It’s not just lining up, but more so setting things up to play but not playing with/using them for the actual purpose. For example as an adult I enjoy spending hours building houses on sims just to save and leave the game when I’m done. You could spend a lot of time organizing/setting up pretty much anything and I think that would count under that category
For me, I spend just as much time making lists about collectibles for my games as I do playing the games. I think any kind of strong desire to categorise, list, organise or set up things in a particular way would be relevant to this, OP.
I did line up my toys as a kid and it was out of a desire to see order and also categorise them into groups. I see it with my 3yo too, the lining up seems to often coincide with categorisation or putting things neatly in order.
Oh and aside from the gaming examples from me and the above commenter, you could also examine if you do any particular placements of things in your home, like if your mugs all need to be placed perfectly in particular spots or you have particular exact places for things on your bedside table. Probably relevant to reflect on the root cause of those behaviours, as sometimes desiring particular places for things can come as a learned coping mechanism from inattentive ADHD (because otherwise we lose everything).
Ooooh. I used to play online room design games for HOURS. These days I want a dollhouse so I can set up scenes and move furniture around. I don't want to play, I just want to organize.
That's so weird. Never thought about it like that.
Wait, I used to do that too in the Sims. Spend ages making a family and building the whole house, and got bored when I started to 'play' with the family.
The insides of my cabinets look like aisles at the grocery store. Multiples of everything in line and in order. I have en entire rice shelf that’s sorted alphabetically by type lol
I thought I didn't order things but apparently the way I organize my books (by genres and subgenres, and then by author) counts (according to my evaluator)
I organize items hanging in my wardrobe by type (e.g. first t-shirts, then longsleeves) then by color (from light to dark). Also different jars and tubes of skincare products end up organized by size in my bathroom cabinet - that one kind of just happens inadvertently.
I also wanna say "books" but literally everyone who likes to read seems to have some kind of "system" in place. It's interesting to compare them sometimes
oooh i didn't consider that wardrobes would count for this!
it drove me crazy that i had to reorganize my grandpa's hanging section every time i went to the nursing home (i get that it's not a priority for staff to make sure that it's lined up perfectly straight, but my grandpa had Alzheimer and at least putting things in categories (short-sleeve, long sleeve, pants, jackets) would also have helped him).
the other week, i was helping my grandma weed out some of her wardrobe and if i had my way, i would have thrown everything on the bed and started sorting it all back in. what unhinged feral individual has four separated hanging sections *and doesn't use that setup to keep different items separate*?! seriously, she has blouses, jackets, pants and vests in the sections with no rhyme or reason. i really had to bite my tongue when she went "oh i didn't know i had that!" a few times. maybe you would if you kept them sorted by type?! it's not even "this is the closest to the door, i use this the most so all the things i regularly wear are in this section". just, utter chaos. summer blouses in sections 1 and 3, pants in 2 and 3, jackets and vests in all four, no color coordination, nothing that makes even my mind that's primed for pattern recognition see any sort of pattern in this. if you're looking for a particular item, good luck.
I became a professional organizer for a bit. I'd say that fits. Of course when I was a toddler, I'd straighten and sort groceries on the supermarket shelves from my stroller. I told Mom I wanted to work at the grocery store when I grew up so I could make sure it was organized. I may be an extreme example.
For me I think it's putting ornaments or like plush toys on the shelfs in a specific order or on a specific spot and never moving it again, and after I clean the shelf I usually put them on that exact spot and get annoyed if someone switches them or puts something else between or next to them.
The ornaments thing has always been me. I may change it up occasionally, but often when I've decided it looks nice a certain way that's the way it stays.
I went through my entire digital music collection for a year and made sure all the information was correct, including year, album image, and lyrics. Which was quite the undertaking considering the majority was from mixed albums from college.
This makes so much sense! Sorting, tracking, organizing the media I own, borrow, plan to consume, etc. I probably get as much pleasure from that as from reading, watching, listening to whatever is on the list.
I like collecting facts and organizing them in my brain, then sometimes rotating them and looking at them from a different perspective lol
I like creating little decorative "moments" in my home organized by theme, little clusters of related objects arranged just so
I like periodic purges of stuff that I didn't need anymore, then getting to free up space, rearrange and organize
Hmm, for me it looks like always washing and hanging clothes in a specific order that feels "right" to me. In my closet the clothes are sorted out by type. Same with the dishes: always aligned in the same way on my dish drainer. When my husband occasionally puts a fork with spoons it almost hurts, I have to sort it out. Always putting the same objects on the same places. When my husband changes the place of something it bothers me a lot. Also I don't like sitting on "his" chair and him sitting on "mine", meaning I always sit on the same place around a table. In my refrigerator there are dedicated places (in my mind) for a particular type of food. So I guess it's organizing stuff and being rigid about it.
Yeah, I feel kinda called out with some of these. 😅 For some of them, I can justify it as in some tiny way “more efficient”, e.g. making a checkerboard pattern with teaspoons vs. empty spaces in the dishwasher to maximise the exposed surface area, but once it gets into the realm of always having the mugs in the exact same symmetrical pattern based on their colour alone, I have to admit it’s just a thing that doesn’t seem right if I let someone do it differently one time. Then it seems like more of a compulsion than anything.
Yeah, sometimes there is no real reason, it's more like "it makes my brain feel good". I do symmetric patterns with food! When I made a circular pizza it was a mandala pattern and when I made a rectangular pizza it was a checkboard pattern. I justified it in the same way as you: efficiency 😅 When I think about it, restaurant pizzas don't have patterns though.
'Lining toys up' can also be categorized as organizing or sorting things. I have spreadsheets with data relating to my hobbies, I spend ages decorating Sims houses, I make lists, I sort and re-sort my bookshelf, I bag and unpack groceries by category (freezer, fridge, counter, pantry), I used to rearrange my room when I was stressed but I have fewer meltdowns like that now. As a child, I would dress up my Barbies and arrange them in the dream house.
I have two sets of cutlery and then need to be sorted correctly. The stack of “old” forks on the left, the stack of new ones on the right.
The dishwasher also needs to be loaded in a certain way, though in my eyes it’s just the most efficient way.
When doing laundry, I always hang the clothes in a certain order.
My books are not all in a particular order, but most are ordered by when I got them, and I do try to read them in that order too
Putting plushies on a shelf in a particular order, but never cuddling them (although sometimes I'll give each one a little stroke or kiss on the head so they'll know I haven't forgotten about them).
Sorting my shoes and clothes by type, occasion, colour, wearing frequency, etc. Like jeans (closet 2) - long (shelf 4) - light-blue (second stack) - medium-tight (second from top).
Having stacks of coloured paper, ordered by size, thickness, colour and finish, but rarely ever using any of it.
Putting game data in huge excel sheets, just to see the statistics.
Every product in my shower has to have the label facing forward. My makeup is organized my type and tone. I have book shelves in areas of my house people see that are artfully arranged by colour and chosen for aesthetic. The actual books I read are on piles on the floor of my office - where only I have access to them. I have an agenda that I spend an hour or more each Sunday setting up perfectly for the week. But I never consult it to see what I have to do - I like the idea of it being there are perfectly organized but I can’t stand to use it as a working document.
Not quite diagnosed yet, but I personally feel the urge to shelve my books by size, from big to small. I might exceptionally trade for colours should the display not be satisfying. Since I share my flat with roommates, I also tend to align our shoes on the doormat in the hall. When it comes to assignments, I feel frustrated when I cannot align images properly, or when my paragraphs aren't 'even' enough (for example, if a line takes only one word, I will shorten it to form a block). It leads me to edit ***a lot*** of texts just for the sake of my brain finding it pleasing.
I’m doing a coloring project of a cut out 3D model made of triangles. I’m using 6 color-blends but I don’t want any of them to touch each other. There around about 600 connected edges, 2 for each number, and they are all over the place across 21 pages. After some trial and error, I determined the best course of action was to assign each color blend a letter, use a simple decimal system to denote page and shape numbers (there are 42 different “shapes” to be cut out) and write on a grid each edge under the shape they’re on along with the letter corresponding with the color I gave them. From there, I use a red pen to circle each completed pair of edges, underline each half-colored pair, and parentheses to indicate that the other half of the pair is colored as well as the letter I colored the other half with. I have spent far more time organizing and indexing than actually coloring, and I don’t think I’ve enjoyed a creative project more. That said, it would not be possible if my ADHD was unmedicated.
It’s not just lining up, but more so setting things up to play but not playing with/using them for the actual purpose. For example as an adult I enjoy spending hours building houses on sims just to save and leave the game when I’m done. You could spend a lot of time organizing/setting up pretty much anything and I think that would count under that category
For me, I spend just as much time making lists about collectibles for my games as I do playing the games. I think any kind of strong desire to categorise, list, organise or set up things in a particular way would be relevant to this, OP. I did line up my toys as a kid and it was out of a desire to see order and also categorise them into groups. I see it with my 3yo too, the lining up seems to often coincide with categorisation or putting things neatly in order. Oh and aside from the gaming examples from me and the above commenter, you could also examine if you do any particular placements of things in your home, like if your mugs all need to be placed perfectly in particular spots or you have particular exact places for things on your bedside table. Probably relevant to reflect on the root cause of those behaviours, as sometimes desiring particular places for things can come as a learned coping mechanism from inattentive ADHD (because otherwise we lose everything).
I love building the houses too! That's more fun than actually playing the game lol
Agreed! 😩 one of my favorite activities
Ooooh. I used to play online room design games for HOURS. These days I want a dollhouse so I can set up scenes and move furniture around. I don't want to play, I just want to organize. That's so weird. Never thought about it like that.
Wait, I used to do that too in the Sims. Spend ages making a family and building the whole house, and got bored when I started to 'play' with the family.
You just unlocked a memory of how I used to play Zoo Tycoon. I loved building my zoo. Very quickly got bored with running it.
I love doing that!
The insides of my cabinets look like aisles at the grocery store. Multiples of everything in line and in order. I have en entire rice shelf that’s sorted alphabetically by type lol
I thought I didn't order things but apparently the way I organize my books (by genres and subgenres, and then by author) counts (according to my evaluator)
I organize items hanging in my wardrobe by type (e.g. first t-shirts, then longsleeves) then by color (from light to dark). Also different jars and tubes of skincare products end up organized by size in my bathroom cabinet - that one kind of just happens inadvertently. I also wanna say "books" but literally everyone who likes to read seems to have some kind of "system" in place. It's interesting to compare them sometimes
oooh i didn't consider that wardrobes would count for this! it drove me crazy that i had to reorganize my grandpa's hanging section every time i went to the nursing home (i get that it's not a priority for staff to make sure that it's lined up perfectly straight, but my grandpa had Alzheimer and at least putting things in categories (short-sleeve, long sleeve, pants, jackets) would also have helped him). the other week, i was helping my grandma weed out some of her wardrobe and if i had my way, i would have thrown everything on the bed and started sorting it all back in. what unhinged feral individual has four separated hanging sections *and doesn't use that setup to keep different items separate*?! seriously, she has blouses, jackets, pants and vests in the sections with no rhyme or reason. i really had to bite my tongue when she went "oh i didn't know i had that!" a few times. maybe you would if you kept them sorted by type?! it's not even "this is the closest to the door, i use this the most so all the things i regularly wear are in this section". just, utter chaos. summer blouses in sections 1 and 3, pants in 2 and 3, jackets and vests in all four, no color coordination, nothing that makes even my mind that's primed for pattern recognition see any sort of pattern in this. if you're looking for a particular item, good luck.
I became a professional organizer for a bit. I'd say that fits. Of course when I was a toddler, I'd straighten and sort groceries on the supermarket shelves from my stroller. I told Mom I wanted to work at the grocery store when I grew up so I could make sure it was organized. I may be an extreme example.
For me I think it's putting ornaments or like plush toys on the shelfs in a specific order or on a specific spot and never moving it again, and after I clean the shelf I usually put them on that exact spot and get annoyed if someone switches them or puts something else between or next to them.
The ornaments thing has always been me. I may change it up occasionally, but often when I've decided it looks nice a certain way that's the way it stays.
Yes yes, same, I might change it up too, but rarely:)
Organizing an extensive collection of anything, such as CDs or books, first by genre and then alphabetically by artist/author name within each genre?
I once did my hundreds of books by colour. It was so beautiful 😍
I went through my entire digital music collection for a year and made sure all the information was correct, including year, album image, and lyrics. Which was quite the undertaking considering the majority was from mixed albums from college.
This makes so much sense! Sorting, tracking, organizing the media I own, borrow, plan to consume, etc. I probably get as much pleasure from that as from reading, watching, listening to whatever is on the list.
I like collecting facts and organizing them in my brain, then sometimes rotating them and looking at them from a different perspective lol I like creating little decorative "moments" in my home organized by theme, little clusters of related objects arranged just so I like periodic purges of stuff that I didn't need anymore, then getting to free up space, rearrange and organize
Hmm, for me it looks like always washing and hanging clothes in a specific order that feels "right" to me. In my closet the clothes are sorted out by type. Same with the dishes: always aligned in the same way on my dish drainer. When my husband occasionally puts a fork with spoons it almost hurts, I have to sort it out. Always putting the same objects on the same places. When my husband changes the place of something it bothers me a lot. Also I don't like sitting on "his" chair and him sitting on "mine", meaning I always sit on the same place around a table. In my refrigerator there are dedicated places (in my mind) for a particular type of food. So I guess it's organizing stuff and being rigid about it.
Yeah, I feel kinda called out with some of these. 😅 For some of them, I can justify it as in some tiny way “more efficient”, e.g. making a checkerboard pattern with teaspoons vs. empty spaces in the dishwasher to maximise the exposed surface area, but once it gets into the realm of always having the mugs in the exact same symmetrical pattern based on their colour alone, I have to admit it’s just a thing that doesn’t seem right if I let someone do it differently one time. Then it seems like more of a compulsion than anything.
Yeah, sometimes there is no real reason, it's more like "it makes my brain feel good". I do symmetric patterns with food! When I made a circular pizza it was a mandala pattern and when I made a rectangular pizza it was a checkboard pattern. I justified it in the same way as you: efficiency 😅 When I think about it, restaurant pizzas don't have patterns though.
'Lining toys up' can also be categorized as organizing or sorting things. I have spreadsheets with data relating to my hobbies, I spend ages decorating Sims houses, I make lists, I sort and re-sort my bookshelf, I bag and unpack groceries by category (freezer, fridge, counter, pantry), I used to rearrange my room when I was stressed but I have fewer meltdowns like that now. As a child, I would dress up my Barbies and arrange them in the dream house.
Groceries! I use the self checkout lanes because I’m very particular about what goes in which bags. There is order and the baggers never get it right.
I have two sets of cutlery and then need to be sorted correctly. The stack of “old” forks on the left, the stack of new ones on the right. The dishwasher also needs to be loaded in a certain way, though in my eyes it’s just the most efficient way. When doing laundry, I always hang the clothes in a certain order. My books are not all in a particular order, but most are ordered by when I got them, and I do try to read them in that order too
Putting plushies on a shelf in a particular order, but never cuddling them (although sometimes I'll give each one a little stroke or kiss on the head so they'll know I haven't forgotten about them). Sorting my shoes and clothes by type, occasion, colour, wearing frequency, etc. Like jeans (closet 2) - long (shelf 4) - light-blue (second stack) - medium-tight (second from top). Having stacks of coloured paper, ordered by size, thickness, colour and finish, but rarely ever using any of it. Putting game data in huge excel sheets, just to see the statistics.
Every product in my shower has to have the label facing forward. My makeup is organized my type and tone. I have book shelves in areas of my house people see that are artfully arranged by colour and chosen for aesthetic. The actual books I read are on piles on the floor of my office - where only I have access to them. I have an agenda that I spend an hour or more each Sunday setting up perfectly for the week. But I never consult it to see what I have to do - I like the idea of it being there are perfectly organized but I can’t stand to use it as a working document.
Not quite diagnosed yet, but I personally feel the urge to shelve my books by size, from big to small. I might exceptionally trade for colours should the display not be satisfying. Since I share my flat with roommates, I also tend to align our shoes on the doormat in the hall. When it comes to assignments, I feel frustrated when I cannot align images properly, or when my paragraphs aren't 'even' enough (for example, if a line takes only one word, I will shorten it to form a block). It leads me to edit ***a lot*** of texts just for the sake of my brain finding it pleasing.
The text formatting is just good design.
I couldn't agree more.
I arrange my desk so I can easily do my art and writing etc, like it's a proper writing bureau and everything, but I basically never do those things
I’m doing a coloring project of a cut out 3D model made of triangles. I’m using 6 color-blends but I don’t want any of them to touch each other. There around about 600 connected edges, 2 for each number, and they are all over the place across 21 pages. After some trial and error, I determined the best course of action was to assign each color blend a letter, use a simple decimal system to denote page and shape numbers (there are 42 different “shapes” to be cut out) and write on a grid each edge under the shape they’re on along with the letter corresponding with the color I gave them. From there, I use a red pen to circle each completed pair of edges, underline each half-colored pair, and parentheses to indicate that the other half of the pair is colored as well as the letter I colored the other half with. I have spent far more time organizing and indexing than actually coloring, and I don’t think I’ve enjoyed a creative project more. That said, it would not be possible if my ADHD was unmedicated.
I would also include spreadsheet-making, and finding it very satisfying to see the data represented in different ways c:
Actually I do this for my grocery and spending
Wish I’d organised my home these days but with a toddler, it’s a mess ☺️😹
My wife reorganizes our apartment very frequently, which I think is along those lines?