The Clutter Cycle: How ADHD Affects My Ability to Keep the Chaos of Housekeeping Under Control

Ugh. The clutter. The disorganization. The "where the heck is my _______?!?"

ADHD makes organization very difficult for a few reasons. If we go back to those executive functions I mentioned a while back, you'll remember I have difficulty sorting and prioritizing. Knowing what is most important in order of urgency and/or value is hard to decipher. Compound that with easily becoming overwhelmed, and you have a recipe for disaster. Figuratively speaking, my house looks like a mid-West tornado has screamed through it more often than not.

The clutter begins with trying to put things away in the first place. If it doesn't have a "home", it goes wherever is most convenient to put it down--by the front door, on the kitchen table, on my nightstand, etc. Newly purchased items may live on the floor for months before they finally get a home. Sometimes even putting things away that already have homes still gets seems like the daunting task of the century (i.e. hanging clothes back up in the closet after I've washed them--it can't be done).

My organizational life, in a nutshell.

After the mess has built up, it's overwhelming trying to decide where to start. Do I wash the sink FULL of dishes? Do I fold the mountain of laundry? Do I pick up the dirty sock that has been sitting on the floor for three weeks days? What about the stack(s) of mail on the dinner table? After looking around and getting overwhelmed at the scope of the the task, I usually just leave it and tell myself I'll do it later.

[Around this time I sometimes watch an episode of "Hoarding: Buried Alive" in an attempt to scare motivate myself to do something about the mess.]
 
Once the initial overwhelm has dissipated enough for me to look around some more, I start to feel anxious about the clutter. It's almost like it's going to take on a life of it's own and hold me for ransom if I don't do something soon. To make it worse, I beat myself up for not being more organized in the first place or for not taking care of the mess sooner. I talk myself down, saying: "It's just laundry, dishes, mail, etc. Everyone else seems to manage it, why can't you?"

At that point, the rookies Anxiety and Frustration meet up with returning champion Overwhelm. They go a few rounds until I decide it's a lose-lose match up, and I give up entirely, retreating to some other sphere where I don't have to think about it. 

[Imagine Anxiety as Anakin, Frustration as Obi-Wan, and Overwhelm as Count Dooku. Overhwhelm dies in the end, Anxiety appears to have won, but really goes to the dark side shortly after, and Frustration has to live on watching watching his failure turn into Darth Vader and gone on to wreak havoc. See, no one really wins.]

The vicious cycle usually continues until I have some sort of nervous breakdown when the anxiety starts man-handling the overwhelm and I get sucked into the black hole of decluttering, organizing, reorganizing, and cleaning at the expense of everything else (food, sleep, appointments...). Remember hyperfocus?-- still a topic for another day.

If I do manage to break the cycle and start the organizing process, I still struggle to make any progress. When it comes to de-cluttering, all items seem to come in at the same value (an old pair of shoes that I haven't worn in well over a year still feel as important as my favorite blouse). Trying to deciding what to keep, what to toss, and what to donate feels impossible. Papers are especially hard to keep up with. Oh, the piles and piles of papers!!!

And forget "straightening up" a room. What started as straightening up in one room ends up as scrubbing the baseboards in the bathroom or sorting through a box of old sentimentals I found under the bed.

In the book I mentioned previously, the author gave many great tips on organizing and cleaning. What ideas do you have for managing the clutter? I'll do a "tips" post in the near future, and would love to include some of your solutions.