountainous town in New Jersey, getting sick was an everyday occurrence. I believe if the CDC was to show up to that small township in the dead of winter, they would think every child was exposed to tuberculosis. But never fret because in the summer, we lived in a "high tick zone" and the constant fear of Lyme Disease and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever scared the shit out of my brother enough that he developed an unhealthy habit to locking himself up in his bedroom to play video games in lieu of potentially being exposed to any sort of sickness.
After a few years, his OCD-ness seemed to be controlled although he still has a weird fear of throwing up, which is neither here nor there but sometimes quite humorous to see the look on his face when you slide next to him and tell him you just ralphed up all your dinner. Kidding. Sort of.
But back to my own Martha Stewart-esque brain operations. I had always been somewhat of a cleanly child. My room never reached epic states of upheaval, mostly because my parents kept a very tidy house and I guess it rubbed off on my brother and I. The thing I was probably most guilty of growing up and through college was throwing clothes I had opted not to wear that day on a random, but specific, chair in my bedroom. I would let it pile up to Topple proportions and then I would either do laundry and sort through the clothes or I would realize I could not sit comfortably in said chair with the stack of clothes and take the time to go through them. When I moved into my downtown condo at the age of 23, I decided to make sure I didn't have a "clothing chair" in my bedroom, which would force me to hang back up the article of clothing if I decided it wasn't going to be worn that day. It never dawned on me that I could just throw the item on my bed, but I broke my own habit and such is life now.
When I moved into my own space, I had my weekly cleaning schedule of dusting, wiping, cleaning, and vacuuming. I never found it odd that out of all my friends, I was the only one who did this. I always felt proud of my clean home and assumed everyone else did the same thing I did on a routine basis. When I packed up my condo after 5 years of living in one space to move in with my now-fiance (and soon to be husband in 27 days - holy shit), I realized that I had accumulated more than I would like to own. I would regularly go through my things and organize and clean certain aspects of my place, such as a closet, but as I started to pack up a room like my kitchen, I realized the very last thing I wanted to do was haul all this crap from one place to another. My fiancé had his house pretty much fully furnished and I liked his kitchenware a million times more than mine so it made sense for mine to be disposed of. Plus, it was a hand-me-down from my parents in their pre-divorce days so goodbye and good riddance ugly yellow plates with pink flowers.
So my answer to dealing with stuff I didn't feel like moving was to either sell it or throw it out. I took a 1,000 square foot fully furnished condo and only ended up moving half of my bedroom furniture, my office furniture, my clothes, and a few boxes of knick knacks that I couldn't part with. How's that for efficiency? But I didn't stop there. My condo was older and lacked closets but it was closet heaven in my fiancé's townhouse. Only problem is that he improperly occupied every closet with crap. We're talking old, empty boxes, junk mail, things that he no longer used, and god knows what else. So it became my part-time job to slowly chip away at this chaos and organize every square inch of this home into something that would make Martha Stewart weep tears of joy.
In the two years I have lived here, I have made quite a dent but still not completely done with this long-term task. The problem I run into what feels like daily is that my fiancé never wants to part with anything. And what bugs me the most is that he probably hadn't even realized he still owned said item until I came into his office holding it in my hand going, "WHY DO YOU HAVE THIS????" As our wedding registry gifts started to show up on our doorstep, I not only had to explain to my fiancé that we are in the age of "out with the old and in with the new" but my dad also mentioned to him that the point of a registry is to get rid of the old stuff to make room for the newer (and much nicer) stuff that people have been so kind to gift us.
I feel like this post could go on for another million words and I would still only be chipping the iceberg. End of story - I might possibly have a problem. My fiancé definitely thinks I have a problem. Who else decides at 10:30pm on a Sunday night to empty the just-washed items out of the dishwasher and put everything away in their nice little home after spending hours doing loads of laundry, which included not only stripping the bed to wash the sheets but putting on the new bed skirt and new bed quilt? And let's not even mention the random night last week where I found our step stool so I could re-organize the items in the cabinets and drawers in the kitchen AGAIN. I might be the only person in the world who gets excited to go to the dump with a car full of garbage because purging items is cathartic for me. Instead of seeing a therapist, I run, cook, and regularly throw things away.
I'll have to document my adventures as things occur but for now, I must tend to organizing my nightstand.
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