My ‘relaxation days’ were now spent packing, or rather cleaning and then packing the items I’d
cleaned. We wanted to have the bathtub
redone but before the men could come I had to spend a night getting the real
mold off the ceiling above the tub.
But that was not enough. In case
the mold spores had migrated because I touched them, I also had to clean the
entire bathroom, ceiling and all. Then I
probably threw out the clothes I was wearing.
My closet became
contaminated (I can’t remember why now) and I tried to decontaminate some of
the stuff like jewellery by washing it before packing it.
Unfortunately that didn’t work because my mind remembered they had been
contaminated (unlike a shirt or pants that was just thrown in the wash and I
forgot which one had been contaminated by the time they came out of the machine.) So the jewellery ended up being thrown
out. Now before you get worried, I’m not
talking expensive stuff, thank goodness!
I did throw out my wedding dress, tho, that was hanging in that closet
and also a dressy winter coat.
The basement storage room had real mold in it that I didn’t notice until we emptied
the shelves to pack them. So everything that was in there had to be wiped clean
(all my food cans and the outside of packed bins that were put there while I
swept out the larger room) or thrown out.
(I’d already cleaned out the basement twice due to real mold back when
we’d first bought the house. I had to scrub the concrete walls with bleach
and hose them down. Not a fun job. I was shocked that room
had already started to grow mold again.
Because I didn’t want to wash the metal shelves that were in there, to decontaminate them, they, along with a lot of stuff from the garage were given away. Or did I make Bruce clean them off outside
before we gave them away? So no storage
shelving. The art supplies bin that was
in that room that I carefully wiped down would return to haunt me later on
because I remembered it was in a mold-contaminated room years before. Even though my mind knew I had wiped down the
container (whether it even needed wiping in the first place those of you
without ocd would know) I still had a hard time taking things out of it and
using them. Some items like glitter glue
pens and patterned scissors eventually got used. Other items got thrown out even at that later
date.
I came to North bay
with very few clothes. The last day we
were at our house we tidied it and I threw out my dirty clothes and I think I
made Bruce do the same thing, so I wouldn’t have to take them with me and dirty
up the car. I packed most of our things
even though we had a packing team coming to help us the day before we left. I
was also hurrying to get all our laundry washed before I packed it so it would
be ‘clean’ at the other end and could be put directly into the drawers. I did it all except for 2 bins of clothes/
dishtowels that we eventually threw out because I was too afraid to open them
at the new house till it was too late and the clothes were ruined. It never occurred to us to run to a laundry
mat and clean them before we left Welland . In fact, these were probably the only clothes
that actually needed to be washed as they were worn or used. I saved them for last and ran out of
time. This would not be the only time
things got thrown out due to OCD.
While Bruce was living up north he was house hunting also
and when we finally got one, his job was to clean it in the evenings after
work. He got everything done except the
kitchen. So to me the kitchen was
‘contaminated’. I wouldn’t cook, or clean
or do dishes. I left any garbage from
opening foods on the table because I was too afraid of using the garbage cans. Using a garbage can meant I had to wash my
hands afterwards and that could take up to a half hour if I didn’t do it just
‘right’. So I tried to stay away from
the sink as much as possible. Even after
we spent the time cleaning the kitchen, I was not too eager to use it, although
I did. Not for cooking tho. Bruce did the cooking when he came home from
work.
Laundry was an issue too.
This house had a 2nd floor laundry that was as big as a
closet. And in order to do a load I
still had to wipe down not just the machines, but the walls, the door, the
window ledge. Then I had to take a
shower. Showers lasted a very long time.
Many times I finished with a cold shower.
Often afterwards, I would be crying because I couldn’t stand it that I
couldn’t shower like quickly like I used to.
I was also afraid to touch the walls, shower curtain or faucet.
All the paper towels
from cleaning the laundry room each time I wanted to do a load of laundry had
to go somewhere. For a long while they
ended up beside the toilet in the upstairs bathroom. When the pile got big enuf, they got put into
a garbage bag and taken outside on garbage night. That meant that I had to wash not only the
path from the garbage can in the kitchen to the door which was ceramic tile and hardwood flooring,
but also from the bathroom upstairs down
the carpeted stairs to the front door.
(because you never knew what germy things were leaching out thru the pores of the garbage bag
and landing on the floor!!) Then I’d organize the garbage, wash the front door and foyer area and finally have a
shower. Washing the carpet with a cloth
was no fun, esp. if it hadn’t been vacuumed in a bit. All sorts of sock fuzz along with regular
dirt had to be manually wiped down the stairs.
When I noticed mold inside the rubber part of the new front
load washer, I got fed up and we bought another one, a newer one that had drain
holes cut into the rubber to stop the molding.
I wanted to get a top loader but
OCD loved the front loader with a sanitizing button on it. Now I could really clean something if I had
to! So we got that machine but in all the
time since we’ve had it I’ve never ever used it. One, because I don’t want to wreck the
clothes by washing them in such hot water and second, because I don’t want to
start something by thinking that some clothes are so dirty they need to be
sanitized. I was washing ‘contaminated’
clothes twice using the longest setting possible the second time thru which
meant I was taking 2 showers that day or waiting til one cycle was over before
resetting the washer and then cleaning the laundry room and showering.
We had left a lot of the boxes in what would become our
living room and I would take them out one or 2 at a time and put the items
away. Sometime before all the bins/
boxes were emptied the room became contaminated. This meant that one day I’d clean a few boxes
off, take them out of the room and shower before opening them and putting the
items away. With a 2 yr old to entertain
this process took a long time and by Christmas Eve day it still wasn’t
done. Bruce and I worked our tails off
that evening, wiping down all the boxes and putting them in our dining room,
finding and setting up the living room items and putting up a Christmas tree
and decorations. Katrina went to bed
that night seeing a boxed up living room and when she came downstairs the next
day she had an astonished look on her face!
Christmas had magically appeared at her house!!!
So then we had a
living room which was clean and safe to use.
As long as things didn’t get left on the floor for too long. Then they had to be cleaned again. Ditto for the family room in the
basement. The first time I cleaned the
family room I found some unrecognizable bugs in the room (ie, not ants, flies
or spiders, which were normal for houses.)
Because of my previous experience with maggots, I was completely freaked
out that my house had somehow become bug infested by some horrid bug (not
remembering all the times I’d left the house door open for at least a half hour
if not longer while taking the garbage out and cleaning the foyer area!) . I spent hours cleaning everything that was on
the floor, table etc. including books,
toys and even the couch with vinegar.
And many items would be cleaned and then re-cleaned to make sure they were
clean. Once that was done, I didn’t want
to clean the room again for a long time, except maybe to run a vacuum thru
it. So instead of a weekly routine of a
quick dust and windex and vacuum, I’d do these long marathon cleanings every
couple of months. I felt that if I used
a cleaner of any kind I had to take a shower.
Even a duster.
We had joined the YMCA and found the Early Years
Center
Unfortunately for me, the neighbour kids had a shed of
outdoor toys they used in the summer. In
the winter it was left alone. So OCD
concocted a story in my head that there were probably mice in that shed and so
the toys were all contaminated. The
school where the EYC hub was, happened to be the one these kids went to and
thus it was contaminated- the drinking fountain, the gym the EYC also used,
anything these kids might be touching.
Now I had a problem. I couldn’t
admit to Lise what I now believed because it sounded so bizarre. If that wasn’t enough for me to deal
with, Lise would empty the garbage
container from the classroom and put a new bag in it without washing her hands
afterward. So now the EYC became a
stressful place to go.
I had been seeing a counsellor thru my husband’s work
plan but he wanted to spend the time discussing my past, not getting to the ocd
part of my life so when the 5 weeks were up, I stopped seeing him. The last
time I was there he gave me an article on why we need not keep our children’s
environments sterile. It had a coffee
stain right on the top. (Coffee stains
were especially contaminating because I belonged to a religion that banned
coffee drinking. I’m sure the counsellor
didn’t know that though). So that told me that he didn’t get it- giving a
person with germ- ocd a DIRTY page and giving me an article to read that I
completely agreed with. I KNEW kids shouldn’t be left in a sterile
environment. Problem was, OCD didn’t, so
it didn’t’ matter that I did. OCD ruled
my life, not me.
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