Little Idiosyncracies

We all have them, right? One of mine is that I'm very particular about my kitchen and bathroom. I'm strictly a toilet-lid down person, and it bothers me no end when a guest leaves the lid up. There is something about an open toilet that just strikes me as unspeakably rude (though only in my own house - it doesn't bother me in other people's homes, though I will close the lid if I use your bathroom). But more to the point, we have cats, and when we got them, I didn't want them drinking out of the toilet as have the cats of some (pretty disgusting, actually) people I've known. And then we had a kid - ditto (um, that is, I didn't want the kid throwing toys in - I don't know anyone whose kid drinks out of the toilet, and if you do, please don't tell me about it). So the toilet lid rule has been in effect for over ten years.

And still, people who've been visiting us for that long and who know us well leave the lid up.

I also have a thing about the way my dishes are washed. Right now we have houseguests who drink tea. And tea, if you have noticed, leaves a stain on cups and the teapot. Now, it never fails to amaze me how a person can take a clean mug - sans tea stain - enjoy a cup of tea, wash the cup, and put it back away with a new tea stain and see nothing wrong with that. These particular house guests do this ALL THE TIME. And they do it to the teapot, too, which never gets used unless they are visiting, so I know that they are the tea stainers.

The thing is, the tea stains come out easily with a little scrubbing - if you get at them right away and don't let them sit. But, for whatever reason - and I've had occasion to spend plenty of time wondering what the reasons might be (they're losing their eyesight? they're so accustomed to the tea stains in their own dishes that they no longer see them? they don't realize that tea stains come out? they figure tea stains are just a part of life, so why not embrace them?) - they don't seem to notice the stains, and so I am left to sneak into the kitchen later and re-wash things so they are not permanently stained.

And then there's the matter of the dish scrubby. I have a whole dishwashing system. There's the dishrag, for actually washing the dishes. I knit these myself and wash them in the washing machine every so often. There's the scrubby, which I buy at the store, for scrubbing pots, but I use this sparingly and take time to get the bits of food out of it each time so that I won't have to keep replacing it. (I really, really hate filthy dish scrubbies - ick.) There's the steel wool, which I never use but which is there for the occasional steel wool emergency. And then there's the old, filthy and disgusting scrubby, which is used for cleaning the sink.

Guess which one guests always use on the dishes?

What boggles my mind is that they ALWAYS pick that one, and it's not just our current houseguests but others, too. And I always say, "please don't use that one, it's for cleaning the sink and counters," and they are perplexed as to why I'd be bothered by them washing my dishes with the same dirty-looking scrubby that probably has AJax or whatever still in it. And then next time, they use the wrong one, again.

Along similar lines, I rewash anything that comes into contact with the mat under the dish drying basket, just on principle. I'm surprised and revolted by how frequently people will put silverware flat on the mat - I mean, ick. Or maybe everyone but me scours their mat on a regular basis. Even so, my mat does not even *look* clean.

Furthermore, I have a very picky dishwasher, and it needs to be loaded a certain way. And everytime these house guests visit, we must go through it again - please let me or my partner load the dishwasher because it's really fussy and it won't wash the dishes if you don't stack exactly the right way. And yet, I find things like upside-down silverware in the silverware basket.

It's not that I'm especially clean. I am perfectly willing to let dishes rot in the sink until I can get to them, and every so often, that means a week. I know that's disgusting to many people. I'm not thrilled about it, but I'm used to it, and I can live with it. But if I'm going to clean, I do it right, and that means that I follow all of the above "rules" and that when I wash a dish, it has no food particles or anything left on it afterward. (Unlike SOME people.)

Now, I'll be honest. You caught the title of this post, right? These are MY little idiosyncracies. I know that. I know that the world won't end if the silverware is loaded upside-down or if the toilet lid is up. I know that, at bottom, this is Plainsfeminist being OCD and not entirely an issue of cleanliness. But then - it's my kitchen, isn't it, and my bathroom. And I suspect that, what's really going on is that our houseguests are trying, from time to time, to teach me a lesson, because we end up having the same discussions each visit about these things.

(You might be thinking that any host who would let her guest do the dishes deserves to be taught a lesson. But really, I implore them not to. The only way to prevent it is to always do the dishes immediately after using them, which is so totally not my style. But seriously, if you come over for a meal, please don't do the dishes. It will cause me enormous anxiety. If you feel you must do something, just bring some foodstuff to serve with dinner, and we'll call it even.)