There is one thing I love almost as much as my family. You wouldn’t know it to look at my house, but I love order. When I lived alone, there was a place for everything and everything was, if not in its place, then at least close. I could find anything I needed in a matter of seconds. All of my possessions had a home, a place they went to when they weren’t needed. My things were where I expected them to be when I expected them to be there. Life was peaceful.
Now that I have a family, there is still a place for (almost) everything but nothing is ever even vaguely near where it is supposed to be. This is because I am the only person who knows where everything goes. Naturally, I have told the people I live with where our things live. I believe they were listening to me when I told them. Apparently, though, my son is not the only one with ADHD.
So, I label. There are labels in the pots and pans cabinet. One for sauce pans, one for skillets, one for the colander, one for the big silver pot, one for the big blue pot. The labels are intended to ensure the item named is placed in the spot reserved for it. This ensures the cabinet is, you know, organized. But my family appears to believe the labels are suggestions.
I thought maybe they didn’t know the difference between a saucepan and a skillet, so I changed “skillets” to “frying pans.” I have since learned that they know a skillet is a frying pan and a saucepan isn’t. My son watches “Top Chef,” after all. They know the big silver pot is not blue and that the big blue pot is not silver. They don’t particularly care. Like Native Americans who believe that they are on time if they arrive the day of the meeting, my family believes that the pots and pans are organized as long as they aren’t mingled in with dishes or baking ingredients.
I see nothing particularly obsessive about wanting the pots and pans to be where I want them when I need them. After all, I am preparing healthful meals for my organizationally challenged charges. Never mind that they won’t appreciate them or, in many cases, even eat them.
I’ve learned, though, that some of my labeling is seen as a bit nutty. I admitted to my niece recently that I had labeled the insides of the cabinet doors in my old house with the contents of each shelf in each cabinet. I thought she’d understand. She did, after all, once compliment me on my system for organizing chocolates, nuts and dried fruits. Instead, she looked at me as if I were obsessively obsessive compulsive. Now, of course, I can’t label the insides of the cabinets in my new house without appearing more than a little dotty.
There are a couple of places in our home where the lights can be turned on and off from either side of the space. From the dining room, you can operate the kitchen and dining room lights. From the hall, you can operate the kitchen and hall lights. Complicating things further, there are two sets of kitchen lights. These switches drive me insane. I invariably turned on the wrong one. I would cycle through the three options—stove light, table light, hall light—until I had the one I wanted. So, I labeled the switches, a perfectly reasonable solution I thought.
A friend, on seeing the light labels asked, “Can’t you just remember which one’s which?” She had that “Oh . . .my . . .god” tone of voice and I think she may have even snickered. “No,” I thought, “I can’t remember which one’s which, hence the labels.” This was immediately followed by a deeply rooted sense of shame at my inability to remember which switch was which. The switches are still labeled, but I feel a tremendous sense of inadequacy every time I flip one.
I hope my friend never sees my office. I have a cabinet where I keep my supplies, things like stamps, rubber bands, tape—all the office-y kinds of things. The cabinet has 12 drawers in sizes ranging from small to large. (Do you know where this is going?) Each type of office supply has its own drawer. Little things live in the little drawers, big things in the bigger drawers. So I have a drawer for tacks, one for stamps, another for staples. Scissors have a drawer as do hole punches, Post-its, erasers and tape. There is, of course, a large drawer reserved for—you guessed it—labels. Each drawer is labeled. My saving grace with the cabinet may be that there is a junk drawer. It isn’t labeled.
When my mother was alive, I had a partner in labeling compulsion. She was a goddess of organization. We would have conversations about organizing; we both found them calming. But I’m a piker compared to my mother. While I have long owned a Dymo Letra Tag labeling gun, she had a Brother P-Touch, the Cadillac of labeling systems. I snatched it up recently while helping clean out her office.
When I lived alone, I was cavalier about organizing. Now that I live in the midst of a storm of people, their things, their needs and their emotions, I crave organization more than ever. So, I’ve built an alternate universe in my mind. One where there’s a place for everything and everything’s in its place. There are no Littlest Pet Shop figurines, clothes are on hangers (no wire) in closets, shoes are in boxes, bath towels are neatly stacked. And everything, of course, is labeled.
Tags: compulsive behavior, labeling, obsessive behavior, organizing
I’ve been challenged–in public–by my local library, based on my column this week in The Patch. Here’s the link: http://naperville.patch.com/articles/just four books
