Saturday, February 19, 2011

I Gotta Be Me... OCD

Be careful what you wish for, like your sea can arriving from Texas full of household goods.  I bid a highly anticipated farewell to the cheap Scandinavian style rental furniture in order to welcome my much-loved leather sofa with the nailhead trim and family picture taken amongst the bluebonnets.  Little did I know that the process of moving in all our stuff would play out like a scene from the OCD files.


I'm a tad bit obsessive about tidiness.  I don't need to have a germ-free environment, but I MUST have everything in its proper place.  My one bit of nuttiness (I know, just one?) involves the floors.  The dust can be an inch thick on the surface of everything in the house, giant grandaddy dustbunnies, but there better not be a speck of anything marring the perfection of a clean floor.  My dear old granny had a bit of an issue with just this thing.  I can remember her sweeping the carpet in-between vacuuming.  And we had some ugly, mud colored carpet that could have provided camouflage for a barn full of cows with irritable bowel syndrome.  You couldn't tell when or if it was ever dirty, but by God that woman got a workout keeping the floors free of any perceived bit of stray food crumbs or flecks of soil.  


To my horror, the movers tracked in grassy debris earlier this week.  This was more difficult to spot on the hardwoods, but a real eyesore on the light colored carpet.  I bit my tongue and didn't say a word.  Then came light rain in the late afternoon of unload the sea can day, and I developed a twitch as they tracked some mud across the carpets.  If I'd had any hard liquor in the house, I would have poured myself a large drink at that point.  It took all my self-control to keep from busting out the vacuum, or at least broom, to attack the offending dirt.  I was reviewing how this scenario might play out, me looking like a bit of a loon and all, when it dawned on me that I should let the dirt dry and then try to brush it up.  


I'm happy to report that we finally got the house more or less arranged downstairs today and I got out the vacuum to address the floors before I had a nervous breakdown.  Lo and behold, the dirt was easily removed from the carpet.  You know those markers that come in different stain colors to touch up hardwood floors?  I found mine in one of the moving boxes and plan to conquer scuff or scratch marks, one board at a time.

No comments:

Post a Comment