Driving one morning I said to OH that I needed to top up with diesel, (apologies for not being green enough) the reply I received was “Why you have over a half a tank?”
“Because as you know I like to have a full tank.”
The reply was, “You and your bloody OCD.”
This conversation made me think. Is it OCD (I was under the impression I’d managed to put most of my idiosyncrasies to bed a long time ago). So I chose to tell myself it was habit over hoarding.
Driving, I’m thinking about the conversation and other examples of my hoarding/(possible) OCD and I realised I do have some unusual habits that I can’t explain.
I have a strange need to have more than one of certain things. Not everything – that would make me sound like a crazy bloke – just certain items that for some reason make me twitch if there’s only one in the cupboard.
There’s my coffee one.
My tinned tomatoes one – this used to be quite intense before moving to Italy and there was never fewer than 15 cans in my cupboard. (Yes numbers used to feature too in my OCD.)
My loo roll one: This is mostly under control now as previously it would have to make sure the shelf housing them was completely filled. I remember my mother always had a stock of loo roll so maybe it’s learned behaviour. Needless to say the pandemic panic buying didn’t affect us.
So is it OCD or hoarding or as I like to call it, habit. Who knows, but before we could continue on our way I pulled into a petrol station and topped up with diesel.
Barry Lillie 