| The first rule you will learn when living with me is that my stuff is my stuff. This doesn't mean you can't touch it, or look, or use it; only put it back where you found it. I will know (and no, the fact that I know does not mean that I will mind), I will offhandedly observe that my things have been used.
This is the way I am. I just know where my things are, I am conscious of my belongings, aware. People mistake this as possessivenes, or freaky organization, or just plain selfish, but it's not. I leave my things organized, however disorganized things may look, they are where I put them, and I will notice if they move. I don't really CARE if they move, if they are used. But still, I will notice.
I left my pictures on the dresser once, and when I put them down I aligned the edge of the pile with the ridge in the wood. (That's just the way it happened, I felt like it.) Later, getting my scissors from the dresser, I ask my roommate Dina, how were the pictures? She flipped, God, Jane, I even lined them back up on that freakin' ridge you had them against!. But she left a different picture on top.
Some people are more expansive, they will come home and drop the books on the kitchen table and their scarf on the way down the hall and the rest of the stuff in the room. They will run and get one of their papers from the kitchen and sit on my bed to talk and leave it near me; later searching for the gloves, the papers, the scarf. These people sometimes irritate me, not for disorganization (because lordy knows that's my middle name) but unawareness of their shape, the space they move and live in.
I am just conscious of my surroundings, aware of my personal space. I can't help this, I do not condemn others, and I don't have a problem if you use my stuff, but I will still know, because the periphery of my mind spends time cataloguing it all.
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