Everything in Its Place

day 12 - something you are OCD about

ignoring the fact that I dislike the term OCD when used to describe anything but an official diagnosis of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder...

I am very obsessively organized.  I cannot stand to misplace things.  As a result I am very persnickety about where I put things and how I have things arranged.  In one of by books about Tsar Nicholas II, there was an explanation of why he never had a personal secretary:  he wanted to know where everything was, so that if he needed to, he could find anything in his office in the dark, and a [personal] secretary would move things, if only inadvertently.  I read that and thought, YES! that's me.  I hate when people move my things because then I cannot find them.  Anyone who knows me, knows that my desk at the office is obsessively organized, and that I know at a glance if someone has touched something, or used one of my pens (and I prefer run-of-the-mill standard blue ballpoint pens).

At home, I am not as organized, though I am still as obsessive about knowing where things are.  Nothing makes me madder at myself than not being able to find something.  Which is why some things have the strangest permanent locations.  I have long held that if you see something or put something in a strange place, leave it there, because you will remember the strange place, but not whatever sensible place you moved it to.

Yes, I am obsessively, if uniquely, organized; I make no apologies and offer no excuses.