Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD, 3rd Edition: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized

by Susan C. Pinsky

Customize a musical mnemonic. A popular one is “wallet, glasses, keys, and phone” sung to the tune of “head, shoulders, knees, and toes.”

The only way to reclaim your living spaces and bring order to your storage areas is to eliminate objects that are overstock or are no longer needed and create sensible and easily sustainable storage—shelves and hooks—for those possessions that remain.

Tips for Coat Storage No member of the family should own more than three coats—heavy winter, spring jacket, and trench/raincoat. If you have a large family and lots of coats to store, give the closet space to the non-ADHD members of the family and provide hooks and shallow baskets on low tables directly next to the door for those who have ADHD. If your ADHD family member continues to ignore the hook, place a large, attractive rattan basket next to a low table. They can dump their backpack and coat in this basket almost as easily as they can set them on the floor.

“I love Christmas, but my partner doesn’t get everything put away until May, and then I still find bits of Christmas all over the house well into July.”

Allow yourself two levels of a tall, modular shelf for Christmas decorations (that’s about four large tubs), and then donate the rest. Even so, consider using the Big Christmas, Little Christmas model: One year purchase a small tree, use only one box of decorations on it, and call it a holiday. The next year, after your partner has had a chance to rest up and feel some Christmas nostalgia, go ahead, and use all the items from all the boxes on your shelf. But even then, Christmas should not take more than an hour to put up, and an hour to take down.

Tips for a Happy Holiday Families with an adult ADHD member need to find ways of reducing chores around the holidays, not creating them. Try these useful tips to ensure a happier holiday: Do not allow Christmas supplies to grow out of the Christmas shelf and resist the American insanity of turning your house exterior into Santa’s village. String one set of lights on a bush, and use the time saved to see the Christmas displays downtown. In this way, we will create a warm and happy Christmas memory rather than a marital spat and burdensome obligation that lasts into late spring. If opaque tubs are owned, use them to store Christmas decorations. We never need to retrieve something from our Christmas tub in July—everything comes out at one time—so it is not critical that you see inside year round. Let a growing supply of tubs serve as a visual reminder to limit the seasonal decorations. Once our supplies don’t fit in our tubs (or our tubs don’t fit on the Christmas shelf), we will know it is time to winnow. Buy tubs that are small enough to fit in shelving (no storing tubs on the floor), and make sure they aren’t too large to handle or carry. Reconsider Christmas cards and gifts. The ever-expanding Christmas gift list (teachers, colleagues, etc.) can make gift giving a burden and clutter the home with unwanted items while killing the planet. Restrict gift giving to the immediate family. Inform the rest of the list that we are no longer exchanging gifts, and instead send a sing...

Organizing Your Garage Space Two or three plastic modular utility shelves and some hooks (or a hammer and nails) will help eliminate the sense of clutter and help maintain the space. If your garage has cement walls, pay a handyman to install a grid of 2 x 4s (38 x 89 mm) on all three walls. Once the 2 x 4s are in place, you can use a hammer and nails or some hooks to create a flexible and cheap system for storing the bulk of the possessions you keep in the garage. Name each individual utility shelf or bank of shelves (Athletics, Landscaping or Gardening, Auto, etc.). Reduce inventory in each category so that each category takes up no more than three to four levels on any shelving unit. Leave one shelf on one unit free for use as a staging area in the garage. Sometimes we just need a spot to stash an item that is in transit; keeping these objects off the floor and on a staging area will ensure that the garage doesn’t deteriorate. Avoid expensive, inefficient systems. No one is going to have the patience to winch and hoist those bikes up to the ceiling.

Landscaping Equipment Storage Tips Although it is nice to have a pegboard for long-handled tools, it is not strictly necessary; a spading fork can be hung by its handle from a nail, and a shovel can be hung by resting its head between two nails. A flowerpot, with some sand on the bottom for stability, makes an easy “jar” in which to dump your trowel and other short-handled tools, and other flowerpots can be drafted for holding gardening gloves, twine, or other smaller items. An open tub on a lower shelf can hold grass seed or potting soil and corral any leakage.