What household chores are you a bit neurotic about?

Dishes

Dishes and Lawn Work. It always has to be precise.

I second on my laundry OCD.

I can’t think of any household chore I get OCD about. I like things to be clean and tidy but I am not obsessive. The closest thing I can think of is putting the shopping on the checkout thing at the supermarket. I have to put things in categories. Cleaning stuff together, veggies together, tinned foods together and I do get a bit twitchy if they aren’t sorted right.

@Bellatrix – You know what, I do that on the belt of the checkout, too! It has to go a certain way. I bought deodorant for at the grocery store today and I made sure it wasn’t near anything that it might make smell. I know they’ll bag it correctly, but I don’t want smelly things too close to my food.

I do that too… I love when the cashier’s thank me for packing my own stuff. I don’t do it to help them – I do it so that it makes sense to me! haha

I am a single dad so I do them myself.
The ones my daughter does are done pretty well so I can’t complain.

The dishes. Apparently I’m the only one who knows how to load the dishwasher correctly, to be able to get all the dishes in it properly. Either that or my family pretends to bungle the job so they don’t have to do it… :P

@WillWorkForChocolate Sometimes when I go over a friend’s house, and they ask us to do the dishes (don’t ask why) I always ask them , “Where’s the dishwasher?” and they laugh and point at me.
I love dishwashers more than anything.

Laundry, definitely. I went on a laundry strike for a long time because my husband kept interfering with my process. I actually gave him an ultimatum. He could either stay the heck out of the laundry room and let me do it all, or he could do it all himself. I was not trying to compromise.

Also, anything that involves organizing. I like things to be just so, and it drives me bonkers when they aren’t the way that I like them. I get really anal about the way certain things sit on shelves or in cupboards.

The dishes. Unless there’s been a party, I can wash dishes faster in the sink and use less water than the dishwasher can. I go wonky if I see someone has put a glass in the sink rather than setting it beside on the countertop. I believe in piling dishes in the sink with water in between to soak BUT I want the biggest flattest ones on the bottom and then smaller as they stack, silverware and utensils to soak in a pot or larger bowl. When people use the garbage disposal as a trash bin then I flip out since I only like the smallest remnants to get ground up in there.

I can’t stand the sheets untucked on my bed.

If the kitchen isn’t clean, dishes washed or put in the dishwasher, and clean dishes put away, counters wiped clean and everything put away, it makes me crazy. I cook a lot and clean as I go and I make sure that everything is cleaned and put away immediately afterward. Otherwise, I can only imagine giant germs and bacteria eating away at everything. I clean up after other people as well, because I can’t stand the thought of jelly covered utensils touching the counter, or having sticky things or crumbs or dried spills on anything. And clutter makes me very nervous. I will usually clean the whole kitchen before cooking, and then clean the whole kitchen again, after I cook something. I think I am a professional chef at heart.

Dishes and catshit a close second. Me hates.

The floors. I sweep them at least once everyday and clean them once a week. I hate seeing prints on the pergo and I hate it when I see cat fur fluffs flying around.

I hate it when I can’t walk barefoot on my hardwood floors. They have to be clean, especially in the kitchen. My husband slops food around and it pisses me off that when he’s home, I have to clean that floor every day because he’s such a slob.

I do all the cleaning and washing in the house and I’m able to keep things clean and tidy when it’s just me and the little man, but when the Slob comes home, I get really anal at all the extra work he makes. I don’t have to be worried about ‘this is something I have to do myself’ because if I don’t do it, it doesn’t get done anyway.

Wow, I’m surprised so many of you said dishes! I HATE doing the dishes – and I have a dishwasher!!

But I’m definitely neurotic about my bathroom. There is nothing I hate more than walking into a dirty/messy bathroom. The rest of my apartment can be a complete mess and a half but you can always count on a spotless bathroom!

@DJoy83 – If you clean my bathroom, I’ll do your dishes!

@tedibear Sounds like a plan if I’ve ever heard one :)

Laundry? I have one of those apartment-size combos that washes and then dries all in one machine. Dirty clothes go in, clean dry clothes come out. No worries. (Actually they’re very common in Europe, but it was a bitch to find one here in the states.)

Dishes? Again, I set the dishwasher on Super Scrub and don’t worry about it.

Vacuuming? My little Roomba takes care of that daily without a thought from me (except to occasionally empty the dustbin).

@HungryGuy: Will a Rooma pick up fluffs of pet hair, small dried leaves and teeny grains of gravel/sand? We have all tile floors and need something in between moppings.

@Neizvestnaya – I can’t say about pet hair. I live in an apartment above the ground floor, so leaves and gravel/sand isn’t an issue for me. Though it sometimes has a problem with large particulate type objects…its bin isn’t very big, so you have to run it daily to maintain the clean. One of these days, I plan on buying one of those Dyson Animal vacuums for once or twice a year deep cleaning. They say one of those will suck up a sherman tank left on the floor :-p.