ADHD Organizing Tips: Where to Start Organizing & How to Maintain Your Space
Sometimes the hardest part is to start.
In fact, if you have ADHD, starting may always be the hardest part.
Unless of course it’s your newest, latest, and greatest obsession. But I digress…
Many of us ADHDers get caught in a vicious cycle where we know that being or staying organized would be supremely beneficial to us.
But we don’t know where to start or can’t get motivated to start so we put it off, hoping we’ll get some sort of divine inspiration or come across the ultimate hack that will solve our organization problems with minimal effort.
Then we can’t find something we need or lose something important and we think to ourselves “I should really get myself organized”. And so the cycle starts again.
But hopefully, not after today. Because I’m sharing my tips for starting and maintaining an organizing project as an ADHD mom.
ADHD Home Organization Struggles
To start, I want to give you a little background into why it may be that you struggle with organizing.
To be honest, it’s because organizing is an executive function…since us ADHDers struggle (by no fault of our own) to regulate the uptake of dopamine in our brain which powers executive function, it’s understandable that those of us with ADHD may struggle with organizing our thoughts as well as our physical items.
But as I love to say “An ADHD diagnosis is an explanation but not an excuse.”
Meaning it helps to explain why you may struggle with starting an organizing project or following through on an organizing project or remembering to maintain an organizing project, but it does NOT mean that getting your home organized is impossible.
We just may have to come at our organizing projects from a little different angle, that’s all.
We may need a little extra support with our projects. And that is perfectly ok!
Tips for Starting a Home Organizing Project as an ADHD Mom
Let’s dive into my suggestions for how to start an organizing project…
Schedule the Time for Your ADHD Home Organizing Project
Yep. Like on your calendar. Blocked out.
Because when you are a busy mom or a mom running a business or a busy mom running a business and especially if you’re a busy mom with ADHD running a business, the time to do the things you need to do that are piling up on your to-do list is not going to just magically appear.
If it’s a priority to you to organize a space in your home, you have to give it a block of time on your calendar.
And a few tips as your plot out scheduling your project…
Remember that your ADHD time blindness will probably convince you that you don’t need as much time as you actually do OR that you can finish more in an allotted time than you actually can.
And some of this is due to the fact that organizing is an executive function itself, as well as involving executive functions of planning, initiating the task and making decisions…which could potentially make your project take longer if your neurotransmitters aren’t firing.
There is also the potential for distraction.
You know as well as I do that even with the best crafted plans to organize a space, us ADHDers can find ourselves down a rabbit hole quickly when we run across an items we forgot we had.
Or when we take something to one room which leads us to taking something else to another room and next thing we know, we are in the wrong room trying to pick gum out of the carpet instead of progressing on our initial organizing project.
So ideally, schedule in more time than you think you will need to complete the project. Rough estimates for how long projects may take look like:
Home Office (depending on paper) – 6 to 18 hours
Garages/Basements – 8 to 20 hours
Closets – 2 to 8 hours
Toy rooms – 4 to 8 hours
Kitchens – 4 to 8 hours
I know it may seem like this would be WAAAY longer than you might need. But you have to trust me.
I can’t even tell you how many projects I worked on with a client where they assumed they could make all the decisions in 1 or 2 sessions that ended up stretching out for many more.
And these weren’t necessarily people who struggled with executive function.
Deciding what to keep, what to get rid of, and where to put what you’re keeping can be surprisingly exhausting and taxing. Especially so if your executive function is already tapped out.
And one more note on scheduling, don’t schedule your project on a day when you have something else that you must do that could be impacted if you don’t finish in the time you allotted. You want to make sure you have time to either finish OR put things away to make the space usable until you can work on it again.
For instance, if your kid is playing in a soccer tournament on Saturday afternoon, don’t plan to clean out your entire garage on Saturday morning…you know, just in case you don’t have time to get it all done.
If you’re struggling to find time for your full project, you’ll definitely want to enlist my second tip which is to…
Make a Plan for Your ADHD Home Organizing Project (and Break it Down)
I know that’s technically 2 things but making the plan is essentially breaking your organizing project down into steps. And the reason it’s important to know the steps is that
a) it can help you better assess how much time you need to set aside,
b) it can give you a checklist to make sure you don’t forget any important areas,
and c) it can make it easier to break the project down if you can’t do it all at once.
Let’s take organizing a closet…your steps may look like
Pulling out anything you don’t like or wear
Pulling out anything that doesn’t fit
Grouping like items together (all the short sleeve shirts together or all the red shirts together)
Putting items back into the closet.
If you don’t have a full afternoon to dedicate to organizing this closet, you can take this list of tasks you’ve made and work through it for the amount of time you do have.
One session can be all about pulling out the stuff you never wear or that no longer fit.
One session can be about grouping the items together and putting them back.
You could even break it down by going through these steps for tops one session and bottoms another.
By breaking the project down, you’ll know all the steps that need to be done in order to complete your project AND you’ll be able to work on it bit by bit a little easier because you’ve created a checklist for yourself.
My final step for helping you get started on an organizing project is to…
Where to Find Accountability for Your ADHD Home Organizing Project
Your accountability could be someone living in your house.
It could be a friend or family member who likes to organize and wants to help.
It could be hiring a professional organizer because you know if the time is on the calendar and you’re paying for it, you may actually follow through and get stuff done.
Accountability can also just be having a friend or loved one check in on your project.
Have them send a text the afternoon you’re working to ask how it’s going.
Or the following day asking for before and after pictures.
Just remember the point of enlisting accountability is never to make you feel bad or guilty if you’re not progressing or things didn’t work out they way you had hoped.
I know how that RSD can creep in, even when you’ve asked someone to check on you.
Your accountability buddy is there to remind you about what you said you wanted to work on and perhaps why you wanted to work on it.
They are there to provide a sense of obligation, which can often be a boost to get us ADHDers over the motivational hurdle.
So after you’ve made your plan and scheduled the time, ask someone or hire someone to check in on your project to make sure you’re progressing or you finish.
How to Maintain an Organized Space
Before we wrap up, I want to talk about an often forgotten step in the organizing process…maintenance.
I mean, if you’re going to put the time, effort, energy, and money into organizing a space, it’s probably a good idea to try to keep it that way, right?
The great thing about maintenance organizing is that is typically takes a fraction of the time of the initial project because you will have already decluttered excess items, found spaces for the items you’re keeping, and maybe even labeled the spaces or bins you used to help know what goes where.
Another great thing…the steps for maintenance are the same as starting an organizing project.
Schedule the time, don’t just expect the time to appear.
Break what you want to do down into smaller, more manageable tasks, especially if you have limited time or are working over multiple sessions.
And tell someone what you are doing and ask them to check in on you to hold you accountable and on track.
Rinse and repeat.
Believe me, it is MUCH easier to spend a little time each week or month maintaining a space you’ve previously organized than it is to let it go so long that you feel like you’re starting over.
And if you’re still feeling overwhelmed about organizing your home, your schedule, or your life in general, I would love to help you. Part of what I do with my clients each week is schedule time for tasks, break tasks down into manageable chunks, and follow up with them to see how things are going. If you’d like to see how I could help you juggle all the things life throws at you as an ADHD mom and ADHD entrepreneur, click below to schedule your free, no-obligation clarity call with me.
