Confessions of a person with OCD

 For those of you who don’t know me personally, I think that you probably need a History 101 on Cay in order to appreciate what I did today:

 Hi! My name is Cay and I am extremely OCD when it comes to my personal life! I cannot tolerate disorganization! I have been this way my entire life. I am a type A personality.  As a child I would spend hours in my room cleaning and organizing my things.  I would pretend that I lived in a tiny one-room apartment in New York City and I would work to get everything neat and tidy! Sad, huh? My play kitchen was in the closet! (That way, if unexpected guests arrived and the dishes weren’t finished and put away, I could just close the door and pray that no one asked for an imaginary glass of water!)

I am also a list maker. As a child, I would drive my mother insane. She would send me to my room for a task such as cleaning out my clothes that I had outgrown or didn’t wear any more and she says that she would not see me for several hours and would think that I must be doing an amazing job. However, when she went in to check on me, I was still making lists trying to decide the best way to tackle the project. This was and still is true about everything that I set out to do!  When I have a project, I start by imagining the end result and work backwards. I lay in bed at night thinking about different options to my latest and greatest task!

Oh, one other fact that you may not know: we just moved into a new house.

Now that you have all of the facts, today I had a custom closet put in. The old Cay would have done it herself (yes, I am a DIYer), but the new Cay, the one seeking sanity (for herself and Shank) decided to bite the bullet and pay someone to do it.

A quick History 101 on Shank: He is the most wonderful man I know. He is bright, intelligent, funny, a great money and finance person, and best of all, he tolerates all of my eccentricities! He however is not OCD about anything except money. Don’t get me wrong he is not a slob. He just doesn’t care about perfection in anything except his finances and his appearance.

So today the closet went in. I have been planning this closet since July. I have thought about the arrangement and layout and have been to the Container Store too many times to count.  I spent numerous nights trying to decide between birch or white… single or double hang…. how many and what size drawers. After the installer left, I spent the afternoon putting everything back in the closet.  I am tired but happy. Even though I am excitedly anticipating the matching shoeboxes that are to come and Shank refuses to divide and remove the plastic from his dry cleaning so that I can color coordinate his shirts, it is finished!  The old Cay would be stressed beyond belief about the plastic and the lack of color coordinating, but the new Cay is taking a deep breath and moving on.  Check out the new closet!