Newly Added To My OCD List

As you may have ascertained from my posts, I have some obsessive compulsive tendencies. Since the birth of my children, I have shifted those tendencies....a tiny bit. I don't have to vacuum everyday anymore, they can have some mess in their rooms. I still like things picked up and in their place, but I can put up with them making a mess and even playing with toys in the living room...for a short period of time. Assuming they are fully picked up at the end of the day....even if I have to do it. The OCD has in fact become more focused on them. I want them to have polite manners, excellent table manners, they need to be clean and neat, with teeth brushed, in an outfit that actually matches. And is cute. And appropriate. And stylish. Did I want to pull out my hair when D would have his cute little shorts outfits on with his rubber rain boots..in 95 degree weather? Why, yes Readers, I did. He was so little that you could barely see the outfit over the boots. And rain boots just aren't appropriate when it feels like 120 degrees with humidity and there isn't a cloud in the sky. But, we'll save a discussion on D's obsession with rain boots for another post. More than that though, I worry constantly about forgetting certain memories so I'm forever writing cute things down, taking loads of pictures, and taking video when I can. I have a pile of crap on my scrapbook table so deep, that I couldn't possibly hope to get through it in my lifetime and they haven't even reached the teen years yet. Now you'd think my everyday OCD, combined with my OCD I've created for myself by birthing children would be enough for me, but it clearly isn't as I've added a new one.

Recycling. My kids have luckily picked this obsession up so I'm not completely on my own this time. I recycle every single thing that I can. I even go through my parent's garbage and bring things home that they can't recycle. I go to specific stores to buy products that are packaged in recyclable material versus materials like styrofoam that I can't recycle here. I buy meats that are at the meat counter and insist that they are put into the freezer paper. I try not to use plastic baggies, but if I have to use them for cold lunches, I make my kids bring them home so that they can be recycled. I am down to about one garbage bag of trash every 4 weeks, my goal is 5.

Here's an example of what keeps me up at night. Worrying about transferring my videos of the kids onto DVD before the tapes disintegrate, wondering about what happened to the picture of D after his first haircut - it's been lost for 2 years, and figuring out new ways to reduce my trash output. Add that to actually falling asleep and then having nightmares about missing great deals at garage sales and I'm as close to an insomniac as you can get folks.