, but I do have one perhaps-slightly-redeeming quirk, when it comes to housekeeping.

Thing is, I’m neither tidy nor organized nor much of a clean freak, and left to my own devices I’ll neglect a mess until it can be neglected no more. I don’t have adhd (that i know of) but i do have a plethora of “doom boxes” incl. doom baskets, doom corners, doom kitchen drawers, & doom piles in every room. The whole basement? One big doom box. Tbh I’m just lazy. What am I even doing, I sometimes wonder.

Also I suck at cooking. This one is partly nature, partly nurture. I never really cared about cooking, and my family of origin never really ate meals together or had much in the way of family tradition around food; then in my early teens I developed an ED that stuck around, so food and I just never really got along. Zero joy in that relationship. Can’t cook, can’t clean, but let me tell you how I got this ring: my husband, he has weird taste. What do I do well? I’m such a scatterbrain my preschooler and toddler are constantly reminding me of things I forgot to do. Why did I come into this room? What am I doing here?

My one thing, the one small streak of neat-freak-ism, my little pet organizational neurosis, is: the dishwasher.

The dishwasher has got to be loaded a certain way. Specifically, the silverware. The silverware container has separate compartments. You must put spoons in one, butter knives in two, forks in three, baby utensils in four, and so on. Why would you not do this. Why would anyone not do this. I don’t understand people who just shove any utensil in any compartment haphazardly, jumbling them all up. It makes more work for you later.

If I open the dishwasher in the morning to unload it, and I see that someone else finished loading it last night, and the spoons and forks and knives are all jumbled up, I am hit with a palpable wave of horror and disgust. “Eugh!”, I’ll inadvertently exclaim, recoiling, my nose wrinkling as if something smells. The sheer overwhelm. Hands wiggling at my sides like they don’t know what to do. Because where do you even begin?! When the spoons are all in one hole, you can just grab a fistful of spoons and go. Then a fistful of forks. If they’re all mixed together, what do you do?! I have to sort them into the correct compartments before taking them out of the dishwasher. Is it just me?

But I’d never harass my sweet husband about loading the utensils the “correct” way, because that’d be anal and naggy, and I’m honestly just grateful to have a husband who helps with the dishes. Because really, the silverware is such a miniscule matter. Twenty seconds saved, maybe less. Really, if I think about it, this is not even really a “redeeming quirk” at all. So like what am I doing here.