Monday, May 18, 2009

Knife Points and Charmin Rolls

Sitting on a friend's toilet the other day, it hit me that I have two categories of behavior when it comes to believing that there is a certain way things must be done. The first category is activities which I choose to do one way, and firmly believe my way is correct, but will give you the respect and benefit of the doubt of not challenging your way of doing it. The second category is activities which I feel must always be done one way only and for which some OCD insistence tendencies emerge.

An example in the first category is loading the dishwasher. Bob would argue strongly that I put dish placement in the second category of obsessive rigidity, but that's only when it comes to loading our dishwasher. When I am helping to do the dishes in someone else's home, I respect the dishwasher style that they employ. I think glass racks are for glasses only (and any plastic containers or lids, as their instructions always clearly state "top rack only") and bowls are more closely aligned with plates, but if I am helping clean up at your house and you choose to mingle cups and bowls, I will follow your lead. I won't even judge you for it. I also think silverware should be placed with the handle pointing up for reasons of safety, cleanliness, and sanitation. Safety because if the sharp knife point is face-down, you don't risk grazing yourself as you hurry through loading to get to the t.v. in time for tipoff; Cleanliness because a dishwasher spraying from the bottom will hit the food-covered tips with the most force when the functional ends are closest; and Sanitation because you can move the clean silverware from the washer to the drawer by the handles without rubbing your potentially grubby fingers all over the eating ends. All of these clearly elucidated arguments aside, if your silverware has the spoon slopes and fork tines reaching for the sky, I will dangerously place the knife tip in the same direction.

In my own home, I believe that the glass rack only functions at it's highest potential if you don't sacrifice space to a prong-hogging bowl. The bottom rack can be piled and leaning chaos, but the top rack has evenly spaced rows for a reason. I doubt that Bob will ever understand why I care so much, and I doubt I could ever explain it, but nothing in the way we share space can throw me into a fit of "this is never going to work" anger more than when he throws a glass into the middle of the top rack, teetering on a random prong. We have had actual arguments about whether the prongs are there to divide sections for you, making the best option placing the glasses securely between the prongs in even rows (my view) or whether the prongs are there to have a glass balanced upon them (his obviously erroneous view). When it was clear that he would not agree with my logic of the security and efficient space usage with my approach, I turned to pleading and begged him that as this issue clearly matters to me far more than to him, could he just do it my way?

For the most part, he does, and it has become the single biggest indicator of how far our living-together relationship has come in the last year and a half. When the glasses are placed evenly in rows in the dishwasher, not sloppily dangling haphazardly from prongs, I believe that we have found a balance, that he respects the work I do in the kitchen, that our lives can progress together in an organized home. But when I find a dangler, a leaner, or - god forbid it or my head will explode - a glass placed so carelessly that it has fallen completely on it's side, every insecurity about our loving survival rushes to the surface.

I realize it is sounding more and more like I should have been medicated years ago. Don't worry, I am careful to self-medicate daily and I will save you all from the pain I could share here about the chaos wine glasses cause if you are inclined (wrongly, from my point of view) to put them in the dishwasher. Despite Bob's exclusion, for the most part I can respect that other people load their dishwashers differently. What I can't abide, what I don't understand, what my anxious fingers can barely stop themselves from reaching out and fixing, is a toilet paper roll loaded the wrong way.

As these issues of right and wrong seem harder for others to see as clearly as I do, I will let you know that the wrong way to load a roll of toilet paper is with the free end hanging from behind the roll. The right way to load a roll of toilet paper is with the free end hanging on top of the roll, facing the wiper, nose-blower, or mischievous cat. Picture a hotel bathroom that tries to wow you with cleanliness and freshness by folding the tip into a neat triangle (and try to ignore that this shape means the person who was just cleaning the toilet then manhandled the bit of paper that you will soon be touching). Fine hotels and even most shitty motels recognize and illustrate the right way to load a toilet paper roll.

I feel the benefits of the right way are obvious: if the paper is loaded the wrong way, you can't see where the end is hanging. And if you start rolling the tube towards you, you could potentially miss the end as it passes by. When the paper is loaded the wrong way, you could spin the roll around a dozen times and the end wouldn't get any longer. But when the paper is loaded the right way, and you spin it towards you, the end will present itself and get longer and longer as you spin. The end is closer to you, offering itself with friendliness to your service, instead of lurking in the back against the wall or cabinet, hiding from your needs.

Here my obsessiveness reaches out of my own home. If I know you well and think you will love me anyway or if you are someone I know so little I don't care what you think of me, I will correct your toilet paper roll. If it is clear the roll was changed right before me and the homeowner likely doesn't know yet which way it is facing or if it was changed by a guest, I will fix it. Even though I hate those stupid spring-loaded contraptions and know I am risking encountering the faulty one where the spring pops out and the holder scatters in parts across the floor, I will still feel the strongest need to correct your roll's direction. I know it's invasive and rude and slightly crazy, but I guess I approach it like my plea to Bob to just do it my way because I clearly care more. If you care so little about your toilet paper access that you load it the wrong way, than you clearly can't care enough about it to mind if I turn it around. I find it hard to believe that anyone strongly feels it must be loaded backwards and prefers it that way. I assume anyone whose paper is loaded the wrong way is a victim of lazy chance.

And I now arrive at my second product endorsement of this blog: please explore the new world of toilet paper holders. The one single item that makes me the happiest in the entirety of our remodeled bathroom is the spring-less toilet paper holder. Instead of that squeezed plastic tube between two cruddy porcelain ends, our paper holder is a U-shaped curved bar. You simply slide the roll on and off the open end. The whole process can be done with one hand, an amazing revolution in toilet paper holder technology. I find this advancement so critical that I once gave the 21st-Century holder as a birthday gift to a friend mired in bathroom renovations. I daresay it was one of the most beautifully functional gifts I have ever wrapped.

I think it's clear that it's approaching medication time and thankfully a bottle of Chianti is already open. I am sorry to those of you who have been unsuspecting victims of my invasive toilet paper handling. I'm just trying to make the world a better place.

1 comment:

heather said...

Oh my god Kirsten, did you switch the toilet paper at my house? I actually load it incorrectly at peoples houses that I know it will drive them crazy. Only because someone YELLED at me for doing it wrong one time when i had NO idea there was a correct way of doing it. However, I dont think I have done it at your house. Dont worry I will leave your toilet paper alone.