Homemaking the Slightly Obsessive Compulsive Way

I have OCD. It's light now, but it's been pretty intense at some points in my life. As a child, I focused on the number four, doing everything in groups of four - walking, chewing, touching things, breathing, blinking, swallowing.... I had elaborate take-back rituals, spent hours counting important things like floor tiles, and was very careful not to let anyone around me know about my weirdnesses - even my mother who was suffering on her own with OCD.

For me, it was all about balance. Four was balance. Four was comforting and fulfilling. Anything else was incomplete, and I couldn't breathe easily until it was fixed. The anxiety of non-four was overwhelming.

There were other symptoms, too. I knew there were people watching me. Well, I knew there weren't, logically, but there they were in my head, anyway. It was always someone random peeking through my bedroom window or standing silently in the bathtub while I brushed my teeth - the neighbor across the street, a kid from school, the bagger at the grocery store.... I compulsively chewed my nails down to nothing, and if I tried to quit, a new compulsion would turn up - digging at the skin near my hairline, for example, until it was scabbed and bleeding. I played little "games" - having to watch as the digital clock changed to show a new hour, having to stop the microwave at a certain time, having to turn off the radio after a song ended and before the DJ started in, etc.

In recent years, though, things have calmed down quite a bit. I'm still chewing my nails (trying to bite them down to perfection), and I'm forever turning things an eighth of an inch to the left or moving them a half inch to the right. But, these things don't negatively affect the quality of my life.

That's not to say that my OCD doesn't have any impact on the way I live. I was thinking today about how it influences my homemaking. My house isn't perfect or balanced by any stretch of the imagination, but a few small spots are - my closet, the top of my piano, the top of my desk, my television stand (really a 1950s stereo cabinet), various ledges and shelves, and, recently, part of the master bathroom. It's those places I'm able to keep completely clean at all times. The rest of the house, not so much.

Creating a perfect, balanced-feeling space can be a daunting job. For over four years, the "tiny bathroom" - the small toilet room that is part of the master bathroom - has been completely undecorated except for a purple towel tacked over the window. It reminded me of the latrines made out of refrigerator boxes that we used in the Girl Scouts, and the terrible, nauseating, tannish paint color the landlords chose didn't help much. But, I'd simply never gotten around to decorating it. And, since I hadn't decorated it, I had no real desire to keep it clean. There were always a dozen or so books scattered on the floor, dog hair tunbleweeds lurking in the corners, dust vacationing on the windowsill....

Last week, I finally fixed it up. I made no-sew curtains out of a couple of dozen scarves that were languishing in a closet, lined up my beloved collection of coffee mugs in the window (I'm not using them anymore after getting rid of the lead in our kitchen), cut up a favorite children's book (I Was Born in a Tree and Raised by Bees by Jim Arnosky) and put the illustrations into thrift store frames, and finally installed an amazingly cool globe light shaped out of starched string that my brother and sister-in-law made for me. It's perfect. Well, almost - I'm still looking for a wooden, wall-mounted magazine holder....

Once I get a space perfect, it's so fulfilling. It's like I can breathe, again. I can stop cataloging all its faults, which leaves my brain free to focus on other things. Un-perfect spaces make my head swim. All I can see is the clutter or the dirt or the lack of whatever-the-space-needs. For me, that's all there is to the room. It's depressing. Unfortunately, the vast majority of my house falls into the un-perfect category.

And, once a space is perfect (or, perfect enough), I am motivated to keep it clean. Perhaps it's less motivation and more need. I need to keep those spaces perfect. In any case, they stay clean, and I don't have to make room for the litany of faults that would otherwise inevitably run through my head.

Luckily, I love those few, small, perfect spaces so much, that I'm inspired to work on the others. I just have to decide which one needs my attention first....