Hue beaut! Confessions of a colour-matching clothes-pegger

Is it just me who obsesses about colour-coordinating the red, white and blue plastic clothes pegs with the clothing items when I hang them out to dry? I typically use red pegs for warm-coloured clothes, blue for cool colours and white ones for whites and blacks.
Name & suburb withheld

A: What a thrill to hear from a fellow eccentric with mild obsessive-compulsive disorder who’s probably a pain in the neck to live with and whose partner/housemate/friend may have said, “Why are you sending that question in? It’s embarrassing! Make sure you withhold your name – and address!”

Personally, I can relate to your Colour-Coordinating Clothes-Pegging because I, myself, am a Colour-Coded Undies Arranger. I store my undies in coloured stacks: blacks with blacks, reds with reds, and blues with greens even though blue and green should never be seen, but I’ve run out of drawer space. Not ideal, I know. It keeps me up at night.

There are probably millions of us out there: obsessive order-seekers with too much time on our hands. Those who arrange their magnetic knife rack in order of knife bluntness. Those who pre-plan their supermarket route so the Sakata crackers don’t get crushed under a block of Colby cheese. Those who spend weekends organising their Tupperware so that all the containers and lids fit neatly together (damn those round containers, damn them!).

And even though you may be the only Colour-Coordinating Clothes Pegger on the planet, I bet you’ve now inspired a fair few to give it a try. I’d try it myself if I had coloured plastic pegs, but I’ve only got wooden ones.

I keep them clean, bring them in when it rains, fix the broken ones and regularly rotate them so that every peg gets to experience the joy of holding a piece of laundry.

guru@goodweekend.com.au

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