People in HOAs are Nuerotic

When I was a kid, I always wondered why some people chose to live in cookie cutter houses in private communities that required you be a part of the home owner's association. I grew up in the country, at the end of a gravel road, and it was a little bit negligible as to where our property ended and the neighbor's began. I realize now why people would want to live in these neighborhoods: they have a form of OCD.

I can now totally understand why a person would want to be included in a HOA that demands your grass be under three inches tall. I don't like to look at my neighbor's lawn when he doesn't mow it, and I don't like to look at my grass when it gets too tall either. For the people who keep perfect lawns year round, I can see why they would want to be surrounded by other lovely lawns.

 Maybe a person gets annoyed by having their neighbors park an RV outside on the curb for three months. A HOA would take care of this. Those private neighborhoods are for people who hate looking at ugly things. They are aesthetically driven, and properties that look out of order drive them to increase their medication.

I know I'm going to find myself in a HOA someday. As I have aged, I have gotten progressively pickier about the order of my living space. I'll give you some examples.

I used to only make my bed when my mother told me to. During college, I absolutely never made my bed (I think this was because the line between daytime and nigh time, sleep time and study time, were very blurred and varied on a day to day basis). I finally started making my bed when I moved into my house, because I felt like I was supposed to be more grown up and this required and orderly bedspread.

Previously, I thought dandelions a natural part of a lawn. Now that I have my own lawn (bowling alley sized it may be), I abhor dandelions. I go to great lengths to uproot every single one I see. This is a very futile process, as two of the neighbors in close proximity to me let their dandelions grow flowers and then seed. I can never get rid of my chronic dandelion problem if they refuse to be a part of the solution. I may soon get so neurotic that I'll go around snipping the yellow heads off of the plants so that they can't seed and ruin my lawn. Right now my yard looks terrible. It bothers me every time I look at it. That's why I keep the curtains pulled shut and the blinds down.

I keep my garbage bin, recycling bin, yard debris bin, and glass recycling tub on the side of my house. They are mostly out of the way and you can really only see the first bin, because the others are lined up behind it, like kids waiting to see Santa. When my next door neighbors first moved in, they put their GIANT blue recycling bin out in the bark chip area in between our houses. Sure, technically it was on their space. But I thought "Really? That's where you are going to keep it? It looks atrocious. I might as well move next to a garbage dump if that is the structure I have to see every time I look out my front window." However, after a week, the neighbors moved the bin to the side of their house, because they found that their placement hindered parking and backing up. That is a whole 'nother story for another time. Let's just say I'm working on manufacturing parking tickets.

As you can see, owning my own home has caused a sharpening in my OCD tendencies, and the eye sores that I have to look at cause me uneasiness. At this point in my life, I contribute to the problem. I'm clean, but not a clean freak. I'm neat, but I still leave stuff out in the living room. One day I'll probably go ballistic and have to live in a house with bare white rooms and furnishings with no clutter and minimal decor. It'll be called the mental hospital.