I became interested in working with people with ADHD when I was working as a professional organizer. The clients I enjoyed the most just happened to have ADHD. Why is getting organized so hard for people with ADHD? Lots of reasons!
Skills involved with organizing:
- Decluttering:
- Making decisions about what to keep and what to let go
- Making decisions about how to discard or donate things
- Doing physically demanding and mentally boring tasks
- Estimating time
- Project management
- Sorting
- Categorizing
- Imagining the future
- Deciding where you will store things
- Deciding on storage containers or furniture
- Physically putting things into their designated spaces
- Managing emotions
Everything listed uses the brain’s executive function skills. These are the skills that help you execute, or carry out your intentions. Executive functions are controlled by a part of the brain that is highly impacted by ADHD. For people with ADHD, executive functions can be glitchy and they also drain mental energy much faster than for people without ADHD.
Executive function skills and how they can affect decluttering and organizing:
- Working memory – being able to recall the right information at the right time, and mentally compare and contrast information. This is important for sorting and creating categories.
- Breaking down projects – identifying the individual tasks involved in the bigger project.
- Sequencing events – thinking about the different steps involved (uses working memory), and then figuring out what order to do them. It also involves imagining the future and how you will use things.
- Getting started – initiating action.
- Sustaining attention – resisting distractions.
- Monitoring effort – thinking about what you are doing and whether you are doing the right things at the right time.
- Emotional regulation – not getting carried away by memories, feelings of shame, frustration or boredom.
- Estimating time – figuring out how long things will take so you don’t get in over your head.
No wonder conventional organization is so hard for people with ADHD! Conventional approaches often don’t work.
Less conventional ways to approach decluttering and organizing:
- Get inspired. Remember I said the executive functions are glitchy? This means they are inconsistent. The flip side of this is that there are times when they are actually quite good. These times are often when the person with ADHD is feeling inspired. Having a goal such as repurposing a room, or preparing for a new job can be driving forces that help you execute more easily.
- Get company. Having another person keep you company can greatly increase focus, even if that person is not actually helping with the work. But if they can help with the work it can be an even bigger boost, decreasing both mental and physical exertion.
- Keep it light. Listen to fun music or guilty pleasure TV shows while working.
- Make it a game. Choose a space and challenge yourself to declutter it in 5 minutes. Pretend your items are interviewees, and you’re the hiring manager, deciding whether or not they would be good employees, and if so, what their jobs should be. Or pretend they are actors in a play and you are the stage manager, directing everybody where to stand. Be silly. Make it fun!
- Get creative. Being organized is all about finding the ways that work for you. They don’t have to work for anyone else. Be as creative as you like.
- Decrease visual overwhelm. Cover everything else with towels or sheets, and only expose the area you’re working on.
- Work in sprints. Go full bore on the hard stuff for five minutes, and then do simple tasks at a more comfortable pace for five minutes. Or do it the other way around and alternate blasting through the simple stuff, and taking your time with the hard stuff. Repeat however many times you like.
- Invite people over. Cleaning for company can be a huge motivator.
- Hire housekeeping help. Hiring someone else to do the grunge work is a great motivator for decluttering and tidying up.
Do it your way
For people with ADHD, organization in the conventional sense is probably not realistic, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have your own customized systems and strategies for managing your time, space and life. Forget about those conventional approaches and put your own unique interests, talents and skills to work. And if you get stuck, get help! Don’t drain all your precious mental energy struggling to do things that are inherently difficult and not fun. If you like the challenge, great, go for it. But if not, then get help and move on to more interesting things!