OCD - Occasional Cleaning Disorder

'Can people suddenly develop OCD out of the blue?' Miss Mac asked me the other day.

'I don't know' I replied, 'I guess so – why'?

'Well you're vacuuming the walls and you've just emptied your drawers to polish inside them ...' 

Hmmm …

The truth is that I do get a little compulsive when I'm stressed and it often manifests itself in a cleaning frenzy. I need an outlet for all the pent up frustration and, although I suspect that breaking crockery would be far more satisfactory I do try and channel it into something positive.

It doesn't always work though. I'm just as likely to attack a random piece of loose wallpaper and rip a huge strip from the wall or scrub a kitchen cupboard door so hard I take off a layer of paint or blast the render off the garden wall with the pressure washer (all things I have lived to regret in the past).

Vacuuming the walls actually seems pretty tame compared to some of the stuff I could do but I've no idea if it's normal – is it normal? I mean, is it one of those things that other people do all the time? Maybe you're like 'yeah, so what? - doesn't everyone do that in between removing the fluff from the grooves in the washing machine with a cotton bud and polishing the grout around the bath tiles with toothpaste'.

I really don't know, I always imagine that other people dust their light bulbs on a weekly basis and never forget to change the filter on the hob extractor fan (which I'm planning to do some day when I can work out how to remove the damned thing!). But that's not me!

I live with a certain level of domestic sluttery which means that my kitchen floor could probably do with a sweep and it's been a while since I last cleaned the wooden blinds in my bay window because frankly, I've usually got far better things to do.

One thing though that's guaranteed to see me reaching for the bleach is any contact with Ex Lax because (and please do excuse my turn of phrase) he's such a complete asshole and so fucking frustrating that it's a wonder I don't just drink the bloody bleach and have done with it!

Ex Lax rarely gets a mention on my blog because he's not worthy and I don't like to talk about him, or even think about him and, because of the old adage, 'if you can't say anything nice ….'

Well I can't so, rather than sound off and tell you why he is such an asshole, (which I could and I'm sure you would agree with me if I did) I am going to be the better man and say nothing.

Please excuse me – I have ceilings that require dusting and pointing to polish.