One glaring issue that has caused SO much friction between me and my spouse is my tidiness. He's more of a clean freak/minimalist type and I'm a clutter bug. It's not that I don't WANT to be a clean freak/minimalist type, it's just that I have a hard time finding the motivation and time to abide by it.
Most experts will tell you that severe and chronic disorganization/messiness is one of the most common and debilitating symptoms for adults with ADHD. Clutter everywhere, unfinished projects, lost and/or duplicate items, lost or neglected mail (especially bills!), last week's laundry in a pile on the floor.... and it's not just things that are disorganized. Time is also disorganized. Schedules are erratic, something that should have more of their time ends up getting very little and something that should have been addressed in minutes end up taking hours. Your typical ADHD'er has a hard time with shifting attention from one thing to another, but at the same time they have a hard time focusing for an extended period of time on something they don't particularly enjoy.
As Judith Kolberg said in an ADDtitude magazine article: "Counterintuitive as it sounds, many ADHD organization challenges stem from perfectionism — the common, learned belief that things must be done impeccably. It’s an impossible standard that leaves many with cluttered homes, out-of-control finances, and exhausting schedules." I often get teased because it takes me hours to clean one room when it would take a person without ADHD only a few minutes. The reason is just as she said, perfectionism. I have this belief that everything should be done right the first time and to the best of your ability. Instead of just picking up all the towels and clothes off the bathroom floor, I want to also vacuum and mop the floor. And don't forget the mats! They need to be laundered. Instead of just cleaning the inside toilet bowl, I want to clean the seat (top and bottom) and the whole outside (because toilets are GROSS!). Besides, if I don't do it then, when will it ever get done? "Oop, looks like there's a little bit of stuff on the shower tiles... Better clean that too... and don't forget all the soap bottles..." That's another problem I have: when I notice something out of place or needing a little attention... I MUST ADDRESS IT NOW. I can't say "ok, let's put that on our to-do list for Tuesday." Even if I tried that, I'd be itching and twitching until Tuesday when I can finally tackle it.
My main problem is clutter. I have little piles of crap everywhere. I call it organized chaos. My husband calls it embarrassing filth, and I can't argue with him. Except for the filth part. I'm not dirty, just messy. I hardly ever invite people to our house because I'm also embarrassed it's not perfectly neat and tidy. So why don't I just clean it up then? Well, I have... Multiple times. But once I clean one mess, one or two pop up shortly after. Having two young kids doesn't help either. I've been trying to resolve this issue for at least a decade. Reading countless books and articles on how to clean efficiently, coming up with checklists, even attempting to schedule cleaning on my calendars (yes, I said calendar-S). But time seems to be such a commodity with me (see above concerning disorganized time) and nothing has stuck... yet. It always ends the same though. I get frustrated and I give up. My husband gets irritated and resentful, and everyone ends up miserable. All over stuff... Just stuff... Nothing really important. Inanimate objects laying around and minding their own business, not realizing they cause so much frustration and anger just by hanging out.
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| I'm not THIS bad, but you get the point. |
So what am I going to do about it? Well... that's a good question. What haven't I tried yet? I've tried cleaning after everyone goes to bed (I'm a major night owl), but my house carries sound so badly I have a hard time doing it without disturbing those that are sawing logs upstairs. I've tried cleaning before going to work, but a quick 15 min cleaning session almost always got extended and made me even later for work than I usually am due to dropping kids off at school and having to go allllllllll the way back home to let our senior pooch out for potty time. I've tried making Sundays my cleaning days, but that would take too much time away from everyt0hing (and everyone) else I need to direct my attention to. Frankly, my brain just can't handle doing it all day. I get bored or just plain unmotivated and end up stopping to do something that sparks my interest a little more. Currently, I'm trying to purge so that I just have less stuff to deal with. A long while ago I read (well... listened to) Marie Kondo's book, "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing," and I tried to implement it at home. Unfortunately, the rest of the family wasn't cooperating. So I'm left to try and do it myself with mostly just my stuff. Some of it I already do and have been for years, but some will take some getting used to. I have countless checklists and life hacks, most of which probably say the same things anyway... Soooooo.....
So far, here's what I generally THINK needs to happen for success:
1. I need to be realistic about my schedules and my scatter brain. Obviously my brain can't tolerate spending all day cleaning. Maybe once in a while I'll get on a roll and hyperfocus on cleaning, but I still don't get as much done in a day as my husband probably could. I need to tackle everything in small doses,15 min or so each, multiple times a day, with an actual timer to enforce that limit.
2. Purge.. and I don't mean getting rid of one or two little things. I mean REALLY purge our stuff. This is always the hard. Every time I see something that I probably should get rid of, I think "but I could use it for..." or "but someday I will..." Like Marie Kondo says, odds are... you won't. That book that's been sitting on the shelf for ages and you haven't read? Probably will still be sitting in the same spot ages from now. It's just taking up space and not contributing to the household, so it needs to go. Either by donation, selling, or (I hate to say) discarding in the trash. I'm so against filling up our landfills, so I try my hardest to upcycle, donate, or recycle what I can, but some things just need to be thrown away. The best way to avoid this is probably not having it in the first place, which is another problem: Replacing purged clutter with MORE CLUTTER. I am an impulsive shopper... especially when I'm angry or upset. You've probably heard of retail therapy? Yeah... apparently shopping makes me feel better. But even when I'm not engaging in retail therapy, I'll be in the store and something will catch my eye. The creative gears in my already busy brain go into overdrive. Next thing you know, it's getting scanned at the register or an order confirmation has just popped up in my inbox. My intentions are always good, I don't buy things just because the look pretty or because I can. I usually have a purpose for it in mind. What I don't think about it is the importance of that purpose. Something I've found that helps is doing orders through Shipt. I get my shopping urge satisfied, but I don't keep anything. I think getting that as a second "job" was a good decision.
...and be realistic about future use! (this is a reiteration) Like I said before. I need to think about whether or not I will REALLY use it in the future.. Another example: You know that favorite pair of jeans you had in high school but can barely fit over your thighs now? You pushed them all the way to the back of the closet, saying "I'm trying to lose weight. Maybe they'll fit again." Yeah..... I have probably an entire wardrobe of that in boxes, hidden away. Obviously, if I haven't been able to fit into them again in the past decade, I probably won't be able to anytime soon. Besides, once I do lose that much weight, I'll probably want all new styles anyway. I need to think like that anytime I come across anything I haven't used or touched in a long time and just. get. rid. of it.
3. Make a list of repetitive goals for each day, but keep it short (maybe no more than 5 tasks). If I have enough time and I'm on a roll, I can add one or two weekly tasks to keep things from getting monotonous. Hell, just make a list of goals, to start with.Daily, weekly, monthly. Stuff like laundry can be done daily (one load). Dishes, making the bed, quick vacuuming, quick little pickups of random objects that aren't in their places and easy to put away, and wiping down counter tops can also be daily tasks. Weekly should probably be cleaning bathrooms, more thorough vacuuming, more thorough cleaning of appliances, dusting, and changing linens and towels. Monthly can be the little details that get overlooked like baseboards, vents, blinds, fan blades, etc.
4. Don't worry so much about perfection. Good enough should be just that... Good enough. As I said before, I have this mentality that everything should be done to the best of your ability. This has caused me to do a LOT of things "the hard way" and the longest way possible. I need to tell myself that things don't need to be lined up perfectly or completely spotless. a spot or two isn't going to hurt. Could it look better? Sure. Does it need to? Probably not. Is it efficient? Yes. That's what matters. Good enough is better than not at all.
5. Lastly, STICK TO IT. This one is obvious, but probably the hardest one on the list. If things aren't going perfectly or I miss one day, I tend to just quit and move on. It's partially from frustration, partially from anxiety, and partially from a feeling of failure. I feel like "whelp, I missed one so now everything is shifted and messed up and I'll never recover, so why frigging bother?" I need to remember that missing one every now and then isn't failure. It's a setback. And it's not going to make the world spontaneously combust. It'll be ok. Just pick back up where you left off as if you didn't miss a beat. If something isn't going exactly as I hoped and it's getting too frustrating for me, I need to step away for a short period of time, do whatever else I can, and come back to it as soon as I can. I just have to remember to come back to it.
Am I missing anything? I'll be going into detail in the coming days about what I'm doing to organize things and streamline, both at home and at work.
What do you think about my list? What do you have a hard time with and how do you cope?
#Project2020 #cleanlinessisnexttogodliness #tryingtokeepmyhusbandfromhavingmurderousthoughts
