The Household COO

Help me - I’m turning into Monica from Friends!

When I was in highschool, I was such a perfectionist that I had my bookshelf organised in order of largest to smallest. If anyone borrowed a book from me, they had to put it back in the exact same spot they found it. It also had to be back exactly the way they found it. If it was so much as a milimeter out of place, I would be annoyed. Worst still if it was jammed into the wrong spot!

I thought I finally freed myself from the obsessive compulsive need to have everything neatly in place when I started working. There were times when my room was so messy you could be forgiven for thinking a tornado has just been through.

They say “old habits die hard” and they were right. Recently, the hubby and our maid have displayed an annoying habit of not closing all the cupboards and drawers properly and it has been driving me insane! It’s the strangest thing because it never used to bother me before. Suddenly I can’t stand the sight of a partially opened drawer or a cupboard door that isn’t shut.

I’ve been trying not to let it bother me, but I still have a tendency of shutting it properly whenever I find them open. Somewhere along the way something has triggered off my OCD.

I’m sure the hubby would attest to the fact that I am what you could hardly define as “neat”. However, the one thing that I’m quite pedantic about are my book shelves and my cupboards. If you ever borrow a book from my book shelf, you need to put it back exactly where you found it or you can forget about ever borrowing another book from me.

When I came back from the hospital after delivering my son, I found my book shelve in disarray. It seemed the new maid had taken out all my books and restacked them. Even though they were neatly replaced it irked me so much not only because I no longer knew where each book was but also because I couldn’t see any of the titles and some of the books were placed upside-down.

I know it sounds almost obsessive compulsive but this is where it ends. I can be really messy in every other respect. It’s like I live on opposite ends of the spectrum - when I’m neat, it’s got to be really neat, otherwise it’s just a plain pig’s sty. It would be interesting to see how the psychologists would categorise a personality like mine.

I’ve often heard that there are four types of personalities - dominant, expressive, solid and analytical. Most people are rarely one specific personality type. They usually display a characteristics from two of the four types but are usually not the two opposites. For instance, a dominant person is the polar opposite of the solid person, whereas the expressive person is the polar opposite of the analytical person. You could be dominant and expressive or analytical and solid, but it would be unlikely for you to be dominant and solid.

Am I making sense? I guess what I’m saying is that in this instance, I appear to be a mixture of opposites. I almost feel like Mary from that nursery rhyme that goes something like:

“Mary, Mary, quite contrary…”