Same here! Sticks of gum, too. 
I am kind of uber-anal-retentive when it comes to some things. For example, today I discovered that a co-worker had updated a list recently, but that she hadn’t formatted the new people’s names in the correct way and she had not re-ordered the list when one of the items went up in priority. Thus I just spent 1/4 hour fixing a list that didn’t technically have any wrong information on it. It was just in the wrong format and the wrong order. No one will ever notice but me. My exchange student is driving me nuts because he doesn’t put things back the way he found them. I have that DVD collection box facing that way because I like it that way. I don’t care if you want to pick it up and look at it, but do you have to put it back sideways?
Oh the petty petty pickiness. Luckily I don’t blame other people for my retentiveness. I recognize it as my problem. I’m sort of a low-grade Monk. It may bug me but I’m not going to ask anyone to try to be as anal as I am.
When using one of those quad-folded paper napkins, I always first unfold it, then lift it by the middle at the edges so the top half falls backwards over the bottom half (as in, it falls away from me,) and against the way it was originally folded. I then fold the right half behind the left half, leaving me once again with a napkin in fodled into a quarter, but now it’s kind of poofy and less straight edges and I like it that way. By being ‘poofy,’ I feel that it can absorb the crap I get on my hands and mouth better.
When eating wings, I only eat them using one hand, usually the right. This way, only one hand will end up getting nasty and I can open doors and drink my drink without getting sauce everywhere (cause, even when ‘poofed,’ no napkin on Earth can remove all residual sauce.)
Money in my wallet MUST go from largest bills in back, to smaller ones in the front (I mean amount, not physical size, being in the US and all where our bills are all equal sized.) Also, the presidents have to face me when I open it. If I have a check or something else I need to put in my wallet, it gest folded in half the lnog way, and then put in the middle section of bill area of the wallet (it’s a tri-fold wallet,) and in front of all the bills.
I do something similar. All the hangars must face the same way. I’m irrationally convinced that someday, a fire will happen and I’ll be able to save all my clothes by lifting them off the rack in a bunch.
I know this makes no sense (who’s gonna stop to save their clothes, fer chrissake?), but I do it religiously.
I wear medical gloves at the gym because not everybody is scrupulous about wiping down the equipment with disinfectant after using it.
I brush my teeth with baking soda.
I have two wedding rings, a yellow gold one and a white gold one. I also have white and yellow gold wristwatches. I change the ring to match the watch I’ve got on, even if I’m wearing long sleeves and no one else can see the watch.
I drink my coffee cold, even in winter.
I sing songs from Irving Berlin’s musical Call Me Madam in the shower.
I do this too but here in Canada there is still old money and new money floating around. The heads don’t line up and drives me bat shit insane!
… or Jewish.
Q. How do you get a Jew to shut up already?
A. You handcuff him
As for my own personla quirks, I got nuttin’, unless my habit of semi-conciously avoiding doing things the same way every time counts… (I’ll button my shirt from the top down one day, then next day from the bottom up, then from the middle, just because I’m tired of doing it the same way every time… You get the idea…)
For example: I have to find out how to do something in a computer program. This isn’t just something I need for my own use (although if I only need to do it once in a blue moon I’ll document those too), but something someone else needs. So they’ll want some kind of manual, even if it’s just a Word document with a few screenshots. Let’s use Access for the example, just to avoid writing “the program” a dozen times.
So I open Access. I take a screenshot of the initial screen and paste it into Paint; I place a red border around the button or menu I’m going to click, trim that area and paste the trimmed area into a Word document, where I also add some text “open Access and clic on Reports”, for example.
Then I clic on Reports. New screenshot, new editing of the picture, new pasting of the edited picture to Word.
When Access gives me a pop-up window, I put a picture of the pop-up in Word. Only the pop-up, not the whole screen. Several of the programs I work with (SAP, Access) have a blank background that often takes up 80% of the screen, what does anybody care about that whole grey part?
When I run into a dead-end, I still document what happened. I will take it out in the final “handout” that I give to whomever needed the information, but it’s good for me to avoid repeating something I already did (specially if the research takes place over a long period, for example I start it on the Friday before a long weekend).
Usually I’m good enough at those programs that I don’t really take out many of the screenshots, maybe one or two. And sometimes they end up becoming a footnote: “it can also be done thisotherway but I recommend that you don’t because of thisandthat reason”.
The way my co-workers do it:
They open Access, explore it, run into dead ends, find out what they were looking for. This takes them about 10% less than it takes me for the whole previous process.
If they’re Spanish, Latin American or Italian, then they go for coffee. Coffee is important. Love makes the world go round and money greases it, but coffee feeds the hamsters inside. Other nationalities have been known to take bathroom breaks or water cooler breaks at the same point. In any case, there’s a break, where they forget half of what they’ve been doing.
Then they open Word and Access they were exploring, and repeat the process (often running into the same dead-ends as before, because they’ve forgotten exactly what is it they did), taking screenshots and pasting them directly to Word.
Then they close Access and write the information for each screenshot, but often they can’t remember what button did they click between one screenshot and the next, so they open the program again but then they close it again once they’ve re-found-out that particular step. This means they may open and close Access five times for a seven-step process.
In total, the whole process takes them about 3x as much as it takes me. The explanation of how my co-workers do it is based on several dozen actual co-workers from half a dozen different countries.
I’ve been known to be 30% ahead of the calendar in a project where everybody else was behind-as-usual. When I have a boss who appreciates that, I get extra free time. When I get a boss who doesn’t… I bring out my “look-busy” face and start searching monster.es
I have a tea-cup. It’s mine. I get quite tetchy if someone else uses it, although there’s nothing special about it, just that it’s mine…
sin
You have hangArs? Man, I’m SO envious! Always wanted to own a chopper, meself…
I didn’t know this was a quirk. Everybody in my family does it that way. Every girl in my dorm (at least those I ever helped pack, quite a few) does it that way. Most hotel rooms have all the hangers hung facing the same way. Are we sure it’s a quirk and not just The Right Way?
I’m with Nava. This is not a quirk! moreover, they ***must ***be hung with the full part of the loop pointing outward, and the “hook” part inward 
… unless, of course, I’m feeling ornery about hanging them all the same way every time and feel the need to experiment with different arrangements (see my initial post a bit above…)
No, it’s not a quirk, it’s The Right Way.
looks at extensively long list, decides against it
- Like Eleanor of Aquitaine, I am incapable of eating anything unless I have a napkin. Even better, two napkins: one for my lap and one to keep near my right hand.
After every single bite, I wipe my hands on the napkin, even if there is not a crumb to be seen on my fingers.
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I must have two towels to use after my daily shower. I can’t use a wet towel to dry my hair, it squicks me out.
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When I drink tea at home, I drink the first half of the cup with a spoon.
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No one–not even my fiance–is allowed to use my pillow except me.
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I must finish a book after I’ve started it. I can count the number of times I haven’t finished a book on one hand, and it really, really bothers me.
Anyone else do this, maybe it’s perfectly normal? Breakfast, three day cycle. . .
Day 1 - Shredded Wheat
Day 2 - Weetabix
Day 3 - Eggs (alternate fried/scrambled)
Day 4 - Start again.
Lunch is on a two day cycle, supper weekly weekdays, fortnightly weekends.
The largest idiosyncracy I have is that I almost always put an odd number of ice cubes in my drink. Don’t know why. Just do.
I don’t have idiosyncracies, just habits that make good sense.
I don’t like wearing socks. I run around in bare feet in the house in winter, and complain to my husband about my cold feet. He gives me no sympathy.
I don’t like ice cubes. If I must have ice cubes, I must have a straw so the ice cubes don’t bump my lips.
I don’t like cake and ice cream together, and ice cream cakes are right out.
(I didn’t realize you were so weird, Gut. Not nice and normal like me.)
Yup and I when I got back from Denver a couple weeks ago there was American money mixed in with my Canadian money! The horror!
Every morning before I put on my socks I have to turn them inside out to make sure there aren’t any earwigs in them. This is because my mother put earwigs in my socks on various April Fool’s Days when i was a child. It is the most disgusting feeling in the world. For this reason (I think), whilst I am not scared of spiders/wasps/other creepy crawlies and am perfectly happy to pick them up with my hands, I freak out if they go near my feet.
Before I go to sleep I have to pull my entire bed apart, including removing the matress, then remake the whole thing. Yet I am perfectly happy for my bed to go unmade throughout the day.
I write in mirror writing because I am left handed and that way it doesn’t smudge.
I arrange my books and cd’s by colour, and alphabeticise my wardrobe.
I won’t even go into my food issues, because I would be here all day.