I have color-coded posties to organize the importance of things that I have to get done. Yellow posties for instance have things that I have to get done whenever I get to it. Green posties are at the top of the food chain as things to get to within a couple of hours or by days end. (I go through alot of those) The red ones are for important stuff that I have to do soon, just not things that have to be done RIGHT now.

That's right. You've just entered into a world of a compulsive neat freak. I do drive myself crazy sometimes and while I like it this way, there are times I wish I wasn't like this. Within the last decade or so, I've really lightened up quite a bit, but I still have a disorder of some kind.

In a few hours I'll be flying to Rhode Island for a christening on Saturday and despite the fact that I keep the house looking a very pristine kind of way at all times, there I was at about 2 in the morning looking for something else to clean. For some odd reason, it just makes me feel calmer when things are clean and in a state of order.

I've heard the term referred to as a clutter-phobe. I've seen some places that just make the hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention at friends homes, places on tv, or even the homes of relatives when disorder was the word of the day. As a matter of fact, I was just talking about a young lady I dated back in the early 90's recently. It was probably the most shallow I had ever been in a relationship. Sure, she was a sweetheart and not hard on the eyes at all.

But she was a complete wreck when it came to disorder. Not nasty, just disorderly. And excessively so. The kicker was, she seemed completely oblivious to it. There was a total abandonment from the concept of order. Its as if the concept didn't even exist. And the rooms that have to maintain some form of order with me are the rest room and the kitchen. And she failed with flying colors on both. Talk about total opposites. She was a clutter-FREAK against my clutter-phobia.

Some folks call clutter-phobes neat freaks. The kinds of people who lament their house is a total mess if one coffee table book is slightly out of place. (actually, I'm waaay not THAT person, but....) Now, the experts say the desire for neatness runs along a certain kind of spectrum. I'm not in the class of a finicky Felix Unger-type with a need for control. Nor do I sport a kind of life-hampering disorder, such as Adrian Monk, the obsessive-compulsive detective.

It’s just who I am. I was always a "neat" kind of guy, but I think my disorder became worse when I went into the military where order is magnified ten-fold. Folded socks in order, pencils lined up by size, the tips of shoes all lined up along an imaginary line.

But the basic neat freak and the attitude that is impressed upon as one gets older is likely shaped during childhood. Consider the fact that I had a mother who frowned on messy rooms, disorderly closets and whatnot. And although I've told people I'm probably of the extreme nature, most don't believe that. As I've gotten older I no longer believe that myself.

There are some folks out there that would put me to shame and have taken the neat freak title too far. I met a person a few years ago who somehow equated neatness with a quality to being a good person. Heck, that takes me out of the equation - smile.

I take as many as 3 showers a day, which may run along the lines of a neat freak. I take one before I go to sleep. Then another one when I wake up (how dirty can someone get between the hash marks of 9pm - 1am huh?) and another shower in the middle of the day when I come back from the gym. And I'm as fresh smelling a guy as any dude can truly be. But there I am hitting the showers. I'm just never too clean!

Luckily, I haven't moved into that pathological side of the neat freak. I'm not after all, an obsessive hand-washer, but I am bold enough to call out a man who doesn't wash his hands when he just used the rest room. Even a stranger once. But if I found out that the need for constant "order" caused some extreme distress or problems in my relationship, it's time to make an appointment to the head doctor.

The chat I had with some friends once even extended the whole "order" thing as bringing one closer to God. Yes, you read that right. For some odd reason, conventional wisdom holds that neatness is the “morally superior” choice.

It's said that neat people are generally conscientious. They pay attention to order and think before they act. I guess this is true to a degree. I would want that guy to be up there in the air traffic control tower or even flying a plane for instance. But there's no way I'm not going to think that neatness does not have some drawbacks. It's got to.

I may be neat, but I don't like predictability which is what I would be doing if I made my entire environment "neat." I'm a creative person and all of that neatness would be a loss of creativity. And then there is time. I guess, yeah messy people waste alot of time rummaging for their keys. But, I would also think that a neat person would spend as much time if not more constantly putting things away throughout the day, while those who let things pile up and tackle them in one chunk save precious minutes in the long run.

I know some neat people who are just bad with time management and lose alot of time because of disorder. Daaaag! I've actually tried to be different and be purposely disorderly. But like I said, I am who I am. I simply don't have that thing in me to suggest otherwise and I wasn't built that way. In some way, I think I'm actually a prisoner to it.

Oh well, enough of that. Now, excuse me as I go take a shower, alphabetize my dvd collection again and prepare to go to the airport. This post took 1 minute longer than I thought that it would to write it up. - wink- Later family!