Organizing Solutions for People With Attention Deficit Disorder Quotes

“For someone with ADHD, even the simplest 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 kind of care and concentration that average people expend over their entire day.”
― Susan C. Pinsky, Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD, 2nd Edition-Revised and Updated: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized

“Do not use Tupperware to store cereal and other packaged goods. When used in a way that creates unnecessary extra steps, Tupperware becomes your enemy. For example, transferring your Cheerios to Tupperware containers when it already comes in a perfectly good box is a waste of time and energy. Do you really have all this extra attention to spend on repackaging all of your groceries? And are you planning to label each Tupperware with the appropriate expiration date every time you make this transfer? For heaven’s sake, I’m exhausted just thinking about it!”
― Susan C. Pinsky, Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD, 2nd Edition-Revised and Updated: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized

“Make your things easy to access and easier to put away. In the ADHD home, ease of stowage takes precedence over ease of retrieval. • Keep things where you use them, arranging possessions within activity areas or “zones.” Give everything a “home.”
― Susan C. Pinsky, Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD, 2nd Edition-Revised and Updated: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized

“For the ADHD client, the finishing task is the most likely to be neglected, so we must therefore value the ease of putting something away above the ease of finding it. (Because if it has been put away, it will be found, but if it hasn’t been put away, it could be lost for good.). For”
― Susan C. Pinsky, Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD, 2nd Edition-Revised and Updated: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized

“space, excess clutter, or an overcommitted schedule (and what home doesn’t have at least one of these?) should rely on a system that gets things done efficiently, with the least amount of time and effort expended.”
― Susan C. Pinsky, Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD, 3rd Edition: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized

“get-it-done fast and sufficiently (not painstakingly and perfectly) “ADHD-appropriate”
― Susan C. Pinsky, Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD, 3rd Edition: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized

“Items in a way station staging area are actively in transit. An effective way station must be in the direct path of the object’s journey and should be so obvious (irritating, in fact) that we are motivated to move the item along.”
― Susan C. Pinsky, Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD, 3rd Edition: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized

“A reader’s tip: put glow-in-the-dark stickers on your remote controls so they are easy to locate in the dark.”
― Susan C. Pinsky, Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD, 3rd Edition: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized

“Every ADHD home should have a trash can in the family room and any other rooms used daily.”
― Susan C. Pinsky, Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD, 3rd Edition: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized

“Maintain through controlled shopping and by reorganizing the room twice a year. If the bookshelf fills up, get rid of some books before buying more. Controlled shopping can also mean reducing physical stuff and relying more on technology. For example, switching to an e-reader will eliminate “stuff” (books) but not experiences (reading).”
― Susan C. Pinsky, Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD, 3rd Edition: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized

“A dishpan with a jumbled, unfolded, heap of towels, dishcloths, and sponges provides sufficient organization. Dishwashing liquid sits next to the sink and old, extraneous kitchen cleaning supplies have been eliminated so that the cabinet contains only those supplies for which there is an imminent need.”
― Susan C. Pinsky, Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD, 3rd Edition: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized

“Keep a dish pan in the sink. For those occasions during the day when you can’t get the dish in the dishwasher, at least if the dirty dishes are in a pan, they can be moved aside easily if someone needs to use the sink.”
― Susan C. Pinsky, Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD, 3rd Edition: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized

“Give tasks that are naturally grounding to the ADHD family member. Having one’s hands in the warm soapy water or on a broom handle will keep people on task. Putting the food away is episodic and can lead to wandering.”
― Susan C. Pinsky, Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD, 3rd Edition: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized

“Wash dishes at the end of the night—no matter how painful it is. It’s a lot better to have your coffee as soon as you get up.”
― Susan C. Pinsky, Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD, 3rd Edition: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized

“Defining What We Do Tidy Up/Picking Up = getting a room to look somewhat neat by putting things away. Cleaning = washing floors, vacuum dust Organize = schedule and prep, weed and sort, remove and clean, name and return, containerize and bask”
― Susan C. Pinsky, Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD, 3rd Edition: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized

“Sorting and Organizing Roadmap First: Always start on the floor; a clear floor immediately provides a more restful and efficient project environment because you can easily move about. Next: Clear the surfaces as these provide staging areas for sorting. Finally: Tackle interior spaces like drawers and cupboards.”
― Susan C. Pinsky, Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD, 3rd Edition: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized

“Where Does It Go? Don’t know where something belongs? Here is a quick Q&A that can help you identify an appropriate permanent storage location (home) for your possessions. Q: Where would a stranger look for this item? A: Your clothes belong in your closet because that is where a stranger would look for them—not your son’s closet, the guest room, or a bin in the attic. Q: At what kind of store do you buy this item? A: Office equipment purchased from an office supply store should be stored in the home office. Items purchased at a hardware store, belong in a utility closet. Match store origins to related home areas. Q: Who does it belong to? A: If the item belongs to your husband, then it belongs in your husband’s space. Don’t allow possessions of various family members to bleed into each other’s space. Q: Where does this item most often get used? A: The blender gets used in the kitchen and should therefore be stored in the kitchen, not the laundry room, the basement, nor the hall closet. Consider donating possessions that can’t be stored where they are used.”
― Susan C. Pinsky, Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD, 3rd Edition: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized

“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. To set up a maintainable system, we must first eliminate systems that are too inefficient, unwieldy, and tedious and replace them with systems that are streamlined, fast, and convenient. Often these systems sacrifice beauty for efficiency.”
― Susan C. Pinsky, Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD, 3rd Edition: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized

“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 labor.”
― Susan C. Pinsky, Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD, 3rd Edition: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized

“takes for others. To shower,”
― Susan C. Pinsky, Organizing Solutions for People With Attention Deficit Disorder: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized: Tips and Tools ... Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized

“For someone with ADD, even the simplest 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 kind of care and concentration that average people expend over their entire day.”
― Susan C. Pinsky, Organizing Solutions for People With Attention Deficit Disorder: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized: Tips and Tools ... Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized

“The best organizational system for someone with ADHD is the one that is most efficient, simplest, most convenient, and the easiest to maintain, because it requires the least number of steps and materials.”
― Susan C. Pinsky, Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD, 2nd Edition-Revised and Updated: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized

“people with ADHD do not tend to be lazy—they are instead some of the most energetic people I know, capable of boundless enthusiasm and dizzying creativity. What they are is discouraged, because the organizational systems that are handed to them are either so complex or so tedious that they are impossible for the ADHD sufferer to maintain.”
― Susan C. Pinsky, Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD, 2nd Edition-Revised and Updated: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized

“The straightest, most effective path to achieving the golden rule of efficiency is reduction.”
― Susan C. Pinsky, Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD, 2nd Edition-Revised and Updated: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized

“the house should make so much sense that a stranger could figure out where something belongs.”
― Susan C. Pinsky, Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD, 2nd Edition-Revised and Updated: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized

“Inventory shouldn’t just conform to storage but should be less than storage, so that it never requires a multi-step dance to put things away. Instead, every item should be stored where it is used so it can be stowed in one single motion”
― Susan C. Pinsky, Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD, 2nd Edition-Revised and Updated: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized

“When your dishtowel is dirty, throw it in the direction of the laundry room, perhaps dropping it at the bottom or top of a staircase (a staging area) if the laundry room is on another floor.”
― Susan C. Pinsky, Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD, 2nd Edition-Revised and Updated: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized

“efficiency should always take precedence over beauty.”
― Susan C. Pinsky, Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD, 2nd Edition-Revised and Updated: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized

“Do place a lidless laundry basket–style hamper in a prominent location in your child’s bedroom—no tucking it into a closet. I always recommend a tall laundry basket for this purpose; it makes for an easy target when tossing in dirty clothes.”
― Susan C. Pinsky, Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD, 2nd Edition-Revised and Updated: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized

“Tips to Help an ADHD Child Organize ▪ Adjust your expectations for perfect order. ▪ Stay with your child through the room-cleaning process to lend him focus. ▪ Reduce the number of materials in his room so that it is simple and easy to clean. ▪ Make sure his storage systems are easy to access (low-hanging shelves and hooks). ▪ Limit the scope of his chore. ▪ Praise him lavishly when he completes it.”
― Susan C. Pinsky, Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD, 2nd Edition-Revised and Updated: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized