Aspies and property

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Do you have a strong need for keeping control over personal possessions? Do you get touchy if somebody uses/moves/throws away your stuff without warning you and seeking your consent?

I certainly am. I'm reasonably generous with stuff I've acquired, but I have to delineate things very clearly in my mind, some stuff I see as "for sharing" and I see that stuff as likely to vanish or get destroyed/abused, so I don't get attached to it.

I used to lend things to people but was appalled at how rarely they returned them - when I borrow stuff, I take it as a grave responsibility. These days I'd rather copy a CD for somebody than lend them my original and run the risk of not getting it back.

I don't even like people picking up my stuff to look at, though I have been known to allow it. I'd never employ a cleaner, not just because I have ethical problems with one person cleaning up amother person's mess, but because I just wouldn't want anybody else touching my things, I feel sure I'd get inconvenienced in loads of different ways if that happened; they'd never understand that I want some things to be kept exactly where I'd left them.

As for my home, I'm lucky to have been able to afford to buy my own house (small and humble though it is), because I'd feel awful at the thought of somebody else owning it.......it seems to me to be a basic human right, your home is your castle and all that. Yet some people don't seem to mind renting at all.

I agree 100%. I want to own my things and my home, this is very important to me. My dream is buying a small but comfortable house in a safe neighbourhood.

Oh my YES!

We recently returned from a weekend away and unleashed holy terror on the neighbour for having "tidied" up our yard while we were away! I wouldn't have the nerve (nor the desire, frankly) to come onto someone else's property and move stuff around. She ended up in tears and didn't talk to us for a week. Whatever. She knows now that our property is OUR PROPERTY. Paws off!

I also find that we're more or less defined by our things. We have collections that mean the world to us... we have a rather extensive Yoda collection that's a joint effort, and I have a historical dictionary collection, and I am ever so fond of my teen etiquette manuals from the 40s - 60s. So to touch stuff that is like an extension of my very self, well, that's just not cool.

We bought a house as soon as we could. We still have a mortgage on it but I consider it mine nonetheless.

We're even antsy about who we have in the house to babysit the girls. Assuming there are 2 people who we would trust with our children, we'd go with the one we figure will NOT be snooping through our stuff. Funnily enough, this very topic came up tonight before dinner.

Yeah, I'm very touchy about my stuff. Always have had issues with sharing and stuff.
In my case, dunno how much of it is me/being autistic, and how much of it is growing up poor-ish.

As for personal possessions, my NT sister and brother were worse about that than me. My sister would go into an absolute frenzy about it.

Home ownership has always been my big goal in life, but on a limited and single income, it took me until i was 47 to actually own one, but i bought it outright, never had a mortgage (got a redundancy payout and a bequest from my parents estate and bought a cheapie in a 'bad' area - have bought and sold 3 houses since, moved states). I'm a Taurus so we like owning homes. If I had lotsa money I'd be collecting them!

I didn't grow up poor-ish but always had issues with people touching or looking at my stuff. After finding out about asperger's, I attributed my behavior to the condition. When I was a kid I would always feel uncomfortable when adults would open my book bag and look at homework, etc. I felt like my privacy was being invaded, but then I realized I was the only one with that problem. Anyone else ever felt that way?

Unlike the other people who responded though, my sense of ownership doesn't make me want to own my own home, as I tend to prefer a nomadic lifestyle.

I have a few items that're particularly important to me and I get very aggrivated when someone touches it without my consent (which I will never give).

I do feel very tense when someone uses any of what I consider my stuff, but not to a point where I lose control.

I always wanted to just buy a house outright - till I saw the prices - I felt bad about it not being mine, but then somebody pointed out that it wasn't anybody else's either, so I felt better. I paid off the mortgage as soon as I could afford to (I was about 50 I think), and felt better than ever.

Glenna, the way you use the word "we" suggests you're part of a couple who have solved the biggest part of the problem concerning personal property - i.e. how the partner deals with it. Seems you both feel the same way. If so, that's great - there are people who just don't seem able to recognise clear boundaries with these things.

Talking of gardens, I really must get a lock put on the back garden gate - the neighbours sometimes engage builders who seem to think it's OK to annexe whatever they like in pursuit of their tasks - I wouldn't mind that within reason, but it's the way they assume rather than ask that annoys me.

Apparently it's not uncommon for people to let workmen into their homes while they themselves go out to work, to do refurbishments.

Interesting to hear that NTs can be just as "bad." I was thinking that the root cause of it (in Aspies) would be the inflexibility thing - need for predictability and regular routine, the slow learning curve and the need to control the environment so the effects of clumsiness are minimised and the coping strategies don't get inadvertently thwarted - I wonder what the NT's excuses are?

It's a big problem for me at work, because the bosses are always changing my workplace, all this silly "hotdesking" ethos where they think they're saving money by forcing everybody to share.......frankly I've taken to hiding some things away to stop other people wading in and helping themselves, and I've raised a few colleagues' eyebrows when they notice my penchant for locking things away. It's a shame because I really like the communal ethos, in principle - just that in practice, if I participate too much, everything I have goes completely out of my control until I can barely get anything done.

Is this an exclusive AS factor? I'd think anybody would be upset if someone messes with their stuff.

i very much dislike people rearranging anything of mine without consulting me for my approval.

there are various levels of importance that i place upon objects remaining where they are.

i have no ornaments or framed pictures around, except for the ones that other people thought would look good on my mantle shelf. they can be moved or even taken and i would not notice.
when someone gives me a framed picture of eg. "me and them" to put on some ledge, i allow them to position the picture. i never notice it in my mind after that because i never look at it.
if someone took it away, i would not notice it's absence.

but as for things i use or refer to, i am adamant that they should not be touched.

i have a friend called sonia who is bi-polar, and in her manic phases, she surveys my house and sees it as a mess.
my house is not unhygienic or dirty, it is just cluttered and disorganized.
i have papers on tables everywhere, and i also have things like circuit boards and other "bits and pieces" all over the place. there are wires draped across the floor and up the walls in some rooms.

she wants to "clean" it up for me. i advise her that it is not "dirty", and she says she wants to "tidy" it up for me.
i say that i can remember the location of all the things i need to access, and any rearrangement would be a nuisance to me.

one day, i had to go to the office of a company i work for (i usually work from home) and i left sonia at my house because she said she wanted to sleep.

when i got home about 14 hours later, it was completely clear of clutter, and sonia was gone.

i thought everything was stolen and i rang her and asked her if everything was here when she left.
she said she "cleaned up" and she arranged everything neatly. she thought she was doing me a major favor as it took her hours to do.

she picked up all my papers from every surface, and stacked them in 2 neat piles.

there were about 80-90 pages of things i had arranged on tables around my rooms, and i remembered where every one of them was.
when i got an idea, i would get up and go to the table with the relevant papers and add to them.

after she cleaned up, i had to sort through many pages to get to what i wanted to find. by the time i found them, the "spark" of my idea had gone out, and i forgot the fundaments of what i wanted to add.

she also piled all my cd's and dvd's in stacks. she made stacks of 50, and there were 6 stacks with a few cd's left over.

my god!! !! all the disks i needed to access were in view of my eye before she "tidied them up", and my memory of where to look for them was now irrelevant. grrrrr!! !.

now i had to sit cross legged on the floor and sort through every cd to find the one i wanted.

when i found it, i left the other cd's on the floor, and after a few weeks, the cd's and dvd's got back to their messy organization.
so did my papers and my components that she put all in a box.

i can not tolerate filth or smell or any other unclean environment. but i do not consider "untidiness" as negative.

i was not happy with her for a few weeks after she ruined my environment.
i was stressed and annoyed.

I share like crazy. I really don't mind lending or sharing something out even if it's important to me. It does anger me if someone messes with my property, of course.

What really pisses me off though, is when I let someone borrow something and it comes back in bad condition.


But... I really don't think this subject is any different with people with AS than NT.

Sure, anybody is likely to get upset if they lend something out and it comes back damaged. But I'm thinking that for an Aspie, the effect of having their personal stuff changed by other people is likely to be more of a problem. For example, a neurotypical probably has a home that's organised in a way that conforms closely to social norms, so if somebody else tidies it up, they'll be doing it in ways that the NT owner can easily predict. For the Aspie, somebody else tidying up for them can appear more like randomising their stuff - the new "order" makes sense to the NT, but to the Aspie it's more like they've just strewn everything all over the place.

I have hundreds of funny little ways of doing things that would take ages to explain to anybody else. They work well for me, they dovetail into my daily habits to render a lot of mundane things very easy and efficient for me. But it wouldn't be obvious to anybody else why I have things arranged the way they are. Nobody else would suspect that the pair of trousers lying on the bedroom floor have been placed in the perfect way for me to put them on in the morning. If they move them, then my routine is disturbed, it takes me longer to get dressed, and the contents of the pockets will likely spill out, coins will roll under the bed, credit card lost, etc.

So when people mess with my stuff, they are tampering with forces they can't possibly understand, because they think I'm like everybody else.

I am probably one of the most possessive people you'd ever meet. For me, sharing definitely does not mean caring. It means someone is going to mess up whatever I let them borrow. And sure enough, whenever I am in my rare generous mood, something bad happens (although always by accident). So now I don't let anyone borrow or use absolutely anything anymore, especially money. If someone even moves something of mine, it almost sends me into a "panic mode".

sounds (almost) just like me.. i recently had people help me clean & seeing people move my stuff around was too much, i very nearly screamed, flapped & got rid of them but fortunately kept it under control.. (they were ladies too, if a guy touched things like that i'd have man-handled out of my place) i rent unfortunately, no job etc i can't afford to buy anywhere.. i'm in a "council" flat/apartment block with 60 other apartments roughly.. it's loud & dirty, people here have no qualms with breaking in to property.
i think some of my "possessive anxiety" is to do with OCD as i was diagnosed with this. but yes this definitely sounds (or "reads" ) familiar.

I am very protective of my property, and I also am a pack rat and cant easily get rid of stuff, as I might someday need it.