Compulsion Much?

Yesterday's little list of quirks has got me thinking...and I'm afraid now that I've left the list quite incomplete.  I'm fairly bothered by the extraneous number of other quirks which have jumped in my mind since beginning this little exercise.  What if I am far quirkier than I thought?  What if I am uber-quirky?


What if I am a Crazy Cat Lady-in-Waiting?


Well, perhaps the best we can do with fear and foibles and frailties is expose them to the light of day, to make confession of those things we hold secret and simmering, that vat of craziness I suspect we all have but try to keep from boiling over.


So today, I am taking the lid off one more quirk, one more little thing that might create a speed-bump in my route toward Crazy Cat Ladydom.


It goes a little something like this:

I tend to get stuck on purchasing a certain household item out of concern that I am just about to run out of said item.  For several years, it was white corn meal.  I needed white corn meal to make my grandmother's Thanksgiving Dressin' recipe (not to be confused with 'stuffing').  White corn meal is one of the major ingredients.  So I would buy white corn meal most every trip to the grocery....for a dish I prepared...ahem...once a year.  We were white corn meal rich.  Bags and bags of white corn meal.  I finally got hold of myself somewhere around year 4 and stopped.buying.white.corn.meal.  Guess what?  We survived and even lived on to have Thanksgiving Dressin' again.


So now to my newest white corn meal compulsions:


White washcloths.  I love white linens, white towels, white sheets....and apparently white washcloths.  I don't know that I've ever experienced a white washcloth shortage...but I'm ready if OPEC ever cuts off our supply.




Tutti Dolce Chocolate Fondue Body Lotion.  Now don't go judging me.  There is a perfectly logical explanation for this extravagance.  See, I have a history of falling in love with a certain beauty item, shampoo, china pattern or crystal, all to have the manufacturers end production of that item.  I'm sort of a product kiss-o-death.  If I fall in love with it, the board has already met and unanimously agreed that this product is headed for the dumpster.  So it was with this lotion.  My fav, my fav, my fav.  And then they go and end it all.  I found a crate of it on clearance at a Bath and Body Works store at a mall three hours away and went and bought it all.  And this is what's left...I dole it out to myself like precious elixir.





Okay, I have no explanation for this one.  I suppose I traded in the white corn meal buying for toilet bowl cleaner buying.  I figure I can unintentionally poison the water table of three counties with this stash.  The irony?  I don't ever remember a 'ran out of toilet bowl cleaner' crisis in all my years of homemaking.  Ever.



 They do have a certain aesthetic, though, don't they?  Colorful, uniquely shaped, that curved-neck technology...

And now for the last collection of the day....now please recall this is a family of 10.  Keep that number in mind, please.  Because this is where I think the line between compulsion and necessity gets a little blurred.  See, I have lived through a shortage of this item...and it wasn't pretty.  I have been housebound because of  icy streets and blizzard conditions, only to discover that this item had all been used up.  And so now I give you....




The TP Backlog









Now, cluck your tongue if you must, but I have found this to be the handiest and most easily justified overstock of the group.  While you will have to clean out a significant portion of your children's toy closet to house such a large grouping of paper products, think of all the items it can replace and how the children can repurpose it for educational use...


Soft-sided Lincoln Logs...


Stacking cups....







Photographic backdrops....



Language Arts applications...'Gimme an A!'


'Gimme a B (sort of)!'


'Gimme a C!'



Then there is the simple childlike wonder of sharing a toilet paper collection with the younger generation...





And who among us can forget the magic of making Toilet Tissue Snow Angels?....


So I feel a little better now, having confessed my stranger hoarding issues and in re-framing some that I thought might be odd, but in retrospect, I now see have educational and playtime merits. Thanks, Dear Readers, for allowing me to unburden myself in such a wholesome and non-judgmental environment.  It helps to know that some of you probably have weirder collections than I do.  And the rest of you just aren't ready to confess it yet....

Just sign me...