Sallamandrina wrote:
The only thing that works for me is routine. I have a day for laundry, one for cleaning the whole house and so on. If for any reason my routine gets disturbed, everything gets messy and it's very hard to get back on track. Fortunately, my husband doesn't mind, as he's messier than me, so at least there's no pressure.
Very similar to me--routine helps immensely and I don't feel so oppressed if I only do a small cleaning task in a day. When I am on a mission to complete some kind of project, I can tolerate my own untidiness for a while. However, I am much more organized usually and want everything in its place. This is complicated by an nt husband who is almost a hoarder, at the very least extremely messy (and 5 cats, 3 of whom are gravity testers). I read an article once that prompted me to ask him if he was made anxious by spartan tidiness and he answered "yes". It must be hereditary, because his mother was very much like that. The compromise is that our house has very tidy areas and areas that look like they exploded. It is worse when he is stressed, like now with his parents' health melting down. Somehow we have made these compromises work. The one hope is that he is seeing the consequence of getting rid of his parents' accumulation of stuff and has decided on his own to get
rid of a shed full of junk in the back yard, not just cull it. Obviously I would be happier (I think) if I got it all my own way. I keep reminding myself of a coworker with a very OCD husband who had major fits if she touched his displays spread throughout the house, even to dust them, so it could be worse. My husband is very relaxed about his piles of stuff in comparison.
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The plural of "anecdote" is not "data".
15 Mar 2009, 8:26 am
