You down with OCD?

A colleague and I were talking about how she can tell when our students have used the vacuum, because they don't wind the cord up the same way, and this got us talking about things around the house that have to be done a certain way.

In her house, it's towels and shirts. Towels have to be folded--and shelved--a very particular way (which her young adult son still doesn't seem to get), and shirt are always hung up so that they are facing the same way.

I suppose it's similar in our house: when we got married, Lauren let me know that there were certain laundry-related tasks that I was doing wrong--folding towels and folding shirts. I think I used to fold towels over once, then fold the other way, and then the other way (so it was basically folded in eighths). Now I am to fold it over once, then fold it into thirds, and I do. And, all right, it does look nicer. I don't even remember the old way of folding shirts, though I'm also pretty sure that Lauren is not entirely satisfied with my version of her way of folding shirts. It's unlikely to lead to divorce, so we both let it slide.

I remember growing up, my father was very particular about the way the lawn was to be mowed: diagonally across the main body of the front yard, alternating which diagonal from week to week.

For me, I'm particular about where my folded laundry gets put away, because I have a system so that I can find what I want in the near-pitch-black of our bedroom in the morning. But the time that I really turn OCD--although I've gotten better--is in the weight room.

It annoys me when I see that the dumbbells have not been racked in order from smallest to largest. I twitch a little when I see someone actually putting them out of order. Likewise, every power rack, every bench rack, has a particular peg on which particular weights go. They're even labeled. And it can't take that much more effort to put things back on the right one as it does to put them on the wrong one, but people still do it. Probably just to drive me nuts.

Ideally, if a fellow denizen of the weight room wanted to keep me happy, he or she would not only put the weights where they belong, but this theoretical happiness-provider would also make sure the racks are balanced: if there are four 45-lb plates, they'd better be two and two, not three and one. For that matter, if somehow there are only three plates for a given size... go get another one!

Unfortunately, not everyone shares my sense of weight room feng shui, so I've had to learn how to cope. Then again, a little rage in the weight room just might be a good thing....