i am neurotic.

I wait to turn off the faucet at a public bathroom after washing my hands, so I can turn it off with the paper towel I used to dry my hands. I figure that the faucet handle must be the dirtiest object, because it is the last thing that people touch before cleaning their hands. If I forget to use the towel to turn the faucet handle, I sometimes consider rewashing my hands – just depends on the bathroom and establishment. In especially dirty bathrooms with only a hand dryer, I have actually left the faucet running.

Whenever I go to the bathroom, I need to turn my ceiling fan on. The sound of peeing makes me uncomfortable. If there is no ceiling fan, I either wait until no one’s around, or I just leave and hold it in for a bit. I also hate when bathrooms are next to the kitchen, and refuse to use those because I don’t want to hear urinating while I eat.

I must always shower with the door/curtain to my left and the wall to my right. In some showers, this results in my showering with the showerhead behind me – a ‘backwards’ shower. If I have been staying at a hotel or someone’s house where I had to take backwards showers for a while, I must take an extra long regular shower when I get home to make up for it.

I have to check the bed for snakes before I will get in. If my husband’s already in bed, I will wake him up and make him get out, so I can thoroughly check. I make sure to leave the toilet seat down at night time, in case a snake comes up the toilet. I live in Ireland, and we have no snakes here. I’m not sure where I got my phobia from.

Sometimes when I take a poop, the stool will hit the water so forcefully that it will splash back onto my bottom… After this happens I get extremely depressed with the notion that all of those disgusting poo particles and filthy water are stuck to my cheeks and will transfer to my underwear, eventually spreading to the rest of my pants and that I’ll be spreading poo particles everywhere, eventually leading to an epidemic. So I HAVE to take a shower whenever splash-back occurs.

I share a bathroom with my older brother who is rather unsanitary. When I enter or exit my bathroom I take all my things in a little basket and store them in my bedroom. I cannot leave them in the bathroom. I also ALWAYS clean the mirror over my sink with windex after being in the bathroom for a period of time, even if it is clean.

When trying to fall asleep at night, I can never fall asleep until I have gotten up to go to the bathroom twice. Sometimes I’ll go once and then lay there for almost an hour until I feel the urge to go again. After I have gone the second time I fall almost instantly asleep. My old roommate even caught on that I had to do this. One time her boyfriend was visiting and he saw I was going to bed so he started to turn the TV down. She told him he didn’t have to really worry about it until the second time I got up.

I can’t go to the toilet without before and after spitting in it. I don’t know why I do it but I do it everywhere I have to go. and it has to happen before I flush, or while I’m flushing.

I am a soap-a-phobic. I’m not afraid of soap, I’m afraid of having soap left on things: hair, dishes, my body..i scrub everything ridiculously…and if i see any bubbles that look like soap bubbles, i rescrub. good thing my water is included in my rent!

I mentally divide the towel I use for showering into different areas for distinct body regions. I use one side for drying my body and the other is divided into zones for the ears, face, and hands (because I use this towel to dry my hands, and I know where each part of the towel is when I hang it up).