…I bought a pack of 47-cent stamps. And a sheet of 1 cent and a few strips of 10 cent stamps, so I don’t have to buy stamps for the US or international letters. Also so I can quickly account for any rate increases. I figure I’m stocked for the Xmas season and beyond. They’re in a little envelope in my desk drawer.
your own examples?
Keeping the gas tank full.
I have certain glasses for certain drinks.
Iced tea has to be in one of my tall character glasses. The kind I buy from the WB Studio Store (or did, before they closed). My favorite has Wizard of Oz characters on it. Still looking for the Wicked Witch, though.
I prefer to run up to the WaWa for a fountain Coke. If I must drink a Coke from the fridge, it has to be in a cold glass with lots of ice. Preferably canned; bottled Coke tastes a little flat. But nothing beats a WaWa coke from the fountain you do up yourself.
Milk (when I actually drink it) must be in one of the glasses that matches my dishes. Nothing fancy, just regular Corelle stuff.
Beer must be straight from the bottle, preferably an icy, icy Coors Light Longneck.
Wine in a wine glass. Other alcoholic drinks are fair game.
Orange juice in my small plastic cup with cats dancing on it.
I can only drink water from a plastic bottle.
But that’s not anal stuff, is it?
Sheri
I’ve been copyediting stuff at the office lately and every time I see the words Hawaii or Halloween I stick in the damn apostrophe even though I know that I will be overruled by the slacker mob. I just can’t help myself.
Hawai’i. Hallowe’en. How hard is this? Nobody cares about the little things anymore. It kills me.
[sub]Gee, what astrological sign is Trout?[/sub]
Any money I have has to be all facing the same direction, and arranged by denomination. If someone else hands me money to hold, I have to fix it for them.
Since I’m generally a slob, I have no idea where this came from.
To be entirely anal, one must point out that the glottal stop in Hawai’i is most properly indicated with a backwards apostrophe. Dunno how to type it though. 
Of course, I was the one schmuck in the movie theater watching the South Park movie and saying “Hey, they forgot the accent mark in La Résistance!”
… I can’t walk down an aisle in the supermarket the wrong way (when first entering a new supermarket, I have to determine which way is the correct way, before shopping can proceed) Even if I don’t need something in a particular aisle, I have to walk up it, because then the next aisle will be the walked in the wrong direction
… when playing cards for 5 cent coins with my neighbours, if there are more than three coins I have to arrange them in a geometric pattern, or stack them.
… when working as a supermarket cashier, all the notes had to be facing the same way. And all you people who handed me several $20’s or $50’s all facing different directions should watch out as I know where you all live:)
… spoons have to face down (i.e convex surface facing the ceiling) when draining and storing
Oh, I could go on about how I can’t step on cracks in the sidewalk, and how I have to greet my stuffed toys every morning, before I leave my house, but then you’ll all think I’m not just anally retentive, but in dire need of professional help 
I organize my paper money (on the rare occasions when I carry any) - but I think it’s just common sense… I have to tidy my husband’s wallet from time to time…
Newly laundered towels must be put at the bottom of the stack so that all towels are used equally.
T-shirts must be folded shoulder to shoulder, front side out, sleeves folded in, then half and half - makes a nice neat package that fits just so in the drawer.
When ironing a dress shirt or blouse, the first thing done always always always is the collar.
And it’s an abomination to have less than a serving of ice cream left in a carton in the freezer.
When I hang out my laundry on the line, I make sure that each individual garment has identically coloured clothes pegs. Groups of similar small garments should be hung together, with matching or toning clothes pegs if possible.
Example:
underpants, underpants, underpants, bra, bra, tank top is good. It’s better if the underpants all have (say) white clothes pegs, the bras have red and the tank top blue (colours vary between each launcry session)
underpants, bra, tank top, bra, underpants, underpants is not so good.
Hanging up a T shirt with one red and one blue clothes peg is bad.
In many other ways, I’m a slob. I don’t always close dresser drawers when I’m finished. Washing up isn’t always done immediately. I leave the ironing for weeks. But… laundry must be hung neatly on the line. As Harry Hill would say, “You’ve got to have a system”.
AHHHHHHhhhh. Now this is exactly the stuff I can relate to.
When I am folding the laundry, every garment has a category with a corresponding pile.
My work clothes.
My jeans.
Other pants.(kacki or just not denim)
Tshirts I wear out of the house.
Tshirts I wear inside only.
Sweat shirts. One pile for nice another for old.
The system is a bit more complicated than how I describe, but it is just too much to get into here. I can’t stand putting clothes away that are just thrown into a basket willy-nilly.
I can’t bring home groceries unless my kitchen is clean.
This isn’t that weird, is it?
A couple of things, each likely coming from a past job.
First is the cleaning. While a student, I once had a job as a janitor. It entailed such things as mopping floors, scrubbing toilets, collecting garbage, and so on. Nowadays, my wife knows that while it may take some time to convince me that such things need to be done around the house (our views on when things need cleaning differ), they will be done well once I get going. The bathroom sparkles, the kitchen is spotless–I never tolerated anything less than sparkling clean as a janitor; I have the same standards for the job in our home. My car, on the other hand…
The second is money. As a cashier, I always made sure that the bills in my cash drawer were facing the same way. It made them easier to count. But I still do the same thing with bills in my wallet, and will even pay for things in stores and restaurants with bills facing the same way, if possible. I do get a bit grumpy if I get bills in change that are not facing the same way–it means I have to realign them before putting them in my wallet.
I do the same thing . . . all my credit cards and other important pieces of plastic are facing the same way.
My room, on the other hand, is not neat. The only thing keeping my clothes from being in a general pile on the floor is that I haven’t bothered to take them out of my suitcase yet.
I have to eat ice cream from my own ceramic bowl, which I keep in the fridge, so that the ice cream remains cold. That same bowl can be used for cold cereal with milk.
Milk is drunk from a hand-made ceramic mug, also kept in the fridge.
Huh, seeing the title and who wrote it, I thought this was going to be about some new gay-sex thing.
When I put utensils in the utensil-holder in the dishwasher, each little partition must have an equal number of utensils. If this is not possible, the distribution of utensils must be symmetrical.
(damn it sounds bizarre now that I’ve written it out.)
It makes perfect sense to me. The utensils wouldn’t want it any other way.
Ooooh yes !!! The rest of my family think I’m absolute bonkers when I do that. I can’t have a shirt hanging with two differently coloured pegs, and if someone else helps me hang them out, I will ‘fix’ their peg errors ! hehehe
Wouldn’t it be boring if we were all the same !
Mind you, some of these posts seem more OC disorder, than being anal !!!
Spreadsheets. I don’t use them for whatever it is that people are supposed to use them for, but they’re handy for keeping track of things. Like what cds I own by Artist, Album and gender of singer(this used to be in chronological order by date of purchase, but since I had to start over it’s now alphabetical by artist.) And which cdr has which X-Files clips, sounds, pictures and episodes on it.
And…is organizing a cd collection by color of case anal? That wasn’t a good system, in retospect.
I have a friend who organises his cds by colour of case.
*Hawai‘i.
I have all the c. 1100 books on my shelf arranged in order of Library of Congress subject classification. Each book occupies its own unique position between two specific other books. I know in my head where any given book is and can put my hand on it in 1 second. Now if only my socks were that organized…