Making my OCD Work for Me.

For the first time in awhile, I feel calm. Cool. Collected. And, am actually seriously considering doing something fun for myself. I think I may scrapbook today sometime.

However, this has been an ongoing battle between me and my OCD. Clinically, no one has ever said, Carla, you have OCD. And I don't go around like in the movies doing every thing three times. Unlock. Lock. Unlock. Lock. Unlock. Lock. It's not like that.

It's everything else. lol.

I have to have order. Structure. Organization. Or I can't deal with it.

When my life fell apart a little over a year ago, I took time off work and instead of sleeping or crying, I played the ipod as loud as I could and bleached my entire kitchen. I mean, on my knees scrubbing. Under the sink scrubbing. Move the fridge out scrubbing. Everything. Over, under, beside, and inside everything got cleaned. Now, it's not quite to that extreme, but if the kitchen is messy, nothing else gets done. First thing in the morning, I have to clean the kitchen.

We have our hundreds of DVDs in alphabetical order. And I have set the unspoken rule that if Jose or anyone else can't put them away right, they need to stack up on the bottom shelf so that I can put them back in alphabetical order on a regular basis. The other day, I sat and shelf read the entire DVD collection so that I could make sure there were none misplaced. There were. Tons. And I had to fix each of them.

Food boxes without the label of what it is on the side drive me nuts. Who puts boxes on their shelf with the front facing out? If the contents of the box are ONLY on the front, I hate it and will hide those boxes behind the boxes with the contents on the side. Or, better yet, I will pull those and schedule our meal plan for the week around them because it seriously bothers me that I cannot tell at a glance by what's in the box.

Colors have to coordinate. Isa and I have regular daily debates when she's picking out clothes. It's not that I do not approve of what she has selected, but it's because her pinks are two different shades. I could care less if the pants are striped with a polkadotted shirt, as long as they are the same hues and shades, we're okay. You can ask Jose, but there are some things that we have fought over in the house in regards to colors... It drives me insane that the framed art above the tv is in a black frame instead of a wood one. I made him move the cross that he put over the foyer entrance because it was gray and pink instead of wood. I cannot handle wood items to be displayed in our black, white, and red kitchen either. Things in there must be metalic, red, black or white. Even shades of red work. Like the paintings with oranges and yellow. They're okay. But I may scream if you try to put a green appliance or hang a purple painting. No. No. No.

So, as time goes on, I can see more and more of my quirks. And I try to make them work for me instead of being disabilitating. It allows me to organize clothes and movies and food to a manner which is more efficient for us. For example, in the master bedroom, we do not have a dresser. We opted for the wooden cubby holes. There are 18 of them. And one day, I was frustrated by Jose's lack of putting things where I declared that they belonged. So he came home to labeled cubbies: "Jose's work pants" "Jose's work shirts" "Jose's tee shirts" "Jose's jeans" "Jose's slacks" "Jose's PJs" and similar cubbies for my clothes as well. They work out nicely now.

Also, about a week ago, I pulled everything out of our cabinets. I decided that since we're starting to coupon and stockpile, we should use one cabinet for our food that we will be eating that week (we also meal plan a week at a time) and stockpile the rest in the large white cabinet that we bought so that we can lock it and protect it from our kids. So, now, we have one built in cabinet that is strictly for food that is open or for that weeks' meals. The rest is stocked away. Today, I will be doing the same thing with our frozen foods. We have purchased our second deep freezer for the basement, so the freezer in the kitchen is for the week's foods and the open stuff only. The deep freezers will be for our stock of food.

See, it works. At least, it does for us.

It also feeds into our planned life...see, we are on a budget. And I use calendars religiously once I found one that is perfect for me (google calendars - Thanks Tim!). And I swear by them. They have helped me so much.

Everytime we have a change in finances, we go back and change our budget. Tweak. Pinch here, stretch here and viola! The hand of God is ultimately in our money because sometimes, there is no logical way it works except through Him. We have combined the budget with weekly cash allotments for certain spendings (gasoline, allowances, groceries, "family fun") and have proven ourselves even to be wrong in our thoughts about money. We can do it. It's a slow process and sometimes things come up (like the unplanned two months where I only worked 14 hours a week), but we did it. We still do it. So, today, the idea arose about getting a central air unit and new windows in the house where we have originals. It's still an idea, but before, I would have freaked out thinking about it. Where will the money come from? How will we pay another loan? What will be the benefits? Is it worth it? But now, I can step back and look at the budget first. I can see that we budgeted $60 a month for the electric bill. Last month our electric bill was $125, way higher than it ever was before. I also know that we have three window air conditioners and four fans that run nearly every day and all night to keep our house cool. Granted, it's been a hot summer. But our windows are horrible at holding heat or cool air. In the winter, if we don't have them covered in plastic, you will freeze by the window. It seriously would register at like 40 degrees by the windows. And our gas bills are extremely high in the winter. So I play with math. Because math makes sense. OCD likes math.

An extra $65 for electricity through the summer = $260 (four months). Plastic for the windows in winter = $40. We probably lose about $50 worth of heat each month with the windows, if not more = $200 (four months. That's already $500 a year in loss. Factor in that we've been living here since 2007, three years and we've lost $1500. If we wait, as we had talked about before, for another five years or so to refinance and get some money as an equity loan, that's another $2500 lost for a total of $4000...That's a central air unit right there. Plus, I believe that there are still tax breaks this year for doing some of those types of projects for energy savings and windows and whatnot. So, that would be an additional perk to doing it now instead of waiting...

Also, I have utilized calendars to make my life less chaotic and stressed. I put everything into them. Jose laughed at me because I scheduled Teo's nap on the days we stay home. I figured, it reminds me not to schedule anything during that time. If you're a parent to a nap dependent critter, you understand. If you do not ensure that there is time for a nap in your day, you suffer. So, if you open my IE any given day, my homepage is set to my calendars. And it's a colorful rainbow of his, hers, and ours schedules. And there is overlap. But, last week, when I went from one 14 hour job to 3 jobs totalling 34 hours, I buckled down with the calendar. And I wiggled and moved stuff around a bit and made it work for me. Kinda like the budget. So, now, I've got set work days of Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Two of those are long days (about 12 or 13 hours) but its okay. That gives me entire days the rest of the week to play, read, relax, clean, go to the park, swim, etc. without being bothered by the weight of work. It also gives me ultimately three days to work on murals if I have anyone wanting one. It also allows me to make appointments in a more planned and thought through manner than saying "whenever" and having random meetings all week long. I'm pretty satisfied with that.

So, I'm not really sure where I wanted to go with this post, except to say that my OCD, although sometimes bothersome, has actually been benefical lately. Now that I'm working at home, I keep control of my house (except when I teach classes and Jose lets the kids destroy the house), and it's one of those things where two years ago, I thought it would never stay clean. But here I am, looking around going, man, this looks okay...for having two little kids... (granted, don't go upstairs! lol.) but seriously, it's okay for me. I try to not let things control me but to control them and use them as a gift instead of a curse. God made me this way. So, I should be thankful and should embrace it. Right?