SPF ~ OCD, Baby!

Once again, it's Self-Portrait Friday! I juhhst love SPF day ~ it's the total nerd in me. Today's theme: Your Obessive Compulsive Disorders! Initially, I didn't know what to do with this one... I used to bite my nails, but quit at age 10. I used to bite at my split ends (out of sheer boredom though, when in school), but stopped that long ago. I used to have panic attacks once in a while, but haven't had one in years, and I don't think general insecurity from time to time qualifies as an OCD tendency, but this morning I thought of some something!!!

Although #1 is supposed to be "my Bad Habit," this is more like a grand combination of my Bad Habit, plus #2 "my Obession," and #3 "my Anxiety": I obsess over the condition of my towels - this includes swim towels, bath towels, hand towels, washcloths and wash rags - any towel. I CANNOT stand to see/have a wet towel thrown on the floor or any even semi-damp towel of any kind tossed in the laundry basket before it has first been laid out and/or hung up to dry. No No No NO tossing a wet towel into the laundry basket until it has dried out completely! WHY? a wet towel breeds mildew!!! Note: I do not own a single solitary sponge in my home. Sponges serve as nothing more than bacterial breeding centers! blak! Any wash rag used by me will be rinsed out REALLY WELL and rung out TIGHTLY to get rid of as much excess water as possible so it may dry out as quickly as possible. I HATE SEEING A WASH RAG LEFT UNATTENDED IN THE SINK or LEFT WADDED UP ON THE COUNTER! MAKES.MY.SKIN.CRAWL. I reeeeallly hate it. See, once a towel gets that lovely mildew invasion going, you might as well throw it in the trash! Unless you can and do bleach your towels, you will never be rid of the mildew. NEVER! I took a microbiology class! Science supports my claims here, people! Mildew is a microscopic fungus and it saturates every microfiber! No amount of laundry detergent or fabric softener can destroy or cover up that smell - I have an excellent sniffer and lemme' tell ya! I can smell it a mile away!!! Once a towel gets mildewy, as soon as it's wet again, the mildew swiftly returns and if I get a whiff of a recently-wronged towel, I can totally identify old mildew. IT'S DISGUSTING! One time while out of town, my ex-husband left a couple bath towels heaped on the bathroom floor, utterly fouled by the time I returned. I refused to ever use them again for their intended purpose - they were expensive towels too [generous wedding gifts so rock! - still have 4 of the 6 original sets, 8 years later!!! - yes, we were given a ridiculous amount of ALL matching (a wedding miracle in itself) towels]. At first, I tried to super wash them, even ran them through 3 wash cycles (OCD! OCD!), but they were ultimately banished, doomed to wash and wax cars the rest of their towel lives, never to return to the fresh, cool linen closet.

My towel obssession doesn't stop with the mildew obsession/anxiety. See the washcloth laid beside my bathroom sink here? It is not for human skin use! it's used strictly to wipe up the counter and sink area after any messy sink use (my honey-man shares this very same side-sink clean-up washcloth habit - I love it!). Once used, I always lay it out on the front of the sink, over the edge of the counter so it may dry out properly between uses. But if you're ever a guest in my home, make no mistake, this side-sink washcloth is never to be used on human skin, even if I do rotate new washcloths every 3 days or so.

And see the hand towels hung at either side of my bathroom sink area? The one to the right is used strictly for patting my face dry after it's been washed clean. The one to the left is used strictly for drying hands. DO NOT wipe your hands on my face towel OR my body towel! ICKY! The towel will go straight to the laundry basket - ONLY after it has FIRST had the chance to dry out though, of course. Why?!? People usually DO NOT wash their hands as thoroughly as they should, and so they end up just wiping germs off on the towel when they dry their hands - and I DO NOT want yucky remnant hand germies on my body towel or the hand towel I use for my face... thanks.

Another um, funny (neurotic) little OCD thing I do involving towels... after using someone else's bathroom, I'd rather use my own pants to wipe/blot my hands dry, than use someone's typically over-used hand towel left available for me. Plus, I often bring my own washcloth when I travel and will lay it out in such a way that it can dry out during the day or overnight before I may have to pack it back up. ALSO, I once used my travel washcloth to dry myself off after showering, because the guest towel given to me was mildew-tainted, according to my nose. Have you ever tried using a washcloth to dry yourself after showering? Ya end up having to air dry, basically. Yeah, neurotic, I know.


For last measure, a non-towel related Bad Habit:
The pics below look disgusting - yes, yes, I know - but try pullin' big ole', nasty, collected clumps of this stuff from my tub drain on a weekly basis - THAT'S GROSS! no Wait! Let me explain: I have long, thick hair - lots of it. Any day of the week, whenever I wash my hair, several individual strands come out into my hand while I rinse my hair. Now I can either let them rinse off my hands to ultimately plug up my tub drain each week, or I can slap them on the shower wall and later spin them together and toss 'em in the trash once I'm all clean and toweled off. As you can see from the pics, these lil' wall collections from day to day may very in size. No, really - you don't need to tell me how gross this is, I know. Anyhow, the bad habit here involves my FORGETTING to throw the hair in the trash right after I shower, so that it hangs there or falls down from the wall, waiting until I shower again, to be discarded. Otis and Owen have both learned this happens and they will occasionally hop in the tub and the two of them wait for it to fall from the wall. I once found one of these hair clumps (I don't know what to call 'em) out in the front room, having made its way there via Owen, I'm sure. Very gross. I'm not too bad at forgetting - maybe once a week - but when I'm in LA, I forget all the time!!! And often when I remember that I forgot, I go to the bathroom and my honey-man has already tossed it without saying a word of complaint...