OCD in the MAF

We came from here: http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1394513/

Terri, as per your request, here we are.

For decades my world view has been that Planet Earth is an intergalactic insane asylum where the inmates have been left in charge. A corollary is that is we are all crazy, and gravitate toward others with similar insanities, forming a group that reflects what we see a "normal". This group (MAF) is one such example. Obviously, there are sub-sets within this group as evidenced by the thread that led to this one. So, lets spice up this forum with further revelations of our obsessions and idiosyncrasies.

ODC inthe MAF-LOL

LOL - cool topic for a thread, especially with this group. Thanks for starting it David. Hmmm, there are so many things that I do that are pretty OCD.

How about books? I'm a sucker for collecting gardening and cook books. The cook books are in an antique armoire, the gardening books are in the library. Gardening books are arranged by a categorization that somehow makes sense to me. There are 12 shelves and each shelf contains a category - Shade Gardening, Landscape Design, Hardscape (Arbors, Pergolas, Paths, Stone, etc...), Specific Plants (alphabetical), Reference Books (Annuals, Perennials, Shrubs, Trees), Water (Ponds, Streams, Waterfalls), Flower Gardening, Public and Private Gardens, Garden Maintenance, Garden Themes, ...

So OCD, had to edit the thread to take out some redundant typing lol

This message was edited Jul 22, 2015 10:18 PM

I'm obsessed with birds, as anyone who has seen me stop in mid-sentence and go get more peanuts for my blue jays will confirm! I'll also confess that I turn over the compost pile when a catbird is begging for worms. A lot of my garden decisions are based on what's best for the birds. My latest plan is to plant lots of Juniper ground-cover in my front yard to deter neighbors' cats while providing another food source.

Now that you mention it, I do recall you stopping mid sentence at the spring swap to fill the peanut tray for the birds...

Don't feel bad, I have spent much of the last two years buying plants that berry so the birds have abundant food in the winter.

Terri, next time I'm over, I'll find a detailed guide to Dewey Decimal System so we can really organize those books. Or would you prefer Library of Congress??

Haha the Dewey Decimal System! I haven't even heard those words put into a sentence for 14 years (length of time out of high school). Sure is a good way to organize books though. =)

gotta have SOME way to make sense of them. And when there is a detailed system, I can be appropriately OCD. It actually helped train me to be a LITTLE tidier at home...

Perhaps a Dewey Decimal-like system could be applied to spices, allowing them to be arranged numerically?

I'm not super OCD in the traditional sense but my mind picks and chooses random things to be OCD about. I like Sioux City root beer and birch beer and always have it in the fridge. When I put the new ones in, 99% of the time, I face the label out. Also, when eating any dish with rice that's cooked in our house, I must eat every last kernel of rice on the plate.

Or a Dewey Decimal System for plants. That way we could just post numbersand forget about common or botanical names!

Ha Ha, the Dewey Decimal System, I actually can see myself re-arranging those gardening books if I knew what the System was.

Now that Jeff mentioned that his root beer labels are facing out, I realized that all canned or bottled food items are stored with the label facing out, all boxes are stored with the front facing the same way, and all are grouped like with like - i.e. I don't mix up the variety of drinks - all Coke zeros are grouped together, then the Sprite zeros, then the Ice Teas, then the waters....
Likewise with cans such as soups - all chicken broths are together, then beef broths, then cream of chicken, then cream of mushroom, well you get the picture...

OK! I thought of ONE thing which always "has to be" the way I want it to be.

In my wallet--the paper money has to be in this order:

From the back to the front>>

20's-----10's--------fives-------and ones. It helps me pull out the right bills.

That is it--so far. G.

I was going to bring up canned goods...

You still can, there are plenty of electrons.

I do the same with money - in denominational order and all facing the same way up and down/back and front.

Maybe this thread isn't such a good idea, now that it has me really thinking about how OCD I really am LOL.

I also organize all my music cd's in order by genre, and then alphabetical. DVDs are just organized alphabetically, too hard for me to figure out genre on them.

Funny story and gives a little insight about my kind of humor. One of my sisters does not have any OCD tendencies as far as I can tell, but the other sister does. One time when she was out of town, I was going over to her house to feed and walk the dogs. She also organizes all her movies alphabetically, and she literally has hundreds and hundreds of them in a bookcase type entertainment center with the big screen TV. Just for kicks, I moved 7 or 8 of them out of order, left it, and never said a word about it for at least a year. At a family gathering, we were actually talking about the OCD arrangement of movies because my father borrows mine and as smart as he is, I don't think he can alphabetize to be able to put them back properly LOL. I confessed to Tina that I intentionally disarranged some of hers when she was on vacation. She about slapped me, because she blamed it on her teenaged stepdaughters and had read them the riot act HA HA HA!!! Shhhhh, I shouldn't admit this, but I think she could be the epitome of the evil stepmom :-)

Pat's brother is VERY into movies and has 6,000+ in his collection, arranged by director, then alphabetically. Staying at his house when he was in the hospital we were at a loss trying to find a movie we wanted to watch.

6000+ good gosh what a collection! I guess in that case, the best approach is to close your eyes, spin around 3 times, and pick - kind of like pin the tail on the donkey

That is a good one you did to your sister, Terri. My brother is very into movies as well and has several floor to ceiling bookcases devoted to his collection. He has them alphabetized by director, and then alphabetized within each director's section. Makes it quite a pain to try to find something by title.

When he moved the last time, I met the movers since he was in the hospital. I unpacked everything, but it took him ages to get them the way he wanted again.

I could NEVER imagine trying to see which movie I may want to watch if they
were all in several floor-t-ceiling book cases!!!!!

HOW do you pick one???? Maybe your brother has spreadsheets of where
exactly each move is?

All this is mind-boggling to me..........................G.

Wow, arranged by director?? That's a serious movie collector. I love movies but rarely watch anything more than once, so it wouldn't make sense for me to buy them.

I have no idea why he does it that way, and he is very into movies. He may have a spreadsheet of the titles, but he knows who the directors are. He also collects movie posters and has some sort of frames for 2 in his office. Those he changes each week, with the 2 for the week selected with some obscure theme tying them together.