Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD
2024-09-05
Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD is a book by Susan C. Pinsky about home organization for households with people with ADHD in them. I don't believe I am in the target audience but I really enjoyed this book and I want to share some thoughts about it.
Why did I read this book
Someone on the Recurse Zulip chat server spoke highly of this book. I found the title and subject intriguing. I am not very good at organizing (my desk tends to be a terrible mess at all times) so I don't mind learning something new. And what does ADHD have to do with organizing? The book explains that organizing and maintaining organization is hard for people with ADHD because they get distracted easily. The solution suggested by the book is to streamline things as much as possible. This sounds like a good idea whether you have ADHD or not.
Acceptance
One of the most powerful ideas in the book is to accept people's limitations when it comes to organizing. If somebody (perhaps you yourself) doesn't clean up after themselves you can call them "lazy" or "a slob" but that kind of shaming doesn't make things better. The accepting perspective is that whatever you expect the person to do is somehow too much effort, and to look for a different outcome that is attainable. For example the book has an anecdote from the author's work as a professional organizer where a client is frustrated that her daughter never hangs up her coat in the hallway closet when she comes home. The daughter just drops the coat on a chair by the door. The author suggests to the client that she accepts that using the hallway closet is too cumbersome for her daughter, and to hang a hook on the wall next to the door instead. Then her daughter can hang her coat there which is better than having it on the chair.
This is both about accepting that something is not going to happen and accepting a different outcome that is not the solution you had in mind but still an overall improvement.
An example from my own experience is the notion that some possessions which I no longer need are "still worth money" and that I will sell them on an online marketplace, some day. This then doesn't happen so I end up with weird items I never use using up storage space in the house. At some point I need to accept that I don't have the time or it is not worth my time to sell these items and that a better outcome is to donate them to a charity that sells second-hand goods. I don't get any money but I gain space and I have avoided throwing away things somebody else could still use.
The cost of not accepting that I won't sell these things is that I end up with clutter in the house (which costs me space) where every time I look at it I feel bad for not selling it (which costs me happiness? peace of mind?).
Getting rid of stuff
The book argues strongly that it is helpful to get rid of stuff in your house. It doesn't just say this but it also gives you ways of thinking that help you do this.
One idea that stood out to me is that when we make decisions about throwing stuff away we are dealing with two risks: the risk that we throw out something we need to buy again later, and the risk that we keep something that we will never need. It feels safe to err on the side of caution and never throw something out we may need some day. But this comes at the cost of having to keep that something in inventory indefinitely. The cost of playing it safe is that you end up hoarding. If we want to avoid hoarding we must accept that we make occasional mistakes of the first kind: we throw something out we did have a need for after all. We don't want that to happen all the time but if it happens sometimes it actually tells us we are doing "not being a hoarder" right.
No Tetris
When "cleaning up" I used to shove items that were lying around into whatever storage space I could find. This results in a kind of storage Tetris where all space is filled up with stuff. The book argues this is a bad idea because it makes it hard to find and retrieve things you need and what is worse, it makes it harder to put things back. If putting items back is too hard you keep them lying around on your desk, I've learned.
So instead of playing Tetris, the game is to make things easy to get to. This is not space-optimal so it helps to create more storage space first by throwing things away.
Maintaining order
Cleaning up and throwing away old junk is nice but if the space just fills up with clutter again you haven't gained much. The book makes a point of setting up maintainable systems but in all honesty it hasn't been long enough for me to say if my desk will stay uncluttered in the long run. Nevertheless I am optimistic.