Me and my hangups.

When the court visitor was here last week and looked in Scooter's closet, she said, "Wow. OCD much?" She thought Scooter had arranged the closet, but I told her I had. I explained that it just made things so much easier for Scooter to find what she needed at a glance. I had all of her clothes sorted and hung neatly. Starting at the left were the long-sleeved blouses followed by short-sleeved blouses, short-sleeved t-shirts, long-sleeved t-shirts, pants, dresses and skirts, and each section was arranged by color. To me, it just looked nice and neat. It makes things much easier for Scooter to see what's available in her closet and to pick out what she's going to wear for the day. 


I was thinking that her closet was the only one that looked like that, when I realized all of them do. Hopper's closet has one of those wire closet organizers installed, so it's organized a bit differently but even the coats in the coat closet are organized by who wears them with the winter coats to the left and lightweight coats to the right. And the linen closet looks amazing, if I do say so, myself. Everything is folded neatly and in its place, and looks great. Best of all, things are very easy to find. 


When any of the closets start to get messy and disorganized, I find my anxiety level goes up. It's just disconcerting. Maybe it's because they're the only truly finished areas in the house. All I know, is that I have to have them looking neat and organized as much as possible.


It can be a real hangup for me. 


Almost 2 years ago, I wrote about the struggle I was having with my hangers. I had so many different types  of hangers that I was compelled to sort them every time I passed them by. I had to have a different color for each person in the house, and it drove me absolutely nuts when the colors were mixed up in the closets. I wasted so much time and energy on them.


At the time, I realized that the best thing for me to do for myself in regard to the hangers was to start over from scratch, and I gave myself permission to buy all new hangers for our tops. It was hard for me to justify the expense, but I'm so glad I felt I was worth the small cost. It has helped tremendously. 


At the time, I thought I could get away without doing anything about the pants and skirt hangers. Well, that's not entirely true. I did get rid of a hodgepodge of pants hangers (at least 4 different styles and 4 different colors), but I still had 3 different colors and 2 different styles left. I've found that it's still too many choices for me.


In the last 2 years, we've had black, opaque and clear hangers that had the pinch things on them that opened like a clothespin to hang the pants or skirts. The clearest ones were supposed to only be used for Scooter's clothes, because her pants and skirts are the lightest weight, and they'd be least likely to break the hangers. Then the black pinch ones were Hoppers, and the opaque pinch ones were Scooter's. Hubster's hangers were black, but instead of pinching open and closed, there was a little part that went over the clothing and then a silver piece slid down over the plastic to hold the fabric in the hangers.


It's bothered me over the last 2 years, but it hasn't bothered me enough to do anything about it. 


Until today. 


This past week, I realized I've been wasting a lot of time and emotional strength and energy on these stupid hangers. It was frustrating when one of Hopper's was used to hang my clothes, because none of mine were available, or when some of Hubster's clothes were hung on Scooter's hangers and were heavy enough they snapped the hanger in two. Never mind the amount of time waste looking for the 'right' one to use when I had something to hang. 


I've tried for years to make the hangers work. But now that I've come to the conclusion that they aren't working for me, I've decided to do something about it. I realized that it was worth it to buy pants hangers in bulk on eBay, so I'm not obsessing over the mismatched hangers anymore. I will donate the old mismatched ones. The new ones will take the stress over who is using whose hangers away completely, and they'll cut down on the time looking for the right hanger to nothing. The choice will be gone. 


I'm already looking forward to their arrival next week. It will just be one less hangup for me to deal with on a daily basis.


I can deal with that.

Recharging.

Things are going well here. We're thrilled that weather is keeping Mom here and we get to enjoy her company a bit longer.

We've been plugging away here and there on the dehoarding when we can. We've gotten most of the Christmas decor put away, but we'll take the tree down tomorrow and get the decorations put away that I didn't get around to last year. They've just been sitting in baskets waiting all this time. They'll be dusty, to be sure, but I'll be thrilled to dust them and get them put away. It will be such a relief to finally have them done.

It's been so nice having Mom around to be able to bounce ideas off. I've had problems getting rid of a few things and talking with her has helped me make decisions. For example...


Several years ago, The Hubster was deployed, and he asked his mom to order flowers for me. So she did, and she signed the card instead of just letting the florist. When she signed the card, she wrote 'I "love" you' on it from my husband. It's bothered me all this time. Like she thought that the love from my husband needed to be in quotes, because the love he had for me wasn't real love. So all these years, I've hated the mug, but I've kept it in the cupboard, because it technically came from my husband. 


I don't know. Maybe the quotes for her are like underlining are for other people. Maybe she uses them for emphasis in a good way rather than to sew doubt. I don't think any of us have ever gotten a birthday card from her without the word, happy, being in quotes. It somehow has always felt like the wishes weren't actually sincere. If she hadn't been a proof-reader for several years, maybe it wouldn't bother me, but I can't help but let my mind obsess over it. And every single time I see that mug, it brings back that horrible obsession, and I don't have time in my life for negative reminders like that.


It went in the donation box. I know my husband won't mind a bit. He'll be glad to have a little more room in the cupboard.


Another thing I've dealt with is a little teapot that my cousin made and gave us for our wedding. It's not that she did a poor job on it that I don't want it. I mean, it does come close to matching my good china in color, in spite of the fact it doesn't come close in style, but we haven't used it once in the almost 25 years we've had it. Not once. And now, it just makes me sad, because it reminds me of the ugliness she and her mom and sister treated her brother with. I'm not going to go into it here, but it's just very ugly, and I don't want to be reminded of that sort of ugliness every time I look at it.

Bugster wants the teapot, and she is more than welcome to it. I'll let her get rid of it, if she doesn't want it anymore. I think she just wants it to potentially use next summer when she and Bubster have their formal wedding ceremony. I am sort of hoping she doesn't find it as appealing once she sees it again and decides to donate it. I'm sure someone will find it worthwhile and have good memories associated with it. 


In the meantime, I'll be enjoying the space it used to occupy.

I'll try this last one one last time. I've accidentally erased it 4 times now...


Several years ago, I had a friend who did what she could to cause strife between Bugster and me. I didn't find out about it until I'd gone to see my dad and be with Mom and my siblings two days before we lost him to lung cancer. The night before he died, this so-called friend told Bugster I was taking advantage of her by going to be with my dad when he died. Thankfully, instead of being successful in driving that wedge deeper, the situation brought Bugster and me closer together.

During our "friendship", this woman had her husband, a very talented artist, make us personalized Christmas ornaments for our tree. They were gorgeous. Our names were painted in white on red satin Christmas balls. They had beaded holly leaves made of green glass seed beads. They were absolutely gorgeous. But when I came across them this year, I realized that they only reminded me of her ugliness towards me and my family.


They went in the trash.


So even though I haven't had time to write about things every day since Mom has been here, I'm making huge strides. I'm learning that I don't need to hang onto things I don't like due to obligation, and it's not worth hanging onto things that are hideous to me due to circumstance. No matter how beautiful they may actually be. 

Life's too short to be emotionally drained by things.

I give up.

Feeling a bit better today. I didn't have to be on two different kinds of pain medicine to keep things under control. This is a huge improvement over the last few days. I'll gladly take it. I hate when things are out of my control. Especially when I've been making so much progress and then ... nothing.

I've always had control issues. For as long as I can remember.

*I alphabetize my spices - it makes it easier to find them when I need them.
*I sort my canned goods according to size and content - makes it easier to see at a glance what I have.
*I have a compulsion to sort hangers. That's why I now have nothing but white ones.
*I have found that I can't help but sort our new dishes as I take them out of the dishwasher to put them away. The stacks from bottom to top: stripes, purple or purple w/polka dots, flowers, topped off with green or green w/polka dots and repeat. The only ones I don't worry about are the dessert plates. They're tiny. Only about the size of a saucer. Maybe even smaller. But we don't have an even number of them, so I can't sort them evenly, so I don't even bother. But we have 12 of each of the other pieces, and I can't help it. I tell myself I do it, because I want them to wear evenly and not have one pattern wear out more quickly than any of the others, but I think it's just that I have to control over them. It doesn't take a ton of time like the hangers did. I have a routine, and I follow it, and I can do it rather quickly, so it's really not a big deal.

However, for years we went without a dishwasher. So when we bought our house, I was so thrilled to get a dishwasher. I'd wanted one for years to help lighten the load. However, the load never seemed lightened. The dishwasher never seemed to get the dishes clean. So I would spend hours each week making sure there wasn't a speck of dust on them before loading them in the dishwasher. There could be grease. Just not specks of food, because they'd end up in the bottom of the glasses, and I'd have to rewash them. It drove me nuts. I also noticed that there were always soap bubbles in the bottom of the dishwasher when I opened it up which always surprised me, because I only used about 1/4 the amount recommended.

It dawned on me that maybe I wasn't giving the soap enough to work on. I mean, our dishwasher was expensive. It was a good machine when we bought it. The best in our price point, at least. But we never had clean dishes. I often used the dishwasher for a dish drain. I mean, if I was going to spend almost as much time rinsing and soaking all the food off the dishes before sticking them in the dishwasher, I may as well just wash them by hand. Right?

Like I said. Hours. Each. Week.

I told you I have control issues.

:::sigh:::

The next step was hard for me to take.

I stopped rinsing everything off the dishes before putting them in the dishwasher. Granted, I put them on a longer wash, but I'd done that before, and the dishes hadn't come out clean. I expected no less this time. To my utter amazement, the dishes came out clean.

It took awhile for me to give up control over the dishes completely. Even though I'd seen the results, I still couldn't quite believe it. For a few more weeks, I'd rinse the dishes sometimes or do them by hand. Other times, I'd throw them in the dishwasher on an extended wash and still not quite believe that they were actually clean.

A few weeks into my experimenting, a friend sent me the following article. It talks about how using too much soap in your dishwasher or washing machine lessens the life of the machines considerable. I've always used less soap than called for, because we have a water softener, and you don't need to use as much when you have softened water. However, the article also addresses the very thing I'd discovered on my own. That dishes get cleaner in the dishwasher, if you can allow yourself to give up control and just let the dishwasher do it's job.

I'm still a control freak. I probably always will be. But I am so glad i gave up control over this particular thing in my life. It has saved me countless hours. Hours I can use to dehoard the house.

So glad I gave up.