A busted myth! Well, sort of.
It’s like that one show, only with no explosions… sorry about that.
If you’re an adult with attention deficit disorder, and you’ve given up all hope of ever having an organized home or office, it’s probably because you’ve fallen prey to one of the many myths about getting organized. Below are nine such myths, refuted by the truth of the matter — that getting organized is well within your capabilities, and not only will it save you time and money, but it will improve your physical and mental health.
1. Organizing takes too much time!
If you think organizing takes too much time, consider all the hours you’ve spent in your life looking for items that you’ve misplaced. If you added it all up, would it be days? Weeks? Months? If you take that same amount of time, right now, and spend it getting organized, you’ll be able to reclaim that time and use it to do something you enjoy.
2. Organizing is too expensive!
This time, think about all the times you’ve looked for an item and were unable to find it, so you had to go buy a replacement. Or think of all the times you’ve been at the store and thought to yourself, “I should pick up some X, because I don’t know if I have any at home and I don’t want to run out”.
When I organized my kitchen, I found several bottles of barely-used redundant household cleanser. When I organized my bedroom, I found a few dozen black sweaters. If your space isn’t organized, you tend to have too much stuff, which means you can’t keep track of what you have, which means you end up buying more.
3. I have ADHD. I can’t be organized!
I have ADHD, and I’m living proof that you can be organized. So are millions of other ADD adults who have found creative coping strategies to meet their organizational strategies. I know you’ve tried and failed to get organized in the past, and I know how demoralizing that is, but you CAN break through the chaos. Stick with me, kid, and you will.
4. I’ll have to get rid of all my favorite stuff!
This myth comes from prescriptive methods of organizing (see my post “the Three P’s: How Not To Get Organized”) in which an “expert” claims the right to tell you what what you do and don’t need to keep. The fact is that you are the only person who has the right – in fact, who has the capability – to decide what items you do and don’t need.
You will wind up getting rid of a lot of things, but believe me, this is accumulated junk that you really don’t want to hang onto. I call this stuff DTPOCAs (link to post), and once you have a handle on what these items are, you’ll be surprised by how many of them you have lying around, and how happy you are to see them go.
5. I’ll need to sacrifice beauty for efficiency when coming up with storage solutions.
This is another prescriptive organizing myth. The fact is that a storage solution you don’t like is a storage solution you won’t use. A solution you think is ugly, therefore, will NOT be efficient. You have the right, and the need, to find attractive solutions that you enjoy using.
6. Organization is an inborn talent. Some of us are born neat freaks, and some of us are born slobs. We just have to live with it!
It is true that some people are temperamentally inclined to be organized. But as with any other inborn trait, whether it be speech, music, or organization, the inborn talent means nothing until a person is taught the skills. Nobody is born knowing how to talk. Likewise, nobody is born knowing how to run a vacuum cleaner, how to do the dishes, or how to create and stick to a schedule of chores. People learn this skill from others, usually from their parents; given the heritability of ADD, chances are you didn’t learn this skill from yours (I know I didn’t!). That doesn’t mean you can’t teach it to yourself – and I’ve found that the things I’ve struggled to learn often become the most ingrained.
7. The right product will make me organized!
Getting organized is about creating a system that works for you. The right product will help you keep your system working smoothly, but the right system needs to come before the right product. Purchasing organization products before you create your system is one of the top three organization mistakes you can make.
8. I can just hire an organizer and a housekeeping service to do the work for me!
An organizer’s job is to help you create your own system. If your organizer comes in and simply puts a system in place for you, there’s a very good chance it won’t work, because in won’t take your needs and habits into account. An organizer’s job is as much about teaching you new skills as anything else.
Likewise, a housekeeper can be a great support for your organizing system. If you can afford it, and you don’t have time to do weekly housekeeping chores yourself, by all means hire a housekeeping service. However, it’s important to keep in mind that a domestic worker’s ability to help you will be limited by your home organization. A domestic worker will clean countertops, vacuum and mop the floors, ans scrub the toilet, but likely will not put things away that are left out. How could she? She doesn’t live there, and doesn’t know where things go. Items that are left lying around might be piled neatly, but if they look expensive or important they might not even be touched, and your housekeeper will have to work around them.
9. I’ve tried and failed too many times. I’m just doomed. DOOOOOOOMED!!!
You are NOT doomed.
I understand how you feel. I, too, once felt doomed as a dodo; doomed to a life of dust-choked chaos, doomed to constant clutter, and doomed to high doses of several different allergy meds. I believed that between my ADD and my allergies there was no way I could possibly organize and clean my home enough for it to be a healthy place to live.
Comments: Discuss Amongst Yourselves.