OCD...

...or as I like to call it, "Oh Crap, Dirt!" or "Oh Crap, Disarray!", "Oh Crap, Disorganised!" "Oh Crap, *Insert untidy D-word adjective here*".

Tidy room, tidy mind

 I have always been neat and tidy. Instead of coming home after school and putting on the telly or reading magazines, I'd come home and clean the kitchen. My room was always tidy and everything had its place. After a few months everything got rearranged and put in a new place-I just fell short of folding my underwear! I'd spend all of Saturday mornings cleaning the bathrooms and vacuuming the house. Of course, those were chores that my siblings and I all had to do, but I rarely complained about them. I spent hours making sure the task was complete to a high standard. My high standard. I find cleaning enjoyable.

I'm allergic to dirt. Quite literally, I have a chronic allergy to dust-one that had me constantly sneezing at sleepovers when old sleeping bags were dragged out or spluttering in carpeted rooms, I was told to leave my Irish class once for sneezing too many times in a row, I even became exempt from *emptying the hoover bag* duty as my leaky eyes and snotty sniffling were too much for my family to endure. They'd rather do that job themselves. Perhaps my dust allergy is what has my cleaning senses heightened.

There is a point where being clean and tidy is part of my personality and then the part where it becomes an obsession. The joke in my house was "Just get her angry and let her loose on the house-it'll be tidy in no time!". I clean when I'm upset, I clean when I'm angry, I clean when I'm stressed. I often thought of it as the way I uncluttered my mind, like Morgan Freeman and Jim Carey in "Bruce Almighty" mopping the floors to restore order to the city. I thought it was a constructive way of channeling negative energy-"if the rest of my life is in a mess, at least the sitting room isn't!" Monica Geller has nothing on me.

I know that I have a problem. My mother never knows where her glasses are (surely she should have a safe place for them, I'll find one for her...), my father can't find where I put the remote (it's on the cabinet, beside the TV, duh!), my college roommates are scared when I'm scrubbing in a frenzy and giving out that the dishes aren't washed again (surely everyone cleans up the second they're finished their dinner...), my housemates think that I'm unreasonable when I constantly complain about the crumbs or the teabag left over there or the jumper left on the couch (but that's not where they go...). 

And they're right. I am unreasonable. I see dirt that only people with x-ray vision can see. I can't sit still in a cluttered room where furniture isn't parallel to each other and the DVDs aren't in the place where "they should be". Where I see crumbs, I see rats; where I see mould, I see food poisoning. I vacuum the place with vigour and I scrub until my arms ache-a woman possessed. 

Everything in its place

I know that this has not bode well for me where certain relationships are concerned-yes, I will always be a bit of a "neat freak" but when it starts to impact on other people, I have to take a step back and ask myself-does that bathroom floor really need to be scrubbed right now when you're just out of the shower and not even dressed yet? (yes, that did happen...) This was a huge indicator of my not feeling well a few months ago. I felt that I had no grasp or control over my life at the time, the only thing that I could manage was cleaning. And not the nice type-the frantic, hysterical type. I must have looked like some sort of Detol Demon. I took my worries and stress out on the kitchen, the living room, the bathroom and worst of all, those who where living with me.

IKEA makes me very organised and very happy

I have, hopefully, made a few adjustments with my OCD. I have to force myself to ignore certain cobwebs or crumbs or sauce stains or unwashed cups in the sink. I have recently moved into a new house and I must respect those with whom I live. I can clean my room to my heart's content-that's my place and in sleeping there, I have every right to oust ever dust mite that dares show his face on my carpet. But not the rest of the house. Those dust mites are paid for by all our rent, not just mine, who am I to decide their fate all for myself. 

Above are snaps of my new place, thanks to IKEA, had much fun using 

their products to organise-it's the little things in life!