Tips on How to De-Clutter Your Space for the ADHD mind.
With a new year, comes resolutions and goals for change and accomplishment. Big plans on how to make the year and yourself better than the year before - complete all those resolutions that you didn’t get to or finish in 2021.
Well, for the individual with ADHD (including me) this can be a daunting task, one that can bring on an overwhelming load of emotions and responses, including anxiety, depression, feelings of self-doubt, especially when that inner self-critic voices gets really loud. This can all lead to, and unfortunately often does, result in procrastination and disappointment, because some how you convince yourself it was way too much, you didn’t know where to start and so what was the point.
So, this ADD mind is here to share 2 simple tips on how you can start to de-clutter your space with minimizing the distress and disappointment and actually creating an achievable plan.
Tip 1: Start Small – if your end goal is to declutter your entire living/working space, that can be very overwhelming to figure out where to start. So instead, go from the big picture to the small space. Start with one room or even one section of that room – begin there. For example, my kitchen has always been a place that I always want to look organized and put together like those makeover shows, realistically probably not going to get nominated for a free remodel, so where can I start that is doable and lead to the same accomplishment.
I start with the drawers. Yes, we all have them, those drawers which are filled with all those extra cords, bits & pieces, and warranty booklets that we save cause, I just may need it one day. Okay, truth is that when it goes into that drawer, likely it isn’t coming back out. I started cleaning out my kitchen drawers and guess what I found – a CD disk of instructions from some pc programme I bought in 1995 (so sad). The main rule is if I haven’t used it in the last month or I can’t remember what it is for, it goes.
Tip 2: The 3 Bin Strategy – When taking on de-cluttering a more complex section of the house; your closet. It may not be as easy to start off small, however, it doesn’t mean that it can’t be done. It can be hard to de-clutter your closet, usually because it’s filled with items that have some emotional attachment, a memorial event, a size that you so wish to be again. Here you can utilize the 3 bins strategy. One bin for keeps, one for giveaways & one for trash. The bin with things for trash is usually easy, these are the zillions of t-shirts with strains, or ripped jeans, dresses that have frayed. The giveaway bin can be a bit more tricky; cause some of those items you really should be giving away, have those sentimental emotions linked to them – this is where you have to honest talk with yourself and acknowledge whether that item is better staying and you likely not wearing or going to someone who can also enjoy and make a precious memory in it on their own path; think of it as a way to pay it forward. Now the Keep Bin – can also go either way. Again, being honest with yourself, if it fits now, is still in style and you have worn in the last month, it’s a keeper. If it’s been hanging in the back of the closet waiting for the day to return that you can squeeze into it, nope pass it on to the giveaway bin so you can have space for something new and fun.
Hopefully y the end of the sorting, you should have decent number of things in the giveaway and throw away bins, than the keep bin; fingers crossed. And remember this doesn’t have to be a “I have to make these decisions all in one day project, if your closet is big enough to hold the bins/bags, give yourself a week or so to go through the items. Each time you go to get dressed, select a few more items for the bins, before you know it you would have gone through your entire closet & de-cluttered. Now make sure that once the task is done, the giveaway bin items are placed in the car for drop off and the throw away bin items out to the trash.
I hope that these two tips help you get a start on your 2022 de-cluttering projects and that you won’t feel as overwhelmed taking the project as before. Always remember, sometimes it is smaller steps that are needed to complete the big job.