ocd trigger thread

This thread is fascinating in the same way a train wreck is. I do sort the bills in my wallet, a fairly recently acquired habit mostly resulting from the fact that I seem to carry around more cash than I used to, but they don't all have to be facing the same direction. My husband's got a few OCD quirks, though. Shirts and hangers facing the same way, check. The one that drives me crazy is the switches. Where we usually enter the house, there is a switch that turns on the main lights, and another one at the other end of the room (which runs half the length of the house) that turns them off. Makes perfect sense to me because if I come in at night, I want to see well enough to get to the other end of the room, where I can turn the lights off again. Same thing at both ends of our stairwell and both ends of the hallway to the bedroom. But no, the switches have to be in the same configuration all the time. I've trained him to realize that I am going to use the switches in a way that is convenient for me and if he doesn't like it, he can fix them when I've gone elsewhere in the house. He actually does this. Oddly, this applies only to the utility room (where we usually enter the house) and the stairwell. Evidently, he doesn't care about the ones in the hallway, or I've never caught him resetting them, anyway.
 
A friend of mine had a girlfriend who had been a therapist. She said her standard preliminary OCD test was to deliberately hang a picture or diploma or something crooked on the wall of her office over her head where the patient would be looking right at it. She'd make an excuse to leave the room for a moment. If the picture was still crooked when she returned, the patient probably didn't have OCD.
 
judypilot said:
This thread is fascinating in the same way a train wreck is. I do sort the bills in my wallet, a fairly recently acquired habit mostly resulting from the fact that I seem to carry around more cash than I used to, but they don't all have to be facing the same direction. My husband's got a few OCD quirks, though. Shirts and hangers facing the same way, check. The one that drives me crazy is the switches. Where we usually enter the house, there is a switch that turns on the main lights, and another one at the other end of the room (which runs half the length of the house) that turns them off. Makes perfect sense to me because if I come in at night, I want to see well enough to get to the other end of the room, where I can turn the lights off again. Same thing at both ends of our stairwell and both ends of the hallway to the bedroom. But no, the switches have to be in the same configuration all the time. I've trained him to realize that I am going to use the switches in a way that is convenient for me and if he doesn't like it, he can fix them when I've gone elsewhere in the house. He actually does this. Oddly, this applies only to the utility room (where we usually enter the house) and the stairwell. Evidently, he doesn't care about the ones in the hallway, or I've never caught him resetting them, anyway.
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OMG we have the exact same thing! Our kitchen has two entrances, and a switch at both. I typically enter and exit using the south entrance and he typically enters and exits using the north entrance. If one of us leaves the lights on, the other will find the switch in the wrong configuration upon entering. With us, he’s trained me to do it the way he likes it. Then when I flew back East for a week and he was alone in the house, he sent me a video of himself deliberately using the switches my way.
 
My wife tells me of her friend at work that gets a little nutty if you leave time on the microwave ... :lol::yes: :yesnod: :biggrin:
 
Timbeck2 said:
Well although I don't label the shirts - freshly laundered shirts get hung up on the right and I wear from the left. As laundry gets done all the shirts march to the left side, then they get worn and the cycle starts all over again.
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I know a guy that got divorced for several OCD reasons, one was because his wife wouldn't put the freshly washed underwear on the bottom of the stack in his drawer. He insisted the underwear had to have equal wearing time, I guess so they would all be worn out on the same day.

The wife said enough, and that was the end of the marriage.
 
The biggest highlight of my holiday vacation was figuring out how to get the stains off the stainless steel appliances. I am truly hopeless...
 
steingar said:
The biggest highlight of my holiday vacation was figuring out how to get the stains off the stainless steel appliances. I am truly hopeless...
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Barkeepers friend is also your friend.
 
SkyDog58 said:
OMG! WTF?! Are those incandescent bulbs??!
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The fixture needs to be hauled up higher too. People bump their heads on it while viewing a home. You don’t leave them down when there’s no table under them.
 
MICHAEL MAHN said:
That room is an OCD twofer! With the HVAC intake so close to the register, sure looks like the cool/warm air is immediately sucked out of the room :)
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SkyDog58 said:
OMG! WTF?! Are those incandescent bulbs??!
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Rushie said:
The fixture needs to be hauled up higher too. People bump their heads on it while viewing a home. You don’t leave them down when there’s no table under them.
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Ha! I didn’t notice any of these other issues! I guess my eyes were fixated on the trim - I couldn’t look away…
 
kaiser said:
Was house shopping and saw this… I don’t know what to feel…

View attachment 103353
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I tend to OCD in other areas, but that to me looks like a reasonable engineering solution.

Now if the top edges were out of line... :yikes:

(I'm not wedded to symmetry in the machines I design, either. It drives one of our toolmakers nuts.)
 
Once upon a sub-zero freezing night while enduring a field exercise in the Army we decided to mess with our OCD buddy who could not stand clutter or unkemptness.

We waited until we were all zipped into our GI sleeping bags and then tossed a Coke can into the middle of the open "floor" of the tent. It worked.

We were not able to keep our laughter quiet for long, but he did indeed extricate himself from the warm bag and pick up the can and deposit it in the trash bag in the corner.

He separated from the military and got a job with American Airlines as a customer complaint negotiator. From what I heard he was the best in the business!
 
FastEddieB said:
ocd-nightmare-crooked-picture-of-leaning-tower-of-pisa-obsessive-compulsive-disorder.jpg
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Well, the tower actually leans the other way. Just say'n
 
I enjoyed looking over this old thread

kaiser said:
Was house shopping and saw this… I don’t know what to feel…

View attachment 103353
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Electric outlets are a source of a lot of my "issues"

3393RP said:
I know a guy that got divorced for several OCD reasons, one was because his wife wouldn't put the freshly washed underwear on the bottom of the stack in his drawer. He insisted the underwear had to have equal wearing time, I guess so they would all be worn out on the same day.

The wife said enough, and that was the end of the marriage.
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My father in law, RIP, used to number his socks on the toe with a permanent marker so that they would get re-paired with their mate. When he's walk around in sock feet it drove me nuts to see that writing on his socks!
 
Daleandee said:
My wife tells me of her friend at work that gets a little nutty if you leave time on the microwave ... :lol::yes: :yesnod: :biggrin:
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Guy I work with will remove item from the microwave, and if there's any time left, he'll restart it and let it run out, rather than mashing the "clear" button.
 
bluerooster said:
Guy I work with will remove item from the microwave, and if there's any time left, he'll restart it and let it run out, rather than mashing the "clear" button.
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Which is the whole reason to clear it: So nobody hits the start button with the oven empty, which is bad for the oven.
 
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