A Clean House

Looking back on childhood and adolecence, no one would have pegged me for a neat freak. But here I am now, maybe not truly Obsessively-Compulsively neat, but I definately have an anality about the way I love organization. First example, work. When I first began at my job, I was handed second-hand copies of second-hand copies to be my original forms for to make copies from (my 10th grade English teacher is probably having a stroke right about now from that run-on sentence). The packet was filled with papers that I was supposed to hand to parents and clients for them to fill out. At places, the type was crooked from so many second-hand copies and parts even ran off the page. Did the copier they use have the glass from a fun house? I searched our "forms" area in the H drive of the computer server and finally came up with some neat and pretty originals. Also, (here is the truly anal part) I retyped any forms that were not to be found on the H drive. I actually retyped them. I received quite a bit of flak for doing this. Working with mental health professionals, we all have a tendency to diagnos each other. Many options were tossed around. But here is the catch, although I was called every name in the DSM, they all wanted a copy of my packet of originals. (What could I do? I emailed them to everyone so that they could print it off the laser printer themselves--a second-hand copy just wouldn't do--that's how we got into the mess in the first place).

Second example, home. I actually have a chart for doing chores on a regular basis. A place where we can check off what has been done and what hasn't. The chart includes daily chores, weekly chores, and monthly chores. It tells me everyday that the dishes should be loaded in the dishwasher, that I should sweep, clean out the cat litter and take out the trash. Sadly enough, this chart even tells us to feed the pets. Yes, that's right, in my quest for organization, I have organized my life to the point that whinning puppy and meowing kitty are not reminders to feed, I have to have a chart that tells me to do this.

That being said, I will get off track a bit and say that charts are cool. I love making charts on excel. I have a chart for chores (as I have already said). I have a chart for my weight (sadly the line graph that comes from the chart is an up and down phenomen rather than gradual descent). I have chart for anything I can have a chart for. I really like charts and making charts.