After spending much of June in the pit of blackest unemployment despair, I wound up with a job interview early this week.  I think it went well, but the company is interviewing a few other candidates, so I just have to wait and hope that they’re not as awesome as me.  But that’s not what [...]]]>

After spending much of June in the pit of blackest unemployment despair, I wound up with a job interview early this week.  I think it went well, but the company is interviewing a few other candidates, so I just have to wait and hope that they’re not as awesome as me.  But that’s not what I want to write about.  I want to write about the fact that if I hadn’t followed up on my application, I never would have had the interview at all.

When I applied for this particular job, I was answering an ad on Craigslist.  I followed the instructions and sent my resume and cover letter to the Craigslist-generated anonymizing email address at the top of the listing.  The listing said that not everyone would receive a response.  A week went by — no response.

Nonetheless, I took the precaution of sending a follow up email to the anonymizing Craigslist-generated email address.  I wrote that I had applied the previous week, and wanted to confirm that my resume had been received, and reiterated my interest in the position and the company.

I was expecting yet another rejection — but it turned out that my resume had gotten eaten somewhere along the line, and the company had never received it.  They asked me to send it again, and within 24 hours I had an interview!

Following up is something a lot of job seekers slack off about, and I suspect those numbers are higher among job seekers with ADD.  When you’re sending out a lot of resumes, it’s hard to keep track of where you sent them and when, and it’s easy to get bogged down in just sending out more resumes and cover letters instead of tracking down the ones you’ve already written.  It can also be hard to follow up, knowing that you might get rejected — and that this time it’s final and official.  In the long run, though, I’ve found that it’s best to know one way or another, so you can put your energy into finding new opportunities.

It's a work table with work on it, even.

This is exactly the kind of work I need to be able to do on this table.  I have [...]]]> Well, I did it.  After a year of allowing my kitchen table to become submerged under an ever-growing pile of random clutter, I finally reclaimed it:

It's a work table with work on it, even.

This is exactly the kind of work I need to be able to do on this table.  I have a large piece of handmade paper with flowers pressed into it, but it’s so delicate that the flowers are in constant danger of coming off.  I need to put down a layer of medium to make sure they stay put.

Here’s what the table looked like when I began:

Kitchen Table, Before

I started by separating everything into piles on the floor according to my categories. I discovered that I had five categories: art supplies, medications and first aid, cooking utensils, stuff to go upstairs, and papers to be filed. Since the rest of my home is pretty organized, dealing with these categories was pretty straightfoward — art supplies were put away in the studio area, first aid stuff in the medicine cabinet, and cooking utensils in the kitchen drawers.

The “upstairs” stuff had been the pebble that started the landslide, way back last Spring. I have a bunch of knick-knacks and stuff that I have no place to display, so I’m keeping them in a closet upstairs for now. For whatever reason, when I reorganized my studio last Spring, I didn’t ever get around to putting them away. As a result, the table started attracting random crap, and the situation snowballed.

This is an object lesson for a treacherous part of the organizing process. You see, by the time you’re about 90% done with your organizing project, you will stop, and you will take a look at what’s left to do. You will think to yourself, “I’m almost done. I’m tired, and I’m bored, and I’ll just finish this tomorrow.”

Well, don’t, because you won’t. You’ll forget about it, and pretty soon your chaos will be like you never tried to tame it. So learn from my sorry tale, kids, finish the job the first time.

The deadline in question was the final critique for my art class, a self-directed painting [...]]]> I haven’t been blogging much lately.  My offline life has been pretty hectic, as I mentioned in last week.  But I got through a great big deadline yesterday, so I hope to get back to blogging, organizing, and blogging about organizing.

The deadline in question was the final critique for my art class, a self-directed painting seminar in which the students basically pursue their own projects, only with the advantage of structure, feedback, and people to commiserate with.  It’s perfect for someone like me — I have an MFA, and while my draftsmanship leaves something to be desired, I don’t really need drawing and painting classes that focus on the basics.  As much as I love making art, though, I find that I don’t tend to do it unless I have some sort of structure supporting me.  I need to know that someone will be looking at what I make, that my teachers and classmates will wander over and check out where I’m taking my work.  Even if they don’t give me feedback, even if I ignore the feedback they do give me, the conversations inspire me to keep the art happening.

Which brings me to the end of class, which brings me to the state of my studio space:

The Artist's Studio, With Ladybug Cookie

I was working on three large projects at once, and ran out of room on my table, which was covered in jars of medium, pigment, collage materials, and my lap top, which I have to move whenever I work. So I grabbed an end table from the living room to work on (it cleverly nests under another end table most of the time, so I didn’t even have to clear crap off it first!). That end table wound up with jars of paint all over it (as well as my Spring Cleaning Ritual Candles and Feast, consisting of a cookie shaped like a ladybug). But since it was a small table, and the piece I was working on was large, there are also jars of paint all over the floor, and stacks of National Geographics everywhere, and other random art supplies, as well as a handful of books, and receipts, and other random things.  Seriously, you can walk in here without slipping on the slick surface of a National Geographic.

Only this isn’t the scary part.  This is the scary part:

It just keeps getting worse ...

I know … it looks much better than the first picture.  There are no bottles of paint, jars of medium, collage materials, tottering piles of National Geographics, or random bits of laundry.  But under that big brown piece of paper lurks … paperwork.

That’s right.  My studio, messy as it looks, was reorganized last Spring.  I created a system that’s basically functional.  The only thing I have to do is clear the table, clean the floor, and put things away.

But the kitchen table … that’s another story.

The kitchen table has a backstory.  You see, my partner and I are barbarians who tend to eat in front of the TV instead of at the kitchen table like civilized folk.  This is due in part to the fact that we like to watch TV.   But it’s also due to the fact that the kitchen table tends to become a workspace, whether I want it to be or not.  A few years ago I finally decided to own this; Stuart and I got a nice big coffee table for the living room, and we just eat dinner in there.

With the intent of using the kitchen table to expand my workspace, I was used it as a staging area during last year’s massive Spring Cleaning and reorganization project.  I took everything off the shelves in my art studio, spread them on the kitchen table, sorted them, and put them away.  Then I took everything off the nearby kitchen and pantry shelves, spread them on the kitchen table, sorted them, and put them away.  Then I got distracted.

The tiny pile of “homeless” items remained on my kitchen table.  Then it metastasized.  It acquired other homeless items as the months went on.  The scariest part is that it became a repository for my business receipts and paperwork … and those items are homeless because I don’t have a filing system set up yet, which means that I really need to bite the bullet and create a filing system.  This is going to be the biggest challenge of my organizing transformation.  Wish me luck.

Problem was, [...]]]> After my art lesson the other day, I stashed a few checks in my pocket like a usually do. Usually this isn’t a problem, and the checks mingle with odd receipts, and bits of cash, and my cell phone, to become what my sister terms a “pocket wad”. That’s right, we’re ladies!

Problem was, this was a new pair of jeans, and the pockets aren’t as deep as the ones in my old pair. When I went through my pockets today looking for the checks, I couldn’t find them anywhere.

It turns out that as pants get smaller, pockets likewise get smaller. I never had this problem when I was a size 18.

I had to e-mail my clients and tell them to cancel the checks because I’d lost them. This is an inconvenience to them, and I felt bad about that, and to make it worse I just felt like a total idiot. It wouldn’t have taken that much longer to put the checks in my wallet. But of course, I would have had to unzip my bag, and open my wallet, and put the checks inside it, and close the wallet, and then close my bag. That’s FOUR MORE STEPS than just stuffing them in my pocket! Damn, where will I find the time?

I’m trying to talk myself out of feeling like such a jerk. I read somewhere that people with ADHD tend to overemphasize their negative experiences and thoughts in favor of their positive ones. Maybe that’s why I’m having such a hard time telling myself that this kind of thing happens to everyone, and it’s not the end of the world, that my clients won’t suddenly think of me as an incompetent art teacher, and above all that canceling a check is really not that big a deal because banking is done online these days. It takes about 30 seconds to do a transaction, all without leaving your chair, or even picking up the phone.

Sigh.

There are still some things I need to get rid of, like the pile of curtain rods, which have been sitting there for like 6 years, but that’s a simple matter of putting them [...]]]> Yay!  Within 48 hours of posting my bike and all its random accessories on Craigslist, it has been removed from my entryway.

There are still some things I need to get rid of, like the pile of curtain rods, which have been sitting there for like 6 years, but that’s a simple matter of putting them outside with a sign on them that says “free”.

The bike managed to take up way more space than it seemed it should, given that it’s just a bike and all.  Now that it’s gone, there’s room to put the catbox in the corner.  It’s no longer the first thing guests see when they arrive.  Classy, here I come!

Here was the entryway last fall, before I started organizing it:

My Entryway, In Former Times

Here is the same view, a mere six months later:

My Entryway, Today

The cat box is now in the corner, instead of front and center in that big open space right in front of the door. I’m still planning to get a folding screen or something to hide it a little better:

The floor still needs to be cleaned, but it's much better with the cat box in the corner

Well, it took awhile, but now I feel mighty. With the Equinox this weekend, and the extra hour of daylight in the evening, I’m feeling ready to do more Spring Cleaning.  I’ll write it up here.

One of the things on my to [...]]]> If you’ve ever wondered why the ADD adult in your life can’t seem to get things done in a timely manner, perhaps the following tale will shed some light.  The moral, for those of you who want the Cliff’s Notes version, is that sometimes it pays NOT to optimize.

One of the things on my to do list today was to order some slides online.  There’s a cool site called iPrintFromHome that does digital slides (and prints, and giclees, and stuff like that) if you upload your jpegs.  My art teacher is requiring us to show slides this term, so I had to make some, and since I have to show them next week, I needed to place the order today.

I was uploading about a dozen high-resolution jpegs (at least, I HOPE they were the high res versions … and that can take awhile for a computer to do.  I wouldn’t have ADHD if I tolerated boredom, you know, AT ALL, so I decided to do something else with the time — namely, start building a blogroll for this blog.  I congratulated myself on taking advantage of some dead time, and started building a blogroll.

Time passed, as I clicked through the blogs I like, looking for relevant content and links to other relevant content.  Then my browser crashed (Firefox doesn’t like it when you’re running 35 tabs in two windows, apparently) and I had to restart my computer to get it running again.  Only it didn’t start running again; it rebooted and instantly froze.  I tried closing the windows several times, and eventually I guess it thawed enough to actually quit … and then I restarted my browser, again.

By that time my husband was online, and we got to discussing his upcoming job change, which reminded me that since his new job will require him to take a pay cut, I’ll need to hustle for a day job to make ends meet.  That, in turn, reminded me I should really work on my resume.  So I did that for awhile.  After saying that I possess Excellent Written and Oral Communication Skills (doesn’t everyone say that?) I went looking for a different word to use to describe my “visual and artistic skills” … and opened thesaurus.com in a new tab … and realized that I was supposed to have my slides done three hours ago.

I got my pictures uploaded and the slides ordered.  I looked up when I can expect my order to arrive.  I found out that they do same day shipping if you place your order by 6 pm Eastern.  If I’d just patiently waited while my jpegs loaded the slides would have shipped today.  I hope that that it won’t cost me too much time to have them ship tomorrow, but I’ve been burned by FedEx Ground before.

Adults with ADD are notorious for hanging onto clutter.  We’ve being scolded our whole lives for loosing things through our carelessness.  If we never throw anything a way, we know it’s there … somewhere.  We might not be able to find it right now, [...]]]>

Oscar has no problem with trash -- he LOVES trash!

Adults with ADD are notorious for hanging onto clutter.  We’ve being scolded our whole lives for loosing things through our carelessness.  If we never throw anything a way, we know it’s there … somewhere.  We might not be able to find it right now, but we know we didn’t lose it!  It’s just misplaced, right?  We can find it here … somewhere … even if it takes eight hours to do it.

For years, that was my major motivation in hanging on to every little worthless piece of junk.  I didn’t know what was important, and I didn’t know when I might need it, so I might as well hang onto it.  My clutter was an allergy-inducing, frustrating eyesore, but there was security in it too.  The security that whatever it was, I probably had it around here … somewhere.

And so, the hardest part of my organizing journey was the purge — getting rid of things I didn’t need.

The “give away” category was bad enough.  Intellectually, I knew that I didn’t need the cheap set of cookware I’d bought in college, but emotionally, I was convinced that if I donated them, I’d be looking for them a month later.  But with the giveaway pile, I was able to reason with myself.  I could tell myself that I hadn’t used those things in years, and that someone else would be getting good use from them.  Giving them away was a good thing for everybody.

But putting items into the “trash” category, and then actually putting them in the actual trash — that was the worst.

Items that qualified as “trash” were pretty numerous.  “Trash” included anything that was broken.   “Trash” included anything that was missing a part, and  anything that was clearly a part to something else, but I didn’t know what.  “Trash” included anything that was too dirty to use.  “Trash” included leaking, duplicate, and triplicate cleaning supplies in various states of emptiness.

So into the trash went the four bottles of different types of eco-friendly household cleaner (I kept two bottles to have on hand).  Into the trash went the non-stick cook wear that was scratched and peeling. Likewise all those coffee mugs with broken handles, that I’d been meaning to glue together for years. Then there were the cheap plastic bowls and plates and silverware that I’d inherited in college from graduating seniors, all of which was stained or cracked or even melted.

Even though these items were useless, it was hard for me to toss them.  I felt like I should be able to “come up with a use” for them.  Many of the items couldn’t even be recycled, and I felt guilty about having so much garbage.  I didn’t want to be another greedy, wasteful American, my home bursting at the seams with unused purchases that were destined for overflowing landfills.

Fortunately, I had my clutter buddy.  This was an area where really be a realty check.   She reassured me it was OK to throw things out when they’re broken and useless.  She pointed out holding onto my worthless junk would in no way solve our collective cultural problems with waste.  Most importantly, she explained that by throwing away all that garbage, I’d be able to keep better track of what I owned.  I would buy fewer things overall, and therefore I would be less wasteful overall.

We ended our day by taking several trips to the curb with my garbage.  Then we hit Goodwill with several bags full of donations.  I felt bruised.  I felt embarrassed about the years worth of junk we had found in my kitchen — in the place where I prepared and served food.  I felt guilty about the waste I had generated.  And I felt bereft, too; bereft of the items I was giving up, however useless, because of the security they represented to me.

This time was the scariest part in my organizing process.  Not only had I just undergone a Great Purge, but I would have to wait another week before really putting my kitchen back together.  Since no other part in my home was organized, it was necessary to designate an area on the kitchen floor for items that would ultimately belong in the kitchen, but wouldn’t have a “home” there until we’d organized more than the food prep area. This pile would be kept off to the side of the dining area so nothing would get stepped on.  I was terrified that it would wind up staying there forever.  But I took a deep breath, scheduled a decluttering session with my buddy for the following week, and turned to the next step in the process: the Sorting.

One of the most popular New Year’s resolutions, year in and year out, is to “get organized”.  According to the National Association of Professional Organizers, who polled more than 400 adults last November, 71% of respondents felt that their quality of [...]]]> It’s the New Year, and that means New Year’s it’s time for New Year’s resolutions.

One of the most popular New Year’s resolutions, year in and year out, is to “get organized”.  According to the National Association of Professional Organizers, who polled more than 400 adults last November, 71% of respondents felt that their quality of life would improve if they were more organized.  65 percent described their home as “at least moderately disorganized”, and 27 percent said disorder keeps them from being effective at work.  Furthermore, 96 percent of respondents believe that better organization could save them precious time every day, with 30 percent of respondents reporting that they could save at least 30 minutes each day, and 15 percent of respondents felt they could save more than an hour each
day.

To put that in perspective, 30 minutes a day adds up to a whole week every year.  An hour a day adds up to fifteen days — that’s more than two weeks — each year.

If you’re an adult with ADD, chances are that you’re more disorganized than most, and that getting organized will be more of a challenge than it might be for other folks.  You may have started your New Year’s organizing resolution and gotten stuck.  Fortunately, you don’t have to go it alone.  The Adult ADD declutter group, in association with addclasses.com, is meeting for the next three weeks to provide an online chat forum to support its members in decluttering.  The cost is $147 for three classes, but if you sign up by January 8th, it’s only $47.

I’ve had good luck with long-distance group coaching in the past.  It tends to work best if you’ve already gotten a toe-hold in your organizing project; for instance, if you know what you need to know, but are having trouble motivating yourself, or if you’ve already set up a system that you need to maintain.  So check it out, and good luck!