Declutter your space and clear your mind with ADHD/YouTube
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[00:00:00] Hey friends, welcome back. I am so excited to talk to you guys today about something that has been the bane of my existence my entire life and struggled with so very, very, very Very much. And I've come up with some tools that I want to share with you. First and foremost, I'm still checking in with the phone situation and the TV situation.
I am still very much working on, the social media and picking up my phone and finding myself scroll. I. I'm loving that I'm giving myself and designing time for when I want to scroll social media. I am still catching myself picking up my phone without a thought and looking at it. [00:01:00] But the good part is I'm catching myself.
So before I go in. And start scrolling. I'm able to put the phone back down and set it aside. Now, if I am picking up my phone, because I think of somebody that I need to respond back to, or an email I need to send off or something that I'm supposed to do, I'm finding that I give, if I give myself a two minute timer, is very effective to help me get in, get the thing done and get back out.
So those are just some fun tips for you. Now, as far as my subject for today, we are talking about decluttering as a neurodivergent individual, especially those of us with ADHD and how challenging it can be, I think it's very notable to say that we [00:02:00] all genuinely work better and thrive better if we have a clean environment.
But also that's the hardest thing for us to do, right, is to, to have that clean environment. And so what I talk about quite often is how to declutter. How do I get rid of all of the extra things or organize the things that I do have? And with my clients, I, and you last episode, you heard me talk about the bags or boxes, whatever you want to do and labeling them.
One is a throw away. One is a donation and one is a keep. And then once you have organized the area that you're wanting to organize, you, you take the donation to your car. You throw away what needs to be thrown away and you keep what you're [00:03:00] going to keep. Now, what I talk about with my clients, when they have their whole house that they want to declutter, and we're not just talking about a closet or just one room, or maybe it is just one room, but that room is really a room that you have not seen the floor or the walls or the anything for a while.
Now, I like the idea of not needing to put tons of pressure on yourself to tackle the thing in one day, unless it's something that's small enough that you can tackle in one day. But if we're talking about your home, It could take months. I mean, when I first did this, I think I did, I worked every weekend, every weekend for the summer.
And then also into the fall. [00:04:00] I also, I like doing things On rainy days or cloudy days or days that you don't want to go outside. And so I have also found that since it's been a couple of years, since I initially did this, I now will have days where it's just kind of gloomy outside. And I will put on some headphones and I will listen to an audio book, or I will listen to some music and I will just do one room at a time or maybe hall closets at a time or office at a time.
And um, I'll just declutter. And what I do when I'm going through this phase is I genuinely like to. Designate the back of my car for, or the back of my client's car for either bags or [00:05:00] boxes, whatever it is. And then when the back of the car is full, then you go to You know, Goodwill or Salvation Army or the dump, wherever it is that you need to go, but try and make a trip to Goodwill, Salvation Army, the dump or whatever habitat for, for humanity, whatever place that is nearest to your home and taking a trip once a week.
And what I find is it takes out a lot of the overwhelm of trying to get it all done in one day or one sitting or one weekend, and then it's more manageable. The other thing is you're pre planning how to give yourself actionable steps. The other thing [00:06:00] is a lot of us with ADHD and sometimes other neurodiversity, if it is not in where we can see it, then it doesn't exist.
And so it's often forgotten. And I personally have. I mean, Amazon probably loves me, but I have bought clear bins from Amazon, or I've gone to the containment store, or if I notice even at the dollar store or at Target when they, things go on clearance, I will grab clear bins of all different kinds of sizes.
And ways to open them. So sometimes it's an under the bed bin. That's clear. And if you pull it out, you can open one half or pull it the other way and you can open the other half. Um, I've gotten little bins that have slider drawers because I find [00:07:00] that. It's really easy to put medications in those bins and then I keep them where, cause I have kids that I give medications to, and then I also have medications that I take, right?
So I have those clear bins and they're stackable and there's drawers on them. I have them on the top of my tall dresser and I'll pull out the bin. Each kid has a bin and it makes things easy for me to remember to give medications to my kids because It's very obvious that when I go to get dressed right, there is the clear bins with the medications and I won't forget to give the kids their medications.
So that is a very beautiful thing. The other thing that's really notable is you can buy on Amazon or get at the [00:08:00] container store shoe boxes. And what I mean by this is they're actually clear shoe boxes that are stackable, and you can open the doors and pull out your pair of shoes. Now for the most part, they're for heels or stickers or flats.
Not boots. But you can always get the type of shoe rack that can accommodate for boots, but this has been so helpful to be able to organize my closet. I, I, I personally get totally overwhelmed and can't decide what to wear. What to wear. If I have too many clothes in my drawers or in my closet. So what I will do is I have bags.
You can get whatever kind of bag that you want, but some of them are vacuum bags. Other are cloth bags [00:09:00] that have clear sides and top so you can see what's in it. And then you take all of the clothes that are not in season and put them in the bags. So the only clothes that are in the closet and in the drawers are the clothes that are in season.
And I find that to be super helpful because it takes away from some of the decision fatigue. The other thing that I genuinely like, and this Maybe it's off topic a little bit, but I really like picking out my outfit the night before. And so I don't have to think about it in the morning. And so I will set out the outfit the night before.
Another aspect of decluttering and not. Having too many things lying about, I don't know if you guys have the same issue, but there might be a spot where you take clothes off [00:10:00] or say the clothes that you wore during the day or say your jammies or whatever it is, where that is the area that you take the clothes off and you tell yourself that you're going to either put them in the laundry.
Or you're going to hang them up back up or put them back in the drawer when you're done with them. But then you've noticed a week has gone by or two weeks has gone by and that pile is kind of big and you still haven't taken care of it. Giving yourself your internal boundary or your self boundary of, if you take it off, you put it away immediately.
Now that sounds very. hard for some of you and maybe sounds very easy for some of you. I am actually finding it's challenging. I have this tendency to want to take my clothes off and put them in a place and why I don't put them away. To be honest, I don't even know, I don't have a good explanation or reason other than [00:11:00] my ADHD brain says, take it off and put it in a nice pile.
I know a lot of you are laughing and you probably feel what I'm saying right now, but so true. The new. Boundary that I set for myself is if it takes less than two minutes, just do it. So if it takes less than two minutes to take the clothes and hang them up or throw them in the hamper, Then I'm going to do that. Another thing that we can talk about is say kitchen and cupboards in the kitchen. I can't tell you how many times I've had this conversation of how do I do all of the cupboards in the kitchen? And so what I say, if you have a cupboard in the kitchen, decide what you want each shelf to be and give kind of each shelf a theme.
For instance, you can have a [00:12:00] baking shelf, and a spice shelf, and a kids snack shelf, and a, whatever, oils and, , types of oils and baking things shelf, and Then with that you can subcategorize each of the shelves and put them in clear bins. So then when you are going through things, you can very clearly and easily pick out the clear bins, and they even have, very thin, long, clear bins.
So, for instance, if you wanna put spices on in clear bins, you can stack them backwards and then. Pull out just the spices or you can get little thicker ones that are longer to put say your oils in. So you have olive oil and avocado oil and canola oil, and maybe a shallot oil and a garlic infused [00:13:00] oil.
So they're all in the clear bins and you pull out the clear bin that just has the oils in it. You can also group different kinds of flour. For instance, in my home, I'm celiac, which I just found out by the way, you can group all of the typical types of flowers together. So almond flour, tapioca flour, put them in a bin together.
If you notice that you cook with those types of flowers together, right? And then maybe you have another bin that has. White sugar and brown sugar and coconut sugar and whatever else sweetener that you use. And that's in another bin together. And then that's on its own shelf. And then say you've got kids and you need to have a kid shelf.
What I did. And I don't know if it's just me, cause I have four neurodivergent kids and [00:14:00] all four of them have ADHD. Keeping bins is not a thing that they're going to do. But what I did do is I saved boxes to things. So if I got a chip box, that's one of those big ones from Costco, I cut it in half.
And so you can see everything that's in it. And I put that in the shelf and then I subcategory categorized everything. So say, for instance, I got a bunch of oatmeal, little packets. I cut off the top of the oatmeal. Box and I have all oatmeal in one box and then say I have popcorn in another box and then I have chips in another box.
And then I've got those little single serve macaroni and cheese and another box. So for my kids, I didn't. Get the clear, boxes bins for my kids. [00:15:00] Cause quite honestly, my kids would just get them dirty or break them. And this way, if one of the boxes is dirty, it's super easy.
I could just go by. Another chip box and cut it up and stick it in there and no harm. No foul, right? No emotion needs to be put in there, but it's also teaching my kids at an early age These are your snacks, here is where the bread is kept Here is where all of the peanut butter and honey and whatever else is kept and they can clearly see it, right?
So I find that to be helpful in the kitchen. Now, mail. We're going to talk about mail for a second, because this is a hot button for a lot of you. And I'm not saying that at a judgment because I'm one of those ones that have mail all over the place and I don't know what to do with it. So again, I've given myself the two minute rule.
I go through the [00:16:00] mail. I figure out what needs to be kept, what doesn't. And for me personally, a lot of the mail that I don't need just goes in the burn pile. We, I live in Seattle where it's cold most of the year. And I burn firewood all, nine months of the year. So I have a burn pile and I will just keep the mail in a box that gets burned.
And that makes things easier on me. And then as far as the important mail, I have a important mail that needs to be taken care of in the next couple of days. And then sub important mail that needs to be taken care of in the next week. And then another pile where mail needs to be filed.
Set an alarm or alarms to help me on those It's dreary days that I spoke [00:17:00] of to then take those, piles, the pile of mail that needs to be filed and go file those. And so I can help myself feel less cluttery. The other thing that I will really, really say that if you struggle with clutter, I find the less things that you have, the less clutter you will have in your house.
What I've really noticed when I'm coaching clients as they have multiples of the same things and deciding which one that they like the most and keeping that and getting rid of the other ones is helpful. If you have. Stacks and stacks of shelves that have lots of knickknacks while you might enjoy the knickknacks, it can be also kerfunkling, yes, that's an official word, [00:18:00] your brain.
So for me, I had all of these bookshelves and I had all of these knickknacks. I got rid of my bookshelves and I just have one, maybe two knickknacks. On each table, whether it's in my living room or in my room, and for me, that makes it more manageable to be able to keep clean and decluttered.
And then from there, it's just a maintenance situation. . I am not saying that my house is clean at all times and decluttered at all times. My clients that I have helped, we all go, there's the ups and the downs, right? That is a part of who we are and accepting that part is okay. And also continuing to work on it until you get to a level where you feel more [00:19:00] comfortable.
And then when you have that energy, that spike, or it's just a day where you're like, I'm going to stay in jammies all day long and I want to get some stuff done. That's when you put up the messy bun, you put your headphones on and you get through the clutter that you have currently. But when you continue to do this maintenance and you continue to pick certain days, maybe you put it on the calendar.
Maybe you pick a day of the week, maybe you pick a day of the month, or you tell yourself you're going to do it, the third Thursday of every month, whatever it is that you decide to do and you keep up on that maintenance, it makes the task and the job less daunting and less overwhelming. Glad that I get to talk to you about all of the things and I hope this helps all of you.
I love you all so very much. [00:20:00] Take care. Bye bye.
