In my ADD days lots of things around the house would be disorganized, I’d leave dishes in the sink for a few days at a time, some dirty clothes on the floor, clutter in the living room and kitchen, and so on. I’ve noticed that in these post-ADD days I have no desire to accumulate clutter and I actually enjoy keeping my house neat. Yes, I’ve got some catching up to do before I’d call my house clutter-free but I notice that every part of my house that I’ve de-cluttered in the past three weeks has stayed de-cluttered. There are no longer dishes left in the sink except for the occasional pot or pan that needs to soak. Clutter on my kitchen counters is GONE. My bedroom is quite orderly now. The living room doesn’t accumulate clutter anymore. So, basically with no notice I can have people drop by and the public rooms in the house look great.
So, what’s going on? What does clutter have to do with ADD? My experience is that when my mind was spinning new thoughts constantly I would get overwhelmed at the idea of organizing things. I would ask myself a million questions that each led to a million more and I’d spend lots of time in analysis paralysis and do nothing. Before, to clear clutter from my kitchen counters I’d think something like this:
Let’s see. If I want to get the blender off the counter I have to find room in a cabinet for it. The cabinets are all full. There are probably things I could move to cabinets in the utility room but first I need to decide what stuff I want to move where. There are probably things I could throw away but I might regret doing that. I could probably create room in some of the cabinets if I reorganized some of their contents. I could just hire someone to come into the house for a couple of hours and take care of this for me. But, why do I want to pay someone to do something I should be able to do for myself? Geez, this is more than I want to handle. Maybe another time.
You get the idea, right? Here’s what I did today to de-clutter the kitchen counters.
Let’s see. I want to clear these two big counter surfaces. If I rearrange things in this cabinet then I can get the blender off the counter. This pan can go down here. This big stockpot goes above the fridge.
The difference is that I don’t get caught up in the distraction of stories. I decide what I want to do and I go do it. The million thoughts don’t cycle through my brain, the analysis paralysis is GONE. Plus, I’m sure there was an element of self-sabotage - “I’m not worthy of enjoying a nice kitchen” - that helped to keep me stuck. No more
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