How many 'tidy' Aspies are out there?

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By and large I've noticed that a predisposition to sloppiness is attributed to those with Asperger's. It tends to get listed as one of those big things to check off on your way to diagnosis. But how many go to the other extreme? Not necessarily OCD level. Not the white glove treatment to be happy. Just a gnawing need for a certain level of order and cleanliness to your surroundings.

It amazes me to know there are people with a zealous personal hygiene regimen that have to do zig zags to successfully navigate the living room floor. Or will refuse to use public restrooms yet contentedly allow their own toilet to grow fur.

My family are largely of this sort. God bless 'em. I won't allow for fur on the toilet though. The one time I did was just to marvel at how long it would be until someone was perturbed enough to correct the problem. They failed. Or they won. Guess it's all how you look at it.

I constantly nag for help keeping things consistently tidy. Again I say I don't demand spotless, just things where they should be for the most part and the dust not so thick you could plant corn on top of the television. I rarely get very far beyond promises to do this or that, which almost never happen. Despite the nodding head, I really don't believe I've convinced my wife one lick that it's a genuine need for peace of mind. All I've convinced her of is that I'm "anal" as she likes to say. I promise you I'm not. They're just sloppy joes.

When there's a lot of disorder around me I get all irritable, confused, and downright soul sick. I either have to correct it or leave the room to one less affected, infected, or otherwise. Ok I make light. They only eat the carpet and tear up the curtains during full moon. They're good people.

I think it means more to me for them to believe how much psychological grief it causes me than to be relieved of some of the work.

Anyhow, I always considered the sloppy Aspie stereotype to be a knock against my being one. Yet while finally watching Mozart & the Whale I was surprised to see the female Aspie portrayed as something of a neat freak. An abject terror with a toilet brush brought to bear against her sloppy joe love interest.

How many of you are like that?

Last edited by LostNFound on 19 Apr 2010, 12:16 am, edited 1 time in total.

*hides under pile of junk, which simultaneously provides deep-pressure stimulation*

Oh my. Was dearly hoping some of you would come forth to agree rather than be on resort under a mountain of National Geographics.

the Journal of Irreproducible Results once did a gag about how, at the current rate of population growth, the collective weight of all the mouldering nat geos languishing in basements the world over, would soon outweigh the whole planet and eventually sink everything upon the crust down to the planet's core and cause us to become a black hole, or something like that

i love clean, neat and tidy but i just don't have the genes to make anything of that love. i am just too dagblasted disorganized and lazy. i need one of those interventions they show on tv sometimes.

I'm not the tidiest person, but I've noticed an improvement in my housekeeping, over the past three weeks. I guess that all I needed to do, was to make my apartment, a home and personalize it. The desire for tidiness followed.

This. I did not renew my NatGeo subscription, so maybe there will be a bit of improvement there. My big problem is clutter and I hate it too. It's not that I consciously collect, I think it's anxiety that I'll throw away something I'll need later. My father was the worst. I think my mother's influence kept him from being like one of those people featured on Hoarders.

I have OCD and I often clean myself, especially hand and teeth. I don't like dirty and stinky people. My smell is very sensitive, so it's easy for me to call someone dirty.
I find people who do mess in kitchen/bathroom disgusting and awful. I live in dorm and it's horrible. Most people are disgusting and can't behave.

My Mum also has OCD, but she must have all in order, neat and perfect tidy. So I have some traits, because I used to her obsessions. Now I have some mess in the room, my roommate is more dirty. Now it's my turn to clean up and I have litlle compulsion in my head DO-IT-DO-IT-DO-IT-IT'S-SOOO-DIRTY! but I have many things to do, school is cruel, and I can't get to cleaning.

I can't function without everything around me is ordered. However my wife has a different view. But once everything is tidy and ordered I am extremely productive. If things are messy especially the computer desk area or the kitchen I literally can't function until I've sorted everything. I will allow myself some dis-order while I work at the computer such as food plates and coffee cups.
If I go to somebody else's home that is a complete and utter dump I have no problem with this and have enjoyed the visual look from a photographic / cinematography perspective that I will later use as reference in my work.
I have one friend whose house is chaos - and I find her home very visually stimulating, probably because she likes toys like me.
I always am obsessed with dereliction in my film / photography work.

As an additional detail I was diagnosed with OCD with my Asperger's Syndrome - so that might explain it.

Anyway I do drive my Wife nuts with being too tidy - Oops

I'm "clean", as I don't like clutter, which bothers my visual processing.

I'm not a neat freak, but I can't stand stuff all over the floor. Stepping over things or weaving through junk actually causes me stress. Little messes cause my mind to be distracted, so I try to keep them and my number of belongings to a minimum. I really like negative space and have wide swaths of nothing in certain rooms. I love lying on the floor and being able to see, without obstruction, from one wall to the other. The kitchen and bathroom are reasonably clean but not obsessively so.

When I was a teenager I was very abnormal because I actually kept my room clean! Not just clean, everything I owned had to be neatly arranged and organised to a fault. I was constantly obsessing about my many collections of small dolls and stuffed animals and I wondered sometimes if it was an OCD-thing. The rest of the house, however, I couldn't care less about. doing my share of housework was a constant battle between my mother and me. The pots and pans could have piled up to the ceiling for all I cared because I absolutely hated doing them. Now that I live on my own in an appartment I'm fairly good at keeping the place reasonably tidy. I vacum and do my laundry, take out the garbage, and actually wash the dishes although I usually still let them pile up- saves on hot water, right? I don't seem to be as obsessive with keeping my stuff organised but I haven't gone the other extreme, either. It's GOOD to organise your belongings so you'll know where they are if you need them!

i have no garbage in my house. there are no empty cartons or bottles or wrappers etc.
there are no dirty plates (yerrrgh) or other germy things in my house.
my clothes are clean and i am clean.
however, i am severely disorganized and i have myriads of random items on every horizontal surface.

i can not think of where to put things that i have in my hands so i will put them down anywhere i see that is vacant.

i never really allocated any places where things should go (except for plates in the plate cupboard and mugs in the cupboard and food in the pantry or fridge and clothes in wardrobes etc).
for things i can not easily classify, i have no place that is dedicated for them to be put.
i have many empty drawers because i forget that they exist, and i just put things anywhere they will fit.

in the room of my place i am in at the moment , i have a desk and 2 small tables and a mantle shelf. (places to put things that is...obviously i have a tv and sound system etc as well but i am only talking about horizontal surfaces)

on my desk i have copies of invoices that i have written to clients, invoices that i have received from suppliers, a remote control for the tv, 4 loose batteries, 2 mobile phones, a remote for the cable tv box, a remote for the air con, 7 pens, a screwdriver, 2 small spanners, a small torch, a stamp pad, 2 dvd cases with nothing in them, a lighter which i have no use for, a small teddy bear that was on my key ring until the string broke, my girlfriends lip gloss, 2 of her hair bands, a soldering iron, a radeon graphics card, a battery charger, a magnifying glass, a bundle of copper wires, a lot of papers that i scribbled some thoughts on etc etc..

on the mantle shelf there is an old candle that i never lit that was a present, 2 framed pictures that tammy gave to me (face down), a valentines bear that says "i love you" facing sideways, a telephone plug, 3 pens, a box of coins, a manual for my new pixma printer, many plugs and connectors, my car keys, a dismantled lava lamp, an assortment of rca plugs, some papers i wrote a few days ago, a digital camera that does not work, a magnetron from a microwave, a bottle opener, a can opener, 2 reusable corks, the stamp for the stamp pad. the invoice book (carbonless) etc etc etc..

on the floor there are wires everywhere that drape from my computers to the sound system and to the synthesizer keyboard and to an oscilloscope on the windowsill and to the ups...it is endless.

i am disorganized and i am a mess.

*shrugs* had to be honest. And they were library books. I actually returned some of them today! Yay!

All of my spaces are what I call organized messes; meaning that I can find pretty much anything I want in a few minutes, but no one else could if they tried. If its not my space than I try to keep it neat.

If it's any consolation, I'm extremely tidy. In fact, I can't function unless everything around me is tidy and ordered. Not only that, I lose things all the time, so keeping everything in a specific place helps to alleviate that scattiness somewhat.