Dishwasher
Never ever ever let the other half stack the dishwasher. If she has I have to remove it all and restack it PROPERLY!

No, I don't know why she hasn't divorced me either. She calls me the dishwasher Nazi.
( number5 has been fighting tramps and losing., Thu 1 Jul 2010, 16:17, 7 replies)

Not me, but a mate
had proper climical OCD which manifested it self about the time of puberty, As a consequence it affected his masturbatory habits. He said he had to start on the quarter of the hour and go at it for 5 mins. If he tipped his filthy concrete within 5 minutes, then he'd have to carry on. If it took longer, he'd just stop and wait for 10 mins. He said he managed to perfect it so it took him exactly five mins.

I think when he first got a girlfriend who was willing to do it for him, it cured him, or at least that aspect of his OCD
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 16:06, 3 replies)

I am physically incapable of using urinals under normal circumstances
It doesn't matter how desperate I am, I hate the things, and I'll always aim for a cubicle with a proper bog in instead. If the toilets are otherwise empty and I can 'open the floodgates' at a urinal before anyone else comes in, I'm fine, but if I haven't already started, I have to pretend I'm just finishing and try again later.

Oddly, I have the same issue at the outdoor urinals they have at festivals, but will happily piss up the fence instead.
(bblgoose, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 16:06, 9 replies)

Leaving the house
Whenever I leave the house, I have to check every door is locked about 3000 times.

Also, when I walk to the shop, or drive anywhere, I can't go there and back the same way, I have to plan a route that is circular, if you get my drift?
(mattmatt, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 16:05, 5 replies)

Synaesthesia
I have this, to a certain extent, in that I "hear" patterns as cyclic rhythms. When I was little, I was always singing wee tunes that were the things I could hear looking at fences, paving slabs, clocks, carpets, or indeed anything with a regular pattern. One particularly good source of material was looking out of the window on car journeys - patterns of fences and telephone poles stood out like sharp glitchy ticks in the bassy rumble of the white lines up the middle of the road. Even now I can still hear (and remember) "tunes" from familiar bits of road.

Of course there's the inevitable downside - on one particular stretch of road (the A82 south of Fort William alongside Loch Linnhe, if you want to look) there was an accident where a car struck a telephone pole. The GPO (for it was before BT were even British Telecom) replaced the pole in a slightly different place. Now, the old poles were precisely measured - the old GPO guys were a bit OCD like that. This one made one beat very slightly out of time with the rest. I hated that bit of road, and I still don't entirely like it. Just that 100 yards, or so.

The poles are long gone.
(gordonjcp, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 16:02, 19 replies)

When I was younger...
...I didn't like being sat in a car that didn't have at least one window or the sunroof open. It only had to be a tiny crack. If it wasn't, I convinced myself that the car was airtight, and I was going to suffocate.
( Mike Fishcake teamfishcake.co.uk - better than your mum's face, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 15:58, 1 reply)

I hope this gets points
for being one of the oddest.

I don't do it anymore, but as a child I counted the number of strokes in a letter in my head. For example an n was 3 (across, and two legs) then added it to the rest of the letters. Then I'd have a total for each word. This was done more or less instantaneously in real time. It didn't have any significance, though I preferred an odd number. It was just a way of keeping myself mentally ticking over.

Oh and when I was bored playing a game of solitaire or minesweeper in my head, and Sudoku for a bit. Seeing how long I could manage without forgetting it.

It all seemed quite natural especially since it was non-affective, and it's only looking back that I think that it was very bizarre and not something that everyone did.
( Amberl was stripey and dominated Europe, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 15:51, 9 replies)

Football crazy...
Very good mate of mine has to take his own towel with him in a carrier bag when he goes to away games, drying hands for the use of.
He also has to match his tshirt to his socks, and all the coins in his pockets have to face the same way....

When you get to the pub, he orders two pints, drinks one, and pours the other pint into the empty glass... he carries on doing the empty glass thing all night. Has to drink beer out of what he calls the "warm" glass.
( Sallyrsm, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 15:50, 1 reply)

Socks
To me this is something that is so completely pointless yet so pervasive in society that I can only assume it's the result of a mass psychotic delusion - some kind of subconscious OCD operating on the population level.

I'm talking about wearing matching socks... making an actual conscious effort to wear matching socks!? Why?

Apparently people actually spend time pairing the fuckers up.

I can only think of the economic cost of all this futile effort.
( rofl harris, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 15:45, 16 replies)

1,2,3,4
Counting, or more specifically, counting to four. I've done this since childhood - counting paving slabs as I walked to school and it's progressed into adulthood but now I count either cars that I drive past or lamp-posts but they always have to be evenly spread - either two on the left/two on the right or four on the right/left.
I'll speed up and slow down just to ensure this happens - if it doesn't I'll tweak the criteria - shutting my right or left eye so I don't see the offending vehicle - my game my rules.

I didn't know this was OCD behaviour until I was in my late teens when discussing this with others apparently singled me out as a mentalist but to be honest I quite like it - it passes the time on long car journeys.

Oh and one other slightly related point - assymetry drives me potty - I don't care if Cameron Diaz and Angelina Jolie were offering me a menage-a-trois (what? it could happen!)- if they were wearing assymetrical dresses it would just make me itchy.
(lopezthecatkiller has not killed a cat since....., Thu 1 Jul 2010, 15:40, 8 replies)

TV Volume
The volume on my TV must always be on an even number or a multiple of 5.

1, 3, 7 & 9 can just fuck right off, bascially.
(TheManWithThePlan cussed your mum on, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 15:38, 10 replies)

odd numbers
digital things like volume on the tv or the central heating have to be on odd numbers for me. this is not a warped sign of OCD or overwhelming weirdness, but just a hangover from being a teenager mooning around playing "he loves me, he loves me not" with stuff (clue to junior rswipe, if he's gay, the answer is always going to be "he loves you not" regardless of how many petals there are on any of the daisies in the school field).

it is usually fine and unnoticeable, unless i am in the car with a particular friend who has an equally stupid obsession with even numbers. then ensues a veritable war of stealthy knob turning.
( rachelswipe with a fork, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 15:31, 4 replies)

Dual climate control
I had a Volvo that had separate knobs for the driver & passenger to set their preferred air-conditioning temperature, between which was a further knob that set the interior fan to auto or manual control.
As the Auto setting was at 9 o'clock on the dial, the temperature dials HAD to be at the same position. Fortunately, this corresponded with 20 deg C, otherwise the climate in the car could have become very uncomfortable.
In fact, nearly as uncomfortable as when my wife tried to change the temperature on her side and so misaligned the pointers.
( Snappyuk gets BIGGER with free sample., Thu 1 Jul 2010, 15:25, Reply)

Following on from the massive load of games related stuff in the last QOTW
Gamerscore on the 360 - it's got to be in multiples of 5.

I've just been playing a bit of Ghost Recon, and one the achievements was worth 36 points. Cue a mad dash to find any games I've got that can make up the deficit.
(chuckle_h0und You furnish the pictures, I'll furnish the war, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 15:25, 3 replies)

food weirdness
When eating a meal - say a good hearty meal of steak, potatoes and peas - I have to eat the different items so they stay in roughly the same proportions on the plate. So it's 'an amount' of the peas, followed by the same amount of the potato, the same of the steak, peas, potato, steak, peas, etc, etc.

At the end of the meal I'm left with a comically pixie-sized micromeal on my plate. Every time, without having any idea I'm doing it.

Mr Hose on the other hand eats everything in turn - so, all the peas, THEN all the potatoes, and finally all the steak. It distresses me but he will not accept he's wrong.
(no way hose is staring unemployment in the face on, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 15:25, 5 replies)

Some strange habits
- When a car honks, I always answer back "Pouet !".
- I always leave the doors (inside) slightly open for the cat. Even if I know there is no cat around.
(VieuxConAigri is French, throw rocks at him, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 15:20, 4 replies)

My Old Boss...
Told me this not long after I started work on his team.

As a child, he was obsessed by the concept of Infinity. He decided he would attempt to count to Infinity.

Every day at school, he would stand in the corner of the schoolyard counting to himself, not engaging with the other children.

He told me he got bored when he'd counted to 40,000. He was sure though that he'd never missed a single number in his counting.
(caescarna Hell's Roomba, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 15:19, 1 reply)

I am surprised at the love many of my fellow b3tans have for inanimate objects like I do.
Mine is beans mainly but it does apply to most tinned food, when I empty a tin of beans I can't leave "orphans" in the tin. That's just cruel.

At work I HAVE to sign in the exact time in minutes and it bugs everyone else who rounds it up to the nearest 5 minutes.

My mum also has a pot for used tea bags and a pot for the spoon, they cannot live in the same pot together - the spoon must get so lonely.
( Mrs. Spatum, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 15:13, 2 replies)

I've just opened a bag of Wine Gums
I've tipped them all out and arranged them by shape and then by colour. The long red ones (fnarr) outnumber all the others by 3:1
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 15:06, 5 replies)

Number plates
I constantly try to make balanced equations out of car number plates substituting a letters numerical place in the alphabet for that number (i.e. A=1, B=2, and so on). In fact I've been doing it for so long that I can instantly tell you what the numerical value of any letter is and what letter a number is. 9'13 1 1914 7920, 9 11141523.
(Sir Itchalot has a very self-referential signature, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 15:00, 5 replies)

Strange clothing
I once knew a religious woman who tie-dyed her outfit, which was in stark contrast to her colleagues' more restrained uniforms.

It was a bizarre habit.
( R.Soul hmmm, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 14:57, 1 reply)

SLVA's story made me think
I'm the opposite. I need to set an alarm that goes off at a number that isn't devisible by 5 ie 7:47 is fine but 7:45 or 7:50 is out...
(Clashrock is being stalked by his brother on, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 14:56, 7 replies)

I advertised for a cleaner a few years back
I had to change the advert before they'd put it in the local paper though. Apparently it's discrimination to include the line;

"only OCD sufferers need apply"
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 14:53, Reply)

I had a friend at college,
she had a couple of OCDish habits.
If she was poked on one side, she had to poke the opposite side in the exact same space, with the exact same pressure.
she believed it was weird to stroke your nose upwards and if someone did in front of her she would repeatedly stroke her nose down to 'cancel it out.'

Met with her for a few drinks recently and she is over these habits now... shame it was very entertaining.
(eggs and spam *insert witty sig here*, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 14:53, 3 replies)

When I read a book
I like to start at the top left-hand corner of a page, reading it from left to right and then moving down a line.

When I've finished the page on the left, I move onto the page on the right. Once I've read both pages, I turn over to the next page and repeat the process.
( JeffTheDogFucker Can you dig it?, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 14:52, 7 replies)

Frosted Glass...
Whenever I touch frosted glass I feel like i'm drowning!

So I dont touch it now!
(Lip Up Fatty Fatty Reggae still loves BBQ food on, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 14:51, 6 replies)

It won't be just me
I bet a hell of a lot of you, once the alarm has gone off in the morning won't get out of bed until the time is rounded off to the nearest five minutes. Getting up at x:57 would be unthinkable.

However, I did once go through a phase where I wouldn't get up until the numbers on the digital alarm clock added up to a prime number.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 14:49, 2 replies)

As a kid
I was scared of the monsters that dwelled in my room in the dark. Consequently, I used to sleep with my head under the covers. How I never suffocated, I don't know.

I grew out of it a long time ago. But, I can't settle in bed unless my feet are covered at least. Even if it's only my feet, they still have to be covered. I don't know why, I'm not frightened that something might get me in the night.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 14:47, 3 replies)