“Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyze you; they’re supposed to help you discover who you are.” ~ Bernice Johnson Reagon
Have you ever hung up a towel and not straightened it or folded it or arranged it in some way as you did so? Have you ever just casually tossed a towel over the towel rail?
I did that last weekend and it was a big event. I had to laugh at myself for having this obsessive quirk, but doing that was almost impossible. I was in a hurry putting away the laundry, and there were those two clean towels to be hung back in the bathroom.
I thought about just stuffing them over the towel railings—but I just couldn’t! However, when I realized how hard it was to do this, I made myself do it.
I wonder if you are the same as I am about hanging towels “correctly” every time?
When I asked my sister that question, her reply was, “Gasp! Wash out your mouth with soap!” And then she asked, “How long before you went back and straightened it?”
The towel stayed in its tossed position until I used it after my shower that night. After I got away from it after tossing it on the rail, it didn’t bother me. I soon forgot about it—the towel itself wasn’t calling me back in there to fix it.
I went to the bathroom later and managed to leave the towel as it was and just walked away again. It was a good exercise in self discipline.
I’ve learned that I can make untidiness affect me less by doing my ignoring practice, just like during the towel incident.
My partner thinks it’s hilariously obsessive to have to hang towels straight and tidy each and every time. Some people think habits like this (in others) are annoying. I wonder if it’s just as obsessive in another way to be annoyed by somebody who needs to tidy?
My partner hangs his towels nicely most of the time, although not the way I would. I have made myself get used to leaving his towel the way he last hung it—I don’t even notice it any more.
It doesn’t matter to him that I need to have certain things a certain way. He just thinks of this as one of the many
rules. He knows he can happily live with my rules as long as he gets his way about his own rules. (He doesn’t admit he has rules, but I think he knows he does.)
On his boat, everything has to be done properly every time, not just the towels. He says that’s about living comfortably in a small space. At least he knows what it feels like to need that level of tidiness.
Some people, like my partner, are just not able to see untidiness, not ever. How can that be?
When I told my sister that I was training myself out of tidiness habits, she asked, “Isn’t it less trouble, and less energy, to just go ahead and be obsessed?”
Very good question! Self acceptance, even about our own annoying habits and quirks, isn’t that something to work towards? Is that a better place to be than always having the need to “fix” things that bug us?
I remember exactly when I started my personal training and why. It was back when I lived with my ex, very early in our marriage. That day we had a huge fight just before visitors were to arrive. He had left some personal stuff lying around, like socks, I can’t remember exactly.
Before having visitors over, I always had to tidy everything, even the socks in the bedroom, where the visitors would likely never go. Of course, he somehow couldn’t even see what needed tidying, so he was never much help with that.
He said it didn’t matter to people what the place looked like—they just wanted to visit us, not our tidiness. I said it mattered to me because an untidy house said something about me.
Is that true? Do our habits serve to describe us? I began to doubt myself on that point. If that was true, why didn’t he care as much as I did that our home looked untidy?
After that, I began to try not caring whether the person I lived with did things differently from me. I began to try to “just live with it.” But I didn’t have a real plan to accomplish this.
Years later, when I moved in with my current partner, I knew that I wanted a fresh start. I wanted no more obsessively-tidy battles. I began my personal training to eliminate my tidiness obsession. I started with work on lowering my tidy-standards, much like the ignore-the-towel game above.
Although I draw the line at actual uncleanliness, I can now live with dust bunnies, with untidy bathroom counters, with sloppily hung towels. (I confess that it’s still much easier to tidy a crooked picture than to ignore it. Well, ok, I confess that I cannot ignore a crooked frame.)
I’ve noticed that obsessively tidying creates a kind of stress. I feel like it’s been good for me to learn to relax some of my standards and rules because each time I do, it reduces one more little bit of stress.
“Every day brings a choice: to practice stress or to practice peace.” ~ Joan Borysenko
I have learned to recognize that some things, such as a messily-hung towel, can be left as is. I now realize that if it were just the one thing, fixing it would be fine, but during a day there can be many just-the-one-things that add up to a cumulative dose of low-level stress.
Ignoring some of the untidy things also eliminates unnecessary work. Yes, I can now see it as unnecessary! I now recognize that constant tidying adds up to an overall greater workload.
I know I’m happier when things are tidy, and I accept this in myself and do what it takes to accomplish this for myself. It’s no longer about what others will think of me.
This self-training is also very good for my relationships. I’m not talking about how others view me, but about my learning to accept untidiness in others. I still have a long way to go, but I’m working on it.
Accepting it means not bugging them about their habits and not running around tidying up after them. It requires that I’m able to live happily with less-than-tidy. Eventually, perhaps I’ll be able to completely ignore untidiness, not even see it! (My doubting soul had trouble writing that last part. :))
So what it comes down to, for me at least, is striking a balance between self-acceptance (I’m perfectly OK when I tidy something that’s not quite right) and living happily with other people (it’s OK if that person doesn’t tidy something and if I don’t do it for them).
If you’re anything like me, I propose a challenge for you today: Go toss a towel and leave it the way it lands. Can you do it? Can you leave it alone? Then explore how you feel and react for the rest of the day. It’s quite a discovery!
Photo by Mason Bryant
About Kate Britt
Kate is a retired teacher, editor, and technical writer living in Vancouver, BC, Canada. She blogs sporadically at http://ponderthepreposterous.wordpress.com/.
Though I run this site, it is not mine. It's ours. It's not about me. It's about us. Your stories and your wisdom are just as meaningful as mine. 
I can completely relate to this article. Thank you for sharing. I have a real obsession with tidiness too, in particular, symmetry. I have a coffee table in the living room with six colored tealight holders and four drinks coasters. If the tealight holders are not equally spaced out and if the coasters are not parallel and also equidistant, I have to correct them. This is just one of the many obsessions with symmetry that I have. As I type it, it sounds so sad, but it’s almost like there’s something uncontrollable inside me that can’t let it go. I’m going to de-align the candles and coasters now and see how long I can stand it.
I believe in no obsessive behavior, so I honestly don’t give into, never forgive myself for any idea, whatsoever that I can think about such a thing, however, if you can please live with it, my only & good news is still a symbol & a repetition of my self determined fact that I apparently do well to ‘testify’ to being happy to send you any of my further & most relevant labor information, since This Planet doesn’t approve of me, so that I can of course become & believe in & so on, greetings, ‘J.A.,’ guitartie@yahoo.ie.
My thing is the dishes. I don’t have a dishwasher in my apartment and my roommate only does the dishes once a week, but I can’t deal. I addressed the issue with my last roommate and it was really ugly, so now with my new roommate I’ve decided that I will do the dishes with love for her and let go of the annoyed feeling I used to get. My roommate is very busy and so I’ve decided to be happy about doing her dishes as it will free up more of her time to do fun things. I think so long as you have the right intention behind the action, that’s what matters.
As for tidying before guests come over, my mom always said, “No one notices a clean house, but they do notice a dirty one.” So, I totally feel you on that one!
What a great article! Thank you! After reading it I saw how little things like a towel cause so much suffering. Ridiculous but I also do this constant tidying up to give myself some self of control. I really like how this article burrows deeper not only into control but how we often do things because out of a fear of how we will be perceived. The real reason behind why we straighten up should be made aware of and this article did just that.
Thanks for sharing your own tidiness story, RacecaR. Symmetry, yup, I completely get that one, too. It’s not sad at all. Of course those coasters and tealights want to be presented in a certain way. 😉 I’m glad you’re approaching this as an opportunity to challenge yourself for a while, and it’s also OK if, after the challenge, you still need to tidy them. Another challenge — when somebody else knocks them out of alignment, see how OK that can be with you and for how long. Good luck!
Wow, what an awesome approach, Kristen: “do the dishes with love for her”. That’s the best motivation EVER for changing one’s annoyances into joys. I also admire the way you chose a previous incident to learn from for your dishes-interactions in your new roommate situation. She’s a lucky one.
Kat, it’s interesting that you relate your own tidying up with self control. I can see how that association can come up, given that tidiness is a way some of us have of trying to control our personal environment. Your thoughts brought up another for me: How much of the self-control we try to exercise has to do with wanting to be perceived in a certain way — is it really self-control or is it trying to control other people’s perceptions? Hmmm.
Hi J.A., I’m not sure what point you’re making. Could you clarify?
It sounds like you’re saying that any obsessive behavior is to be avoided, by you at least, and that you’re happy because you have been able to accomplish this. Am I interpreting you correctly?
I don’t agree that the towel thing is a good example of tidiness. After all, an untidy towel usually equals a damp, and at the end of the day, smelly towel. I am by no means obsessively tidy, but my towels are always neat so that they can dry after use. Not being obsessively tidy to me would mean not folding and putting away washed clothes, not packing away clean dishes and not hanging up jackets or coats worn that day.
i loved this. i live in albuquerque, where one can open the windows and doors to get fresh air almost all year round. and with that fresh air comes fresh dust. everyday. and i have made peace with the dust. otherwise i would be dusting several times a day. i’m going to have to go check out my towels. never noticed how i hang them. happy day
kudos. when my ex-boyfriend left the dishes in the sink and they started to smell i threw them out. i was working so many hours and just didn’t have the time to do them and all i needed to do. your approach is much better than mine was. but that was many moons ago, too.
I see your point entirely, KT (although I was talking about freshly laundered & dried towels in my example). Thanks for the feedback and for giving some good examples from your own life.
I know each of us has our own preferences for what needs to be tidied and our own level of tolerance what we can let go and not tidy up. I was writing about my challenge to myself (and my readers) to try avoiding one or more of our obsessive tidy-up urges for a little while, just as a way to check on ourselves. It’s one way to see whether or not we’re keeping our “neat freak” tendencies in balance. It’s also possibly a way to become more aware of how we feel about the tidiness preferences of those we live with and how able we are to keep from trying to impose our own tidy-up preferences on others.
Gwynneve, I agree. That dust! How can we possibly keep up with it! For me, ignoring dust is just as much a neverending battle as constantly getting rid of it. It’s a question of which battle to fight, and for me, I finally had to decide to make friends with dust. It can provide great opportunities for spontaneous drawing on surfaces, LOL. 😉
I tried and I went back a few minutes later to straighten it. I cant stand untidiness, I accept that other people are untyidy but I do not want to be them. Its just plain laziness and its disgusting. I love my obessesion with being tidy. Leaving the towel the way I had stressed me out big time, I don’t think I’ll be trying that again. I say stay as you are Kathryn, its very very good to be clean, untidy people actually annoy me cos I think to myself if I can do it so can you there is just no excuse lol. I am happy to be called a clean freak, I’ll rather be clean and tidy then live like an animal xx
This is a huge problem for me! I now live with my husband (who I have come to understand does not leave things around deliberately to irk me 😉 and two small children, and I find it extremely challenging to just let things be, to the point that I have been known, on occasion, to clean up toys that my kids are still using. I have set little challenges like this for myself, like leaving dishes in the sink or leaving a puzzle on the floor when we leave. Now, my strategy is that I do certain tidiness tasks every day – I sweep the floor, make all the beds, and wipe down the bathroom – and all other tidiness is only done twice a day, at lunch time and at bed time. So far that one is working well for me, though sometimes I have to stay out of the kids’ play room if I’m having a particularly OCD day.
Oh, soooo enjoyed this posting! Thank you!
Here is my one obsession to neatness and orderliness that makes me a bit nuts every few weeks. The wall of nail polishes at my nail salon. First thing they say after greeting me is “pick your color”. Picking a color is usually very simple. I generally am a neutral kind of person or a what the hell go for “Kiss the Waitress Red.” Color picking isn’t the problem. Their wall of “out of order” nail color bottles is the problem. I have gone there for years…and almost every time I say “I really want to put all your nail polishes in color order”. They never take me up on my suggestion. I sit there trying very hard NOT to look at the colors that are randomly put back on their display rack…or I mentally rearrange the colors in the order I believe they should go….reds to pinks to neutrals to all the other odd ones…or perhaps the reverse, it changes with each visit. Just ONCE, I’d like to do it. Perhaps I need the courage to go in just before closing some day and clearly state, “I am here to put your nail colors in order. You do not need to keep them this way, but for my personal sanity, I’d like to gift you this just once!”
Yeah I never quite understood compulsive behavior. I mean, I understand it, but I think it’s strangely one of the most stubborn habits in people. Most things they’re willing to change, or at least maybe willing to admit they should, but with compulsive behavior, it’s seems like the thing they’re most likely to respond to by saying: “Sorry. It’s just the way I am.” So that you’ve improved is pretty sweet. Nice.
Tinarose, thanks for your feedback and implied approval when you say “stay as you are”. My little untidiness self-challenges are my way of learning to be more tolerant with other people’s habits, while also learning what parts of my own slightly-obsessive behavior I can and can’t accept in myself.
I do like working toward self-change, and in this case I wrote about my working on eliminating certain behaviors that are rooted in how I think others might perceive me. I’m working on accepting “I am who I am” and it sounds like you’re already there! It’s entirely OK if you don’t agree with my methods or what I’m doing. It’s entirely OK to be a “clean freak”. (P.S. For me, there’s a difference between “tidy” with “clean” and I noticed
in what you said that you perhaps connect the two. I, too, like to live in
clean surroundings, and I do.)
Kelly, you’ve done marvellously at finding ways of coping through establishing routines that work for you. That’s really the point of what I wrote about — finding one’s own balance, finding what level of tidiness we can and cannot live with in our personal surroundings. Well done!
Well you gave me a bit of a chuckle, Celebrantsusan, because your story reminds me about how I like to have my spice rack in alphabetical order, and my frustration if another cook in my kitchen doesn’t put the bottles back in the “right” spot. So I entirely understand what you’re saying.
As you say, even if you did reorder those nailpolish bottles for them, they’d be right back out of order soon after. The salon people are no doubt too busy to keep taking the time to place the bottles back in a certain way. I like your adopted approach of mentally rearranging them, thus not physically imposing your preferences on people who don’t actually care how they’re arranged. I encourage you to keep it at that level rather than actually doing it for them. Maybe you’ll never be able to think of the rows of bottles as being in a *delightfully* random order…. or, maybe that’s something you might work towards?
Thanks, Adam. I do enjoy working on change, but that’s just me. I also respect when people say “It’s just the way I am,” because they’ve obviously worked on self-acceptance, and that, too, is admirable.
I know that, for some people, compulsive behavior can be an overwhelming, serious problem — beyond mere habit and very difficult to address. I suppose my few small tidiness habits are a kind of gift to help me understand and open my heart to people who have debilitating compulsive behavior.
Thanks for sharing this journey. 🙂 It’s one of the things I need to work on. Not only when living with flatmates or partners, but even when living by myself. 🙂
LOL, Kate! Spice rack order…another of my obsessions! My husband says my favorite gadget is my label maker! In the past few months, I ordered tin spice containers (well, actually you could put anything in them) and put all my spices in them…they stack nicely and all my spices are not alphabetical. To help me in my potential search, I also have in the spice cabinet my excel sheet of all the spices….my husband taught me excel. Really, I see the need for orderliness increasing with my age…perhaps a sign of helping me with the “senior moments!”
To be honest, you are probably right about keeping my urge to order someone else’s nail polishes in my head….I also think that should I ever get totally organized, I’d start singing Peggy Lee’s “Is That All There Is!”
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
OOPS! that should read “all my spices are NOW alphabetical.
You’re welcome, Wei Yuet. I agree with you — when we work on these things it must be for ourselves, not just to please other people.
I believe that I am who I am and if no one else like it then that’s just too bad.
I have encountered similar challenges on the needs to keep things “perfect”. I find that if I can hold on to the temptation to make things tidy, then I will be more relaxed and less stressful. The key word is “if”. I think that, in the long run, it is a good training to refrain myself from following the impulse to keep things “perfect”.
Wow..this article hits home for me. My mom was a control freak and through genetics passed that on to me. ha ha..I’m 40 never had any kids. I live with my boyfriend and his two teenage sons. They are the absolute opposite of me leaving dishes around, towels and clothes flung to the floor of their rooms, basically not picking up after themselves. I read your article two days ago…that day I was going to vacuum had my vacuum out and everything…did not vacuum. Today there is a hand towel flung to the floor upstairs. I am going to try so hard not to pick it up.( ha ha…reading that back that’s funny…a hand towel is bothering me) I’m going to go up there and shower and leave it behind. Thank you for sharing..I will bring this up to my therapist this morning……the 14 year old is trying to teach me something..I hope I’m willing to learn.
I agree completely. Why is it a disorder when you are clean, neat and tidy, to the point that family, friends, housemates see it as an obsession, yet being lazy and untidy is not? There is no excuse not to put things back where you got them or wash up/clean up after yourself. Surely putting a towel straight on the rail helps it dry quicker than just throwing it back with ruffles and folds! To me that’s just common sense. It’s other people with the problem. My housemate thinks I am the more obsessive yet is ruled by lists, uses a new teaspoon for each cup of tea and throws dishcloths and tea-towels in the washing machine; sometimes after only used once (Even though she’d help herself by wringing the dishcloth and not leaving tea-towels thrown on the side. It might not seem obsessive but sometimes work is such a priority everything else is overlooked).
It is good to be clean freak. I am clean freak and too organized.
Yet I have lots of time for crafts, hobbies, social life and other things.
I would not change myself because the peace and happiness in this surrounding is very rewarding.
I raised two children and never asked them to help. It was my obsession and I didn’t want to punish them for that by nagging at them to clean their rooms etc. I did everything myself. I also cooked from scratch and baked everything healthy.
My children grew up to be very clean, they keep their cars , their apartments as clean as I did.
I think when children grow up in clean environment they get used to that standard.
shana
Http: beadsknitters.blogspot.ca
Kate I admire you for accepting other untidy people . I don’t judge people either. I have friends that are total opposite but some days I can not have tea at their place so I make a polite excuse.
I am very fussy about no dishes in sink and kitchen towels as white as can be.
I’m a really big neat freak and it’s affecting my relationship with my roommates and bf. Rooms have to be PERFECT, cannot be messy, or dirty. It’s so hard to not let it bother me… But it does.
Out of curiousity, and I hate to necro bump (post on obviously old disccusions), but how would someone who doesn’t really care too much about how the house looks and such live with a Neat Freak?
I know this is an old post, but I’m having trouble with my fiance of 4 years. After a few months of dating I learned how clean and neat he was where he lived. Vacuumed everyday, made his bed perfectly everyday, hung towels on the rack, everything in the cupboards in the entire house was in there perfectly, nothing out of place. And the craziest thing of all! I look in is laundry hamper and every single item in the hamper was folded!! I was totally shocked. Now that we are living together, (not married yet), after just one month I can’t stand it anymore. This is the only thing we fight about. And it really makes me mad when he goes in to my kids rooms, and straightens their rooms, makes their beds, ect. And he also goes into our room and folds my dirty laundry as well. And if he comes home and is just standing there talking and/or getting ready to leave he saw two things on the table out of place just laying there, a pencil and a chip clip, he totally just looked at it and then went and moved it so they were STRAIGHT. Why is it driving me nuts enough to want to leave him? He says I need counseling. And why can’t I just let it go, ect. Why can he just leave my things alone. Why do things have to be PERFECT or straight? Anyone have any thoughts for me?
It’s VERY VERY hard Ryoshia. I live with one, and it’s only been a month. Would love to connect.
Completely relate to this article. Newlywed, recently quit my job of 5 years and moved across the country to a completely new environment on multiple levels.
The loss of routine and structure has made me obsessively tidy everything because then structure is returned and somehow also a sense of security. My poor husband thinks I just have too many rules. Will be working on not bugging him about his habits and running around tidying after him.
Thanks for posting.
Ha, people do notice a clean house! If it is museum-like, I dont feel like it’s homey. I like to feel like people live in the house.
Of course, very messy is disconcerting, too.
This sounds like OCD
Alternate view:
I’m a reformed messy person. I now ensure that I can get my room clean in 10-20 minutes. That’s the amount of mess I can bear.
It’s not about laziness. For me, it’s about how I was raised. My mom is a messy person. She was a fantastic mother, though, and chanelled all of her energy into raising us and playing with us and reading to us (she certainly wasn’t cleaning ;). Hey, my immune system is iron clad). Being neat doesn’t come naturally to me. Though I wish I got some neater tendencies, I wouldnt trade her for the world.
Again though – it’s not about laziness. It’s about priorities. Straight lines and spotless floors are not a priority for me. Because I dont clean too often, I have a lot of time to meditate, do yoga, run, run a small errand, meet a friend spontaneously. Lazy people sit on the couch all day. I lead a very active life and my apartment is a little messy. So what.
Just because you like to clean does not make you a clean freak. And just because someone doesn’t clean at the same rate you do does not make them a nasty person. Obsessive cleanliness IS a mental illness because people with an obsession with cleanliness see EVERYTHING as nasty, even things that are not nasty. For example, someone obsessed with cleanliness will see a pile of disheveled books or a bit of dust on a countertop and loose their minds. You cannot control every speck of dirt at every second, and neither does someone having things in their house a bit unorganized means they are a nasty person. As long as that person doesn’t have dirty underwear thrown around, dirty dishes in the sink, nasty floors, nasty fridge, and other bacterial spills and wastes around the house, then who cares about the house being a little unorganized? I personally do not care if some things are a little unordered around the house (like one sock someone on the floor someone forgot to put away, a clean cup on the counter that someone forgot to put away, etc), and people who loose their minds over such trivial things seriously need mental help. You cannot control everything. Just pick the damn sock up and move on with your life. And people need to figure out what defines “cleanliness” and “nastiness” before they can say what constitutes as a slob or a clean freak. Leaving some things around your house unorganized does not make you a “slob”.
What if the problem isn’t just the mess, what if its more about having to navigate around the messes and it making things more difficult to access?
I am a clean freak and I know I drive my husband crazy!!! I am someone who has to have closet hangers all hanging the same way, clothes have to be neatly packed in drawer, a rug on the floor has to be perfectly straight, I dislike to even see a pen lying on the table. I am someone who if is using anything it has to be put back in its place immediately!! My husband in the other hand isn’t as tidy, if he reads a newspaper it stats laid there, he leaves his dishes on the coffee table he may leave his towel on the floor or his socks in the living room. It is so frustrating for me to have to pick those thugs up behind him. I feel he has no respect for me, he sees it has no big deal and I am Fumo g inside which causes trouble between us?? It’s a battle everyday and I wish I could be more relaxed, please give me some advice!
Your blog really connects with me.
Thank you.