DOOM Piles, Overwhelm, and Avoidance: Our Top Hacks for Organizing with ADHD
At Organized For Good, we help a lot of clients who either have diagnosed ADHD or simply exhibit behaviors commonly associated with ADHD.
ADHD is “a developmental disorder associated with an ongoing pattern of inattention, hyperactivity, and/or impulsivity. The symptoms of ADHD can interfere significantly with an individual’s daily activities and relationships.” The inattention and/or hyperactivity-impulsivity of ADHD breeds many different types of responses or behaviors that diverge from an average human.
Some examples we often see in ADHD clients include feeling overwhelmed when organizing for a task or activity and trouble staying focused during longer-term projects.
As you can imagine, it isn’t surprising that folks with ADHD tendencies require extra help getting their homes organized the way they desire. If you feel overwhelmed when trying to organize your home–for whatever reason–this post is for you.
In this post, we’re going to talk a little more about the ways clutter becomes a big problem—especially for people with ADHD or ADHD tendencies. Then we’ll dissect another professional designer’s approach to organizing with ADHD, and finally, we’ll go over our top ways to tackle this clutter.
In a youtube video from 2020, Jessica McCabe, a popular researcher and public figure in the ADHD community goes over her personal struggles with organizing her home. She turns the mic over to two professional designers that specialize in decluttering and sorting for people with ADHD, Lenore and Carmen. Lenore and Carmen are sisters, and Carmen also has ADHD—so, not only do they have expertise, but they also have personal experience organizing with and for ADHD. Lenore and Carmen establish a couple important ways to categorize clutter that makes it really easy to identify types of clutter in your home.
These two types of clutter are “clutter in motion” and “clutter in stasis”
“Clutter in motion” includes stuff you’ve used recently AND will probably pick up to use again very soon (in about a day). Clutter in motion could be your daily-use make-up items, the ingredients for your morning coffee ritual, or simply some items you’re using to work on a personal project. Basically, “clutter in motion” are items that you are hitting-up regularly.
“Clutter in stasis” is the shadow clutter—it may be the reason the word “clutter” feels like the name of an enemy. “Clutter in stasis” is anything that has left its usual home and has not returned or never had a home to begin with.
“Clutter in stasis” includes the DOOM piles (AKA Didn’t Organize, Only Moved piles). This is clutter that has become part of the permanent landscape of your home—often to your dismay.
Clutter in stasis often triggers a negative cycle between clutter, overwhelm, and avoidance that McCabe describes in her video. This cycle can start with either overwhelm or clutter, and often one will breed or cause another. Then the amount of clutter leads to avoidance, which leads to more overwhelm, and clutter continues to gather and reign in the home. This is a very daunting cycle, and we’ve seen how difficult it is to break out of it—especially when such cycles could go on for years.
This is where Lenore and Carmen’s clutter identification can especially come in handy. Instead of trying to declutter or clean, they urge people to take a look at the “clutter in stasis.” What exactly lives in the pile at the foot of the stairs? What is on your desk in your office? They reason that if you can better understand your patterns and why things accumulate in certain locations, then it’s easier to think of creative solutions.
Because the truth is that organizing with ADHD means finding creative solutions that work for YOU, not the average consumer.
Perhaps the pile on the stairs is mostly hats, clothes, and shoes that you usually take with you when you go out. That could mean your entryway is missing a mudroom fixture and your stairs are doing a job for which they were not designed. Do you have a lot of empty or unclean dishes in various rooms? Perhaps you need a collection tray or bus bin to make it easier to round up these items and take them to the kitchen sink. (Who has a comfy place to drink coffee in their kitchen?—surely not many of us!)
Lenore and Carmen assert that it’s important to understand that “some level of clutter is inevitable” and the best we can do is “figure out how different types of clutter affect us and then put systems into place” based on that knowledge.
Based on our experience and Lenore and Carmen’s approach described above, here are OFG’s top hacks for organizing with ADHD:
Take stock -
This is the time to assess, like Lenore and Carmen advise. To avoid overwhelm, start with one pile you despise and go see what’s in it. Is it mostly something of a single category like clothes, or books, or papers, or items associated with utility spaces like the kitchen or your office? Is it a mixture of several of those broad categories? Why do you think they ended up there? What do you often do in that particular area?
2. Identify the purpose for the space -
If going through the clutter in one area helps you realize what is usually going on there—that’s great! Now you know what you’d like to do/use in that space. If you still aren’t sure, then perhaps that space is simple housing items that belong somewhere else. Try to identify other spaces, what you would like to do in that space, and what will need to move out and move in to build an ideal set-up for that area.
For example, if you identify that you love to do your crafting in the living room while watching reality TV, then you will probably want to make room for “current” craft items to be stored and perhaps have a couple folding trays where you can set up a crafting space. Think about what furniture and storage items ALREADY exist in that space—what’s in them? Do they contain items relevant to the purpose of that space? If your TV console is full of technology that you rarely use, maybe some of it could be stored and lifted onto a top shelf in a closet and that could be your space for craft supplies!
Okay, great, but how do you actually organize and declutter without getting overwhelmed? The following are Erin’s go-to methods for organizing with ADHD:
3. Set project boundaries -
For this step, identify your goal. Want to clear a surface? Want to empty, declutter, and return items to a cabinet? Figure out a specific, small-scale task to start with.
4. Gather some organizing materials -
Once you have your small-scale goal, get a garbage bag, some empty bins or paper bags, sticky notes, and markers. Use these items to immediately throw away any trash, and then gather recycling and donation items. Don’t forget to label your bags or bins with what they contain!
5. Set a timer -
This is very necessary, and all of OFG’s team of professional organizers set timers. This is important because you can forget about the time and focus on your task. If you start to get tired or feel overwhelmed, time to set a new timer—one for a 5-10 min break!
6. Don’t leave the room -
Of course, you can leave to go to the bathroom or grab a snack, but think about leaving something important in the room like your phone or your water bottle—anything you will go looking for as soon as you realize you don’t have it.
7. Keep items visible -
When you are sorting and when you are returning items to their new home, make sure you don’t accidentally hide any items. For example, if you are sorting a drawer of clothing, use Marie Kondo’s folding method so you can easily see every item inside. That way you won’t “lose” a favorite t-shirt at the bottom of a stack!
Our last tip is the most fun tip:
8. Body-Doubling!
Get a body double to encourage you to focus on your task and help you work faster.
If you live in the Austin area, your favorite local professional organizers at OFG are only a phone call away from being your body double for whatever project you want to finish in your home.
Book a phone consultation here, or direcly book an organizing session today!
If you’re interested in diving deeper into this topic, check out our references from this post:
1. “Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder in Adults: What You Need to Know.” n.d. National Institute of Mental Health. Accessed August 20, 2024. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/adhd-what-you-need-to-know.
2. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. DSM-5 Changes: Implications for Child Serious Emotional Disturbance [Internet]. Rockville (MD): Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (US); 2016 Jun. Table 7, DSM-IV to DSM-5 Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Comparison. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK519712/table/ch3.t3/
3. How To ADHD with Jessica McCabe. 2020. “How to Deal with Clutter When You Have ADHD,” Best ways to approach clutter with ADHD. YouTube. YouTube Video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mCr5tqtiMg&list=PLvq9Tp5JZ8oAq8W17MTJe_mBsJfk_UBIR.
4. Jessica McCabe’s Website: https://howtoadhdbook.com/
