OCD

Medical terms like “OCD,” “ADD,” and “manic-depressive,” may be overused, I certainly overuse them.

I like things organized. I like neat and aesthetically pleasing environments in which I put minimal effort existing. Like coffee cupboards. Who the hell would keep coffee cups, coffee beans, and coffee accoutrement (filters, french press, grinder) in different cupboards? No one who likes to drink coffee in the morning, that's for sure.

To optimize the grouping, employ easy grabability! Don't all the cups in front of the big can of coffee! That's not easy!

Put fancy little cups on the next shelf up – you don't use em!

Ok, most people don't think this hard about this, because it's simple and straightforward, right? Yea. Either that or they are lazy. This is a shameful form of Laze. I love being lazy. If you let me, I'd sit and drink tea / coffee all day and read books, maybe watch a movie for change of pace. If you wish to be truly lazy, a little forward thinking goes a long way. Like, keeping the things you use all the time in reach, and the tiny little VanGogh design demi tasses on the higher shelf, but not as high as the beer steins—we're a wine drinking family and all the wine glasses are right next to the wine rack. Duh.

So – I think about these things. All the time. All the time I am surrounded by things that could lead me to be optimally lazy. When I have a spare half hour (working nights, I have many during the day) I wring out the trash (what are these dusty toothpicks doing?) and separate the least used things (fine jade china tea cup with matching china strainer and lid) from the most used things (big chipped mug from New Orleans).

Pretty normal.

It's when I get too into that I start throwing around medical terms.

I found those toothpicks and needed to know from whence they came.

The party cupboard.

Full of shot glasses, boston shakers, napkins of all sorts of design, swizel sticks, more shot glasses, and a menagerie of beer cozies, to-go coffee mugs, christmas things, those copper circle you put on wine glasses to mark them as YOURS, little plastic animals, and glow-in-the-dark ice cubes... Oh god. It was a mess, like the last party's aftermath was shoved in there in the same array someone's mind was in. I hope Whoever got some green tea and Back to the Future.

Now... Well, it would take 1500 words to describe the fun time I had sluicing through all that and more, and the ripple effects finding 10 to-go lids had on the coffee cupboard, and the odd martini glass in plastic had on the wine glass collection, and the hour it took to wipe everything down, and how I really could not finish until all three places were clear of debris and pretty.

OCD?

What does that mean, anyway?