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

For someone with ADHD, any given task takes much more energy than it takes for others. To shower, get dressed, and get out the door in the morning can require the amount of care and concentration that other people expend over their entire day.

To set up a maintainable system for those with ADHD, we must first eliminate all those systems that are inefficient, unwieldy, and cumbersome and replace them with systems that are streamlined, fast, and convenient.

The best organizational system for someone with ADHD is the one that is most efficient, streamlined, most convenient, and the fastest/easiest to maintain, because it requires the fewest number of steps and materials married to the smallest amount of effort and

One of the most difficult parts of any job—getting started—must be confronted and overcome multiple times for someone with ADHD to accomplish even the most banal of tasks. The attentionabled need to overcome inertia and motivate themselves only once to begin a task, while those who experience ADHD paralysis and executive dysfunction may have to motivate themselves four, five, or six times.

“Ferrari brains with Chevy brakes.”

Although hidden storage solutions are sometimes more “beautiful,” hooks and open shelving next to the shower provide an efficient support system for towels, razors, soap, and shampoo.

The single value that I most often must convince clients to abandon in the name of efficiency is beauty.

Stacking vs. Nesting Always avoid nesting multiple types of items. While nesting dessert, salad, and dinner plates in a graded tower is space efficient, it is effort inefficient—every time we put away a dinner plate, we must move other dishes aside!

ORGANIZING IS ABOUT MAINTENANCE OR FINISHING THE JOB No organizational

And because the putting away comes at the end of every chore–be it cooking, laundry, or filing-it’s also when we are most tired, distracted, or otherwise just out of gas. Therefore, our most critical tactic will be to streamline finishing tasks for uber efficiency.

Inventory must conform to storage. This is the golden rule of organizing, but in an ADHD home, inventory (our “stuff”) shouldn’t just fit in storage, our inventory should be less than storage. Don’t overcrowd shelving, cabinets, and drawers–make putting things away easy. Don’t keep building storage, instead reduce inventory.

Make things easy to access and EASIER to put away. In the ADHD home, ease of storage takes precedence over ease of retrieval, because everyone, ADHD or not, has more motivation to find something they need than to put something away when they’re done.

Reduce inventory enough to store things where they’re used—no crossing rooms or going to another room to put things away. Arrange possessions within activity areas or “zones.” Give everything a “home.” Take advantage of vertical storage space by using tall shelves and tall bureaus, so there is space to store ite...

Only touch (or sort) it once. Efficiency means fewer steps, so for example, sort or toss mail as soon as it’s opened. Don’t add it to a p...

Duplicate where necessary to store things where they are used (e.g., a toilet bowl brush in every bathroom). 5. Eliminate items that unnecessarily duplicate functions (e.g., hand-powered can opener or electric can opener, not both). 6. Name each cabinet and shelf (dish cabinet, sock drawer, etc.) as a reminder that only those items are...

accessible, and are never completely full. Value these spaces because they guard against long-term storage items cluttering the living space and provide interim storage for unexp...

Schedule projects, allow extra time to finish, and plan to do...

extra time for unforeseen hiccups will ensure that we won’t run out of time, leaving a disruptive half-finished project to linger and depress. Thoroughly complete one project before starting another. The act of organizing can tear up a space, and we only want one space compromised at a time.

eliminates the mental load of coming up with a new schedule every day; why constantly reinvent the wheel? It also ensures that we complete a task before they become emotionally charged or grow unwieldy.

Name the days like ‘bill paying Monday’ and ‘laundry Wednesday.’ Attending to these jobs routinely keeps them small and underwhelming.

skipped, but even if the task is done only two to three times a month, late fees will still be avoided, and loads of laund...

Activities that are done daily require a daily maintenance routine. Doing the dishes nightly will not only make the dishes easier (no dried-on food) but will render the kitc...

Wherever possible, do chores as a team. Doing tasks routinely with a housemate, spouse or child helps keep the ADHD person on task. For instance, institute Saturday-morning

choretime for all housemates together, or have the whole family pitch in nightly with the after-dinner clean up. Borrowing and lending focus keeps things on track to the finish line.

In designing the most efficient organizing system, we must ask ourselves: Can I find what I need? Is it conveniently located? Is it easy to retrieve and, more importantly, easy to put away? Does it require little or no maintenance?

Let me give an outrageous example: I could organize your shoes by putting all of your left shoes in the attic and all of your right shoes in the basement. Hey, it’s organized! But it is neither efficient nor convenient; it just requires too much effort to retrieve and, even worse, to put away your shoes.

If you flip through this book, you will see some pictures of organized spaces that look like the “before” pictures in other organizing manuals. That

because other organizational systems are invested in beauty rather than efficiency. They would never show a picture of a bathroom with convenient, open shelving and shower supplies arranged so they’re easy to grab. It just doesn’t market well. In organizing for efficiency, we must be wary of organizational systems that, although pretty, are neither practical nor sustainable.

We need to employ a more efficient system. The most efficient? Identify a sock style of a medium weight, suitable for year-round use, and purchase a dozen of the two most used colors. Throw out all the other socks. (It is okay to retain two to three “specialty” socks:

Allocate one drawer or bin to hold all socks and only socks. Now we have achieved an organizational system for socks that is quick, streamlined, and practical.

If a

When an area becomes messy, they must ask themselves: Has the number of my possessions been reduced enough, and my organizational system streamlined enough, that it can be picked up in a matter of seconds? Because for people with ADHD, seconds may be all that is available before the next beguiling and thoroughly captivating thought commands their attention.

FOR LARGER TASKS, OR TASKS THAT REGULARLY RESIST OUR EFFORTS TO COMPLETE, SPENDING MONEY TO GET HELP MAY BE THE BEST VALUE SYSTEM.

Avoid purchasing “stuff.” Instead, use your money to procure helpful services.

If the number of our possessions is small and our shelves are uncluttered, it takes less time and fewer steps to find things and put things away.

IN THE MODERN AGE, OUR SOCIETY’S RAREST COMMODITY IS NOT GOODS, BUT TIME, AND THOSE WITH ADHD—WHO MAY REQUIRE MORE TIME ON AVERAGE TO COMPLETE A TASK—MUST GUARD THEIR TIME AS THE MOST PRECIOUS OF ALL THEIR POSSESSIONS.

Bulk shopping creates work as oversize crates require circuitous side trips to remote storage areas, thereby violating our “keep things where you use them” efficiency rule.

By all means, buy the largest pack of toilet paper that comfortably fits under the sink in every bathroom, but let’s resist turning our homes into warehouse depots..

bulk buying doesn’t even reduce shopping errands because most of us go to the grocery store for fresh dairy and produce once a week or so anyway!

we should learn to be resourceful with less and resilient enough to do without.

HELPFUL HACKS FOR STAYING ON TRACK 1. Body doubling and teamwork. One of the most useful hacks is ‘body doubling,’ or simply doing as many chores together as possible, so the non-ADHD family member can lend focus. Create a five-minute, end-of-the-day, regularly scheduled tidy up that you can do

Music, timers, and alarms. Music can lend support and focus by providing a predetermined short and manageable time to “blitz” a chore. We could, say, tidy

the kitchen sufficiently, if not perfectly, over the course of three songs. One can set a two- or three-minute timer on the phone and ask the ADHD child to work as hard as they can (run! run! run!) for three minutes picking up their room, but then when the timer goes off, they are done! A recurring phone alarm can remind us to take a daily midday medication.

Bright colors, glow in the dark stickers, digital trackers. Choose eyecatc...

should be bright; keys attached to a large, light neon colored key “ring” (could be a lanyard that can be worn as a bracelet or necklace), neon and glow in the dark stickers can be added to phones, eyeglass cases, and remotes. Hats and gloves, laptops/tablets/E-readers, purses, wallets, briefcases should be purchased in the brightest colors one can tolerate. Finally, digita...

4. Play to your strengths. Divide tasks so they respond to family members’ strengths and weaknesses. Short, mildly repulsive jobs like toilet bowl cleaning, litter box emptying, are a worthy contribution while other family members do longer but less icky jobs. Tasks that more naturally hold one’s attention: oil changes (because you can’t leave), childcare, grocery shopping, running errands, and dog walking can all be ADHD manageable, while

laundry and menu planning is delegated to others.

5. Pick your battles. Another great hack is to consider the cost of what you are asking and decide what is really worth ‘the ask.’ Find those one or two issues that really bug the non-ADHD family member, or make it hard for the ADHD person to function, and then lovingly and supportively ask each other to make that extra effort. Then cut ev...

don’t make it to the sink/dish pan.” But recognize that someone with ADHD is going to have limited resources to spend on maintenance, so decide on the one or two herculean efforts yo...

6. Sticky fingers. The “sticky fingers” method was taught to me by one particularly clever client, who used it sparingly but effectively for those few items she absolutely could not lose. This is an effective strategy that we don’t want to overuse. It is just for phone, wallet, keys and one or two items that can get lost if they are not imm...