![]() I began my personal training to eliminate my tidiness obsession. I wanted no more obsessively-tidy battles. Years later, when I moved in with my current partner, I knew that I wanted a fresh start. I began to try to “just live with it.” But I didn’t have a real plan to accomplish this. If that was true, why didn’t he care as much as I did that our home looked untidy?Īfter that, I began to try not caring whether the person I lived with did things differently from me. Is that true? Do our habits serve to describe us? I began to doubt myself on that point. I said it mattered to me because an untidy house said something about me. He said it didn’t matter to people what the place looked like-they just wanted to visit us, not our tidiness. Of course, he somehow couldn’t even see what needed tidying, so he was never much help with that. He had left some personal stuff lying around, like socks, I can’t remember exactly.īefore having visitors over, I always had to tidy everything, even the socks in the bedroom, where the visitors would likely never go. That day we had a huge fight just before visitors were to arrive. It was back when I lived with my ex, very early in our marriage. I remember exactly when I started my personal training and why. 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? 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?” Some people, like my partner, are just not able to see untidiness, not ever. At least he knows what it feels like to need that level of tidiness. He says that’s about living comfortably in a small space. On his boat, everything has to be done properly every time, not just the towels. (He doesn’t admit he has rules, but I think he knows he does.) He knows he can happily live with my rules as long as he gets his way about his own rules. He just thinks of this as one of the many It doesn’t matter to him that I need to have certain things a certain way. I have made myself get used to leaving his towel the way he last hung it-I don’t even notice it any more. My partner hangs his towels nicely most of the time, although not the way I would. I wonder if it’s just as obsessive in another way to be annoyed by somebody who needs to tidy? Some people think habits like this (in others) are annoying. My partner thinks it’s hilariously obsessive to have to hang towels straight and tidy each and every time. I’ve learned that I can make untidiness affect me less by doing my ignoring practice, just like during the towel incident. It was a good exercise in self discipline. I went to the bathroom later and managed to leave the towel as it was and just walked away again. I soon forgot about it-the towel itself wasn’t calling me back in there to fix it. After I got away from it after tossing it on the rail, it didn’t bother me. The towel stayed in its tossed position until I used it after my shower that night. 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?” ![]() I wonder if you are the same as I am about hanging towels “correctly” every time? 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 was in a hurry putting away the laundry, and there were those two clean towels to be hung back in the bathroom. I had to laugh at myself for having this obsessive quirk, but doing that was almost impossible. I did that last weekend and it was a big event. 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? “Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyze you they’re supposed to help you discover who you are.” ~ Bernice Johnson Reagon
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