Decluttering My Home: ADHD Style

what my doctor, psychologist, and physical therapist have taught me about tidying

Hello Dudes,

In true ADHD fashion, I have begun this post as procrastination from two other posts I’ve started as well as no less than three home improvement projects. Welcome to the circus AKA my brain, which is just as loud and chaotic but with measurably less animal cruelty / public death in the name of entertainment (read: none)¹.

An over (and perhaps less-than-intentional) consumption of news, a shift in the seasons, and a month long battle with constipation have led me to needing, almost desperately, a cleanse. Though I know for some of us this phrase will evoke flashbacks to the incredibly disordered Master Cleanse of the twenty-teens wherein people consumed nothing but lemon juice, cayenne pepper, and maple syrup for anywhere from 10 to 40 days before weddings and high school reunions, I am simply speaking about decluttering my mind which involves tidying up and cleaning out the places where I store stuff whether physical, digital, mental or emotional.

It's all about relieving stress and shame bit by (tiny) bit

The image of accumulation, storage, and eventual release of excess feels like the only thing I can think about lately. Whether it’s emails, laundry, dishes, garbage, or text messages, the stress that I accumulate without paying attention and the anxiety that comes from avoiding these small piles results in genuine mental and physical discomfort.

In a trigger point appointment yesterday, my physical therapist suggested that I return within two weeks as his last patient of the day. That way, he could focus on all the other parts of my body he couldn’t get to yesterday without a time commitment. My body is holding that much tension. I am experiencing that much pain: gastrointestinal issues, headaches, you name it — I’ve got it. Because I made a commitment to myself this year that I would do whatever I could to take care of my body, I feel motivated to build strategies and take incremental steps toward promoting a home and a body (for what is a body if not my home) that feels peaceful.

If you know me, you know that I am obsessed with my apartment despite its very real, very loud, very stressful setbacks. Because I am hoping to move at the end of the year, I am taking inventory of everything I have that I hope to use, donate, or recycle by the time moving date comes around. Though I’ve moved over ten times in my twenties, I have never had this much time or flexibility to prepare, and as such, I have moved a few bins of Nonsense™ each time: iPod Touch charging cables from 2009, eleven hundred Allen Wrenches from every piece of IKEA furniture I’ve assembled, expired cans of chili (?) I mean the list goes on… This time around I am hoping to generate as little waste as possible and hopefully slightly recalibrate my relationship to consumerism by becoming more aware of what I have that I do not need and routinely setting aside time to sort through what I bring inside. I’ve realized the key to a peaceful home isn’t massive a number of storage bins and Tetris level organization as much as it is about the intention behind the acquisition of “stuff.”

When I was entering my freshman year at Tufts in 2012, (I found my first gray hair literally today and am reminded of how long ago that was) we were asked to read The Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession with Stuff is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and our Health—and a Vision for Change by Annie Leonard. I’ll let you sit with the fact that we were all encouraged to purchase this book that most of us threw away.

Did I read it? No, not in its entirety. However, the binge-and-purge cycles of US consumer culture have been on my mind for most of my adulthood, and I am tired of constantly “going through my closet” and sorting things into piles of "keep” and “donate.” Since my body has changed shape a lot in my later twenties due to medication and lifestyle changes, I have clothes that fit a body I no longer have, yet I hold onto some of these clothes because I do hope to wear them again some day. As was markedly not the case with the wardrobes of my parents and grandparents, none of these clothes are worth holding onto for potential future children, as they were mass produced cheaply and designed to disintegrate as quickly as possible. Upon reflection, these garments may in fact already be little more than dust under my bed as we speak — like most areas of excess storage in my home, I’ve been too frightened to look.

This avoidance doesn’t just pertain to physical spaces, but digital and mental reservoirs as well. Enter: the Gmail Inbox.

Reader, I wish I could tell you that this were my only inbox with an egregious number of unread, unsorted emails. However, I have five additional accounts that face similar problems that I’ve neglected to attend to. Overwhelmed at the excess of correspondence, I once gave all of my passwords to a friend’s little sister and paid her a few hundred dollars to clean two of them up. It felt amazing… for two weeks.

That’s the thing about purging though, if you don’t develop and then adhere to a system whereby you intentionally sort, prioritize, and organize bit by bit, you will soon be right back where you started: overwhelmed by excess, ashamed of your own avoidance, desperate to do be rid of the cluttered feeling, yet too intimidated to change anything. Fed advertisements about storage solutions that require we buy even more stuff, the cycle does what it does best: repeats.

I am happy to report that though I recognize I have a lot of stuff that needs my attention, I am not swimming in big feelings of shame or defeat before I begin this project. I feel surprisingly motivated to Get My House In Order because it is an aspect of my life wherein if I put in the effort to strategize systems for myself and work at them bit by bit, I will directly benefit from the peace of mind that those efforts bring. As someone who spent most of her professional and personal energy attempting to make other people’s lives easier and more manageable without a massive amount of inner peace herself, I am pretty stoked at the possibility of reducing my own low-frequency anxiety and stress by finally tending to my own messy corners.

So, without further ado and side quests, I share with you…

Decluttering My Home: ADHD Style

I’ve divided my Home Challenge into seven categories which sort of fit the Marie Kondo method, but slightly different². (Note: Marie Kondo has said herself that she has ‘kind of given up’ on cleaning since having kids, so like…I have long since removed any and all shame from my de-cluttering process).

Because I have the inattentive type of ADHD and struggle completing tasks, these categories allow me to bop around when I inevitably get bored. If I am sick of my kitchen, I can open my laptop and unsubscribe from a few emails and still feel productive. Though there are bigger ticket items that need more concentrated attention (i.e. setting up filters and rules for incoming email, matching electronic cables to their various devices, etc.) I am developing a plan to manage my time and expectations and track my progress.

• Kitchen:

  • Food / Pantry: expired? high volume? recipes?

  • Appliances: doubles / broken / unnecessary?

• Utility/Medicine:

  • Electronics / Misc. Tools / Cleaning - necessary? broken?

  • Toiletries / Medicine - doubles? expired?

  • Garbage?

• Clothes:

  • Linens: Towels / Sheets / Pillow Cases - matching? missing? stained?

  • Shoes: broken? ill-fitting?

  • Clothes: fit? style? frequency of use?

• Office:

  • Stationary - organize / donate

  • Crafts - organize / donate

• Sentimental:

  • Photo albums - organize

  • Baby stuff - organize

  • Journals - organize

• Financial

  • Savings goals

  • Investment goals

  • Excel budget / expense reconciliation tracker

  • Job application plan

• Digital

  • iCloud

  • Gmail

  • Photos

  • Google Drive

Do spreadsheets solve everything? No. Are they fun to make and share as an accountability tool? Yes. Each of the seven categories I publish a post for will come with the accompanying spreadsheet / infographic/ time management tools I used to help me declutter. Stay tuned for the first one— Kitchen Challenge—wherein I create a plan to use up all my food and consolidate and/or refurbish all my kitchen appliances before I move. There will be recipes and creative ideas for low/zero waste kitchen clean outs!

This post is dedicated to…

anyone who was ever taught that the messes they made or the tasks they didn’t finish made them lazy, dumb, incapable or disgusting. Our messes at home don’t cause harm. Tidiness and organization have no moral superiority. Release yourself of these messages. You are worthy of love and dignity because you exist.

These little challenges and plans I have for myself are to aid and support my peace of mind. Like exercise or changes in diet, please do not make the mistake I made for fifteen years and use decluttering / cleaning as self-punishment. It’s so UNFUN and unsustainable. I find when I put on some music or a podcast, call a friend or ask for help if when I want it, the tasks are more pleasant and the benefits longer lasting. If you tidy, organize, or clean nothing today, tomorrow, or the next, you are worthy and you are loved. If the only thing you clean out of your house is shame or stress, you did the thing.

Want to share more about your relationship to stress / tidiness / decluttering?

1. Plasse, Marianne. “History of Circus: From Ancient Roots to Controversial Sensation.” The Collector. Apr 23, 2023. Accessed May 17, 2024. https://www.thecollector.com/history-of-circus/

2. Four moves ago, I hired my friend’s mom as a certified Marie Kondo consultant to help me go through my stuff. It was so intense but very cool.