How ADHD Affects Home Organization | ADHD Organizing Tips
I got my start in the entrepreneurial world in 2009 as a professional organizer.
Something I used to say over and over to my organizing clients was that “getting organized” is not about have perfectly coordinating baskets on your book shelves or bins in your pantry. It’s not about making your home look Pinterest perfect.
When you organize your home, the purpose is to be able to retrieve the items that you have organized quickly and easily when you want to retrieve them. The baskets, bins and fancy labels are of icing on the cake rather than the cake itself.
But so many times, those of us with ADHD may put off the highly beneficial task of “getting organized” because we can’t make it look the way in envision. We sacrifice the benefit of home organization for the vision of what an organized space “should” be.
I’ve been on a mission for years to reframe what home organizing means. Because you can totally have perfectly labeled lockers in your mud room but your kids have no idea where their lunchbox could be. Or clear kitchen counters but several DOOM boxes (more on DOOM piles and boxes in a minute) lurking in the bottom of your pantry or on your dining room table.
In my eyes…
Organizing is creating a way to find what you need when you need it
Decor-ganizing means everything looks like it jumped out of an ad for The Container Store, but there’s a chance you still can’t find what you need.
And by no means am I saying you can’t or shouldn’t have vinyl labels on every bin in your pantry. All I’m saying is that is the final step, not the first.
If lack of products or funds to make the organizing project look the way you want is what is holding you back, try reframing to think about the benefits you’ll have by decluttering the space and finally being able to quickly and easily find what you need when you need it.
And maybe it isn’t all about the looks for you. Maybe you just don’t feel like you’ve got the organizing gene or even if you do, you struggle to keep up with systems you’ve set up. You may be wondering…
How ADHD Affects Home Organization
Well, friends, the act of organizing is an executive function itself. Like when you look up a list of executive functions, organization is listed. Right there. In black and white.
But there are other executive functions involved in organizing your home…
You need to make decisions about what stays and what goes or decisions about where to store things.
You may struggle with forgetfulness and need the visual cues. Because if it’s out of site, it’s out of mind.
It may feel so completely overwhelming or like it will take far too much time to do because estimating the time a project will take is also an executive function.
It may be hard for you to motivate yourself to work on organizing your space because there just isn’t a good enough reason right now for you to do it. But hold on tight if all of a sudden your mother in law needs to stay in the guest room where you’ve been hiding all your DOOM piles.
And speaking of DOOM piles, DOOM stands for Don’t Organize, Only Move.
It’s a habit that many of us, both with and without ADHD, employ in order to quickly clear a space. We scoop everything off the counter, the bed, the couch, or out of the car into a box, bin, bag or even just a pile and place it somewhere out of the way with every intention of sorting the items and putting them away at a later time.
But far too often, those boxes, bins, bags, or piles start to accumulate and then the thought of organizing the DOOM piles starts to feel overwhelming. It can be a vicious cycle. But not one that is impossible to overcome.
How to Organize Your House with ADHD
Let’s wrap up with tips for how to organize your house with ADHD…
How to Organize Your House with ADHD: Have Less
Fewer items means less to organize and makes it easier to put things away.
Let’s pretend you are on your way to your bedroom with a full basket of clean clothes that needs put away.
But alas, when you get to your closet, there are no hangers and frankly there’s no space for you to hang items even if there were empty hangers.
I would guess you could make some space by getting ride of a few shirts or pairs of pants that no longer fit, are no longer in style, or that you bought but every time you put it on you fidget and take it off.
When you declutter to make space for the items that you truly want, use, or love that you want to access on a regular basis, you make the tasks of putting away items so you can find them when you need them so much easier.
How to Organize Your House with ADHD: Give Items a Permanent Home
Give items a home. Then practice returning that item to its home.
Think about the items you’re frequently looking for…Key fobs, remote controls, shoes, jackets, backpacks, lunchboxes…and those are just the things I’ve had to find or help find today.
When you give an item a permanent home and then you make a practice of returning the item to its home, you will save yourself the time, effort, energy, and bandwidth it takes to find this item.
Make this system work for you, there aren’t rules about where you keep your car keys. If it makes the most sense for you to keep them on your nightstand because you always kiss your partner good bye before you leave in the morning, then put a key hook by your nightstand.
Make it easy to follow through and easy to use so you’ll stick to it.
How to Organize Your House with ADHD: Break Your Project Down
Your organizing project doesn’t all have to be done at once.
It is perfectly ok to start small.
In fact, I actually recommend those of us with ADHD to start by organizing a drawer, a basket, or a cupboard rather than pulling everything out of a room all at once, except in circumstances where you’ve set aside the time and perhaps even hired a professional organizer to help.
The reason being…I have seen people lose momentum in their organizing projects so many times. Then, instead of making your house seem less cluttered, you’ve now got piles of stuff strewn about that you don’t want to put away because they it’s like you’re starting all over.
Start small and work on maintaining that area. Then move on to another space.
How to Organize Your House with ADHD: Schedule Specific Time to Work
You have to make the time because it won’t just magically appear. Trust me. I’ve tried.
After you block out a specific time, decide in advance what you’re going to work on.
Consider setting a timer so as not to hyperfocus and neglect other duties. Because remember, the goal is to work on small projects we can finish and work on maintaining.
Speaking of maintenance, it’s also important to schedule time regularly to maintain the spaces you’ve organized. I honestly think it may be the most overlooked part of the organizing process. I can’t tell you the number of times I would get called from an organizing client after we organized a closet or pantry saying that the system wasn’t working.
And almost every time, it wasn’t that the system. It was that they weren’t setting aside the time to put the laundry away in the places we had labeled or the groceries away in the correct bins. You have to make the time to maintain the space or else you’ll just end up back at square one.
How to Organize Your House with ADHD: Find Accountability
Find an organizing buddy, professional organizer, or coach.
As we’ve said before, the ADHD brain is very motivated by obligation. That’s why asking a friend or family member to help you sort, purge, and reorganize a space can be so beneficial.
If there isn’t a friend or family member you could ask, you could look for a professional organizer in your area. The great thing about working with a professional is that your stuff doesn’t mean anything to them. And I mean that in the best way. They can sort through your piles of paper without getting misty eyed at a lost self-portrait your kid drew in preschool. They can ask you questions to help you determine if you really need to keep something or if it time for you to let it go.
And while not all ADHD coaches are former professional organizers like me, an ADHD coach can check in with you to make sure you’re staying on track with your plans and they can help you break those big organizing projects around your house into more manageable tasks that fit better into your available time.
If you’d like to learn more about how I can support you with getting your home and business organized so you can see the success you know is possible, click the button below to schedule your free, no-obligation call with me to discuss your goals and my programs.
