Calling: All Anal-Retentives

I've just started working on my classroom today and I've already encountered the uprising of my anal-retentive alter-ego. For those of you who know me, I have an interesting personality split. My room is usually messy but my dvds/books are usually in alphabetical order. My ideal closet includes color-coded clothing, but I do not pair socks and most of my clothes are found on the closet floor. The top of my bedside table is littered with odds and ends, but the drawers are neatly filled with various boxes that once held pieces of technology, complete with warranty information packets and instruction manuals for safe-keeping.

It's like my orderly, rule-abiding and creative, free-spirited sides are constantly warring, and my home front generally pays the price; for instance, the battlefield of the kitchen sink, which can amass alarming casualties of dirty dishes and cups while the dish-washing soaps and accessories must remain neatly organized. Small compromises exist all over the place - and to bring this back to my main point, I feel my art room will be like one of those places.

My room is, as of right now, completely disorganized and chaotic. I think the reason I tend to stray so far from "orderly" is that once I border the "orderly" mindset, it's either 100% order (which = exhausting obsession) or 75% carefree oblivion. (Case in point, I remember in fourth grade being so obsessed with the orderliness and feng shui of my desk that I would compulsively open it about every five minutes to check that I had put everything in the most logical assortment possible. I decided at a young age this was stupid and against my natural instinct, decided to let it get messy. I still consider it a hard decision to make.) I think I'm still a little bit more left-brained than most art teachers though, as the thought of the 'no place for anything and everything with no place' credo that seems to be going on in my room right now will probably cause me to lose sleep this night.