Aspies and property
I prefer people to ask first, but if it's just looking at something, turning it over, that sort of thing, I don't mind as long as I know them.
The thing I really get touchy about is food. I honestly came close to tears in the last couple years when someone reached over and grabbed something from my bowl without warning or asking me. It wasn't so much an "it's mine" issue as a contamination one, though - I have a lot of food issues, and the idea of someone taking their dirty fork with lots of food I don't like the smell or the feel of and putting it my food is outright disgusting to me. I'd still be a little weirded out if someone just randomly grabbed my food even if they didn't have anything else on their hands or silverware, but not as much.
I'm a bit touchy, yeah, heh. D: I feel like I shouldn't be, but it's just that I don't see WHY people can't just be a little more careful. It's not that goddamn hard. Just pay the tiniest bit of attention! I have my friends sorted into two groups: people who break and lose stuff, and people who don't. The people who don't can use my stuff. I don't know HOW some people just break everything they touch. How do you break a table lamp, honestly? (Besides plain knocking it over) There's a switch and you flick it, how do you get that wrong?
And pleeeaaase clean my kitchen stuff if you use it, oh god. ~_~
Anyway though, I agree with zer0netgain. I think most people have these concerns. Except the people who break everything, I'm not sure what's up with them.
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avatar photo: Mount Rainier
"You gotta keep making decisions, even if they're wrong decisions, you know. If you don't make decisions, you're stuffed." - Joe Simpson
I cannot stand anyone else touching my things. It feels excruciating emotionally and physically.
I have very clear and delineated relationships with all my things - whether I want them or not, and so i like to exercise my own control over them and hate them being interfered with.
I am not mean minded but I do not like other people touching my stuff without my say so. There are somepeople who I will trust to borrow and use my things but not many people.
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Health is a state of physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity
I am not a jigsaw, I am a free man !Me too---I am very protective of my personal property. Some experiences with sharing:
I let a schoolmate borrow a book when I was in school (years ago)---I never got it back.
I let my band director in school borrow a record---I had to ask repeatedly to get it back.
I let a fellow teacher borrow my 1950s/1960s CD collection---I got them back scratched.
I let a church member's daughter borrow one of my 35mm cameras for a class---I never got it back.
I have to stop---I'm getting mad
.
Anyway, it is a shame when this kind of stuff happens---but it seems to happen more often than not doesn't it?
As far as leaving my stuff alone---it should be simple---I like it where it is, please do not move it.
Yesterday two power trucks for our electric company came into my lower driveway and got off the drive thus rutting up a good 30 feet of my yard. I saw them leaving my driveway and wondered what they were doing. I went down there to look when I spotted the damage. I called the company and told them what they had done. The supervisor called back today and said he was aware of a driver for the company damaging my yard. Yes, they are going to fix it---but it took me calling first. The policy I found out was that they are supposed to ask for permission first. The supervisor said no one was home, so they took the liberty to enter my yard anyway. True, I was gone when they got there. But I arrived home just in time to see them leaving.
Now I need to play some Playstation2 pinball to calm down. Just kidding---I'm not that upset, but it is irritating the disregard some people have for our property.
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"My journey has just begun."
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.
It seems pretty healthy to know what to share with others and what to keep to yourself. It's good to be balanced with clear boundaries so you don't run out of resources or so people don't walk all over you. Also, I can understand why you don't want a maid/cleaner because my parents have one, and she always rearranges our things in a way making it harder for us to find them.
It didn't take me long to learn that people can think me mean if I simply refuse to let them touch or use anything that belongs to me, so it seemed like a good compromise to put a certain amount of my stuff in the "shareable" category. I tend to keep the "non-shareable" stuff out of sight - what the NT eye doesn't see, the NT heart doesn't grieve over.
Not having a cleaner works very well for me - apart from the convenience of knowing where my stuff is, I'm obviously saving the expense......if I lose my job, I don't have to dismiss the cleaner (which I'd hate to have to do, especially in a recession), I'm already used to cleanng up after myself, and that saved money will tide me over for quite a while. Of course none of these benefits are realised if I keep my job, but I'm planning to leave it as soon as I can afford to, as I think working for an employer is the source of a lot of my problems.
I get a lot of clothes that I like so that if something is stolen I don't mind so much. Stealing I understand and don't mind much for some reason. But chanfging or throwing away or giving away MY stuff is not okay. It's unethical and should be illegal, and it's arrogant, like as if you think you know what that person wants and that they're just too lazy to do it, or like you know better than them what is good for them and what they should do with THEIR struff.
Arrgh! I hate people touching my stuff!
It's not so much them touching it, exactly, it's the fact that it doesn't seem to occur to most people to ask before they just grab for it. It's almost as if a lot of folks thnk that if they can see it, it's fair game, even if it's not theirs. I have no problem with someone asking to have a look at something, even if it is a toy that I am currently really attached to, and if I like that person I will quite often show them what the toy can do (I have a fondness for shiny electronics) and let them play with it.
The part I don't understand is why it seems to be acceptable for someone to pick up my stuff and start fiddling with it or whatever, but me getting annoyed with them for handling it without permission is "just being mean". Some of the gear is expensive, rare, or easily damaged.
More to the point, it really just seems to be bad manners (to me, anyway) to pick up something without permission. I never do it. I always ask - then I check if it is easy to break! In that case I leave it alone!
People putting things back in odd places is really bad - if someone else tidies my desk or work area I can never find anything ever again! I will then spend the next approx. 1/2 hour hunting for whatever it was, flapping, and generallly getting stressed out. Eventually I have to go ask whoever-it-was where they put whatever-it-was, and why they couldn't leave it alone! The only time I ever tidy up after anyone else is if I have repeatedly asked them to do it, they haven't, and I get the black bin-bag out to tidy up! They can't say they didn't get fair warning...!
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The optimist says the glass is half full.
The pessimist says the glass is half empty.
I just want to know who drank the water...
gina-ghettoprincess
Veteran
Joined: 8 Nov 2008
Age:20
Posts: 2,898
Location: The Town That Time Forgot (UK)
At my old school, people kept asking if they could look through my mobile phone, and when I said no they said I was being mean. WTF? My mobile phone is private, I don't want any old Tom Dick and Harry looking through it! Since when is THAT acceptable?!
My mum says I'm mean because I won't let my brother borrow my stuff. That's cos he wrecks it. I'm especially not letting him within a mile of my expensive watercolour paints, I don't want them to become like the paints at school (ie. all messed up).
And what's up with people sharing drinks? That's just unhygienic.
Some things are just not to be shared. My stuff, back off. And that's in plain English.
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'El reloj, no avanza
y yo quiero ir a verte,
La clase, no acaba
y es como un semestre"
I don't mind sharing per se, but I really can't stand when people don't return my stuff - not to mention lose or damage it. So, I stopped lending books and CDs, but I don't have a problem lending money.
The situation changes dramatically when it comes to more personal things. I don't like anybody (except my husband) to touch my clothes or my jewellery and I can't even imagine someone asking to borrow them. For the same reason I never have someone helping with the cleaning - first that I'm used to do things in a certain way and I'm quite inflexible about it, but the thought itself of a stranger touching my belongings seems almost a violation. I only invite people I know well and feel comfortable with - my home is my safe place and I don't like to feel invaded.
My parents went through my stuff all the time, reading my letters and so on and it took me years to stop hiding things around the house, so I always though that was the reason.
Both my husband and I collect things and he is just as annoyed if anybody touches his stuff (he's NT).
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"Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live" (Oscar Wilde)
I'm OCD-ish when it comes to how things are organised in my kitchen, the glasses go in one cupboard, cups in another, plates and dishes in another, pots and pans in another.
I had a friend of a friend staying in my apartment back home, and he was the kind of person who dirtied every single plate and pot before he got round to washing the dishes, which I thought was so inconsiderate, I mean you have to be more considerate when you're sharing a home with someone else. And he always put the things back randomly. Why? You find the plates in cupboard A, so when you've washed them, you put them back in cupboard A, and you find the cups in cupboard B, so when you've washed them, you put them back in cupboard B. I mean, how hard is it?
And I had a cleaner in my apartment here. I actually think she was more OCD-ish than me, which is a really good quality for a cleaner! She cleaned meticulously. But the problem is that I'm a bit of a clutterbug too, I have heaps of magazines and papers on the table, and she used to put all my half-read magazines in a cupboard. I never noticed, until one day I went in the cupboard and there was a couple of dozen magazines that I hadn't finished reading. And she reorganised my underwear drawer. I had to tell her not to organise me so much and not work so hard. I like things like CDs to go back in the right covers, and cups and plates to be put back in their 'home position' but I'm okay with some organised chaos, I know where almost everything is as well. (Apart from my mobile phone, I keep forgetting where I've put it down.
)
I do that too - I try to show appreciation when somebody else does the dishes, but all I really want is to put everything back in their place.
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"Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live" (Oscar Wilde)
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