I’ve been hanging out on the Women with ADHD Ning, and recently one of the members mentioned that she’d never really fit in with “the girls”.  Several more of members chimed in about how they’d never felt “feminine”.  It seems that a lot of women with ADD are just no good with the girly stuff.

It’s [...]]]>

I’ve been hanging out on the Women with ADHD Ning, and recently one of the members mentioned that she’d never really fit in with “the girls”.  Several more of members chimed in about how they’d never felt “feminine”.  It seems that a lot of women with ADD are just no good with the girly stuff.

It’s not surprising, really.  A femme has to be organized.  She needs to get her hair cut regularly, and she needs to leave time to style it every morning, and then she needs to do her make-up.  She needs to shop for coordinated, fashionable, flattering outfits, which can mean buying more bras than I’ve ever seen in one place to go with different necklines and silhouettes.  Then she has to get up in the morning early enough to put all of this together.   If you have ADD, you’re lucky to be heading off to work with matching shoes.  We need to keep it simple just to stay sane.

For instance, take my wardrobe (please!).  Clothes are one of the areas of my life that I streamline for time-management purposes.  I don’t spend a ton of time shopping or dressing.  To this end, my couture consists of five t-shirts and a single pair of jeans that are all way too big.  But what the heck, I have a belt, which means my pants stay up.   It’s all good.

Most of the time, this works pretty well for me … except that I’m going to France next month, and people there dress up a little more, and I don’t want to stick out like the Ugly American.  On a more practical level, I need some clothes that dry quickly, and my giant pair of jeans is not that.

And that means it’s time to shop for Pants.  The dreaded, dreaded pants.

Allow me to digress into an anecdote.  I used to work for a major outdoor retailer.  Many of the women who shopped with us were marathoners, triathletes, and century cyclists.  What I’m getting at here is that they are not your stereotypical chubby Americans.  They are not marshmallows.  They are athletes in prime physical condition.

And yet, every single woman who shopped at the store where I worked would come out of the dressing room with a dozen pairs of pants.  “I’m really sorry”, she’d say as she handed them to me. “I don’t want to make you restock all these, it’s just that none of them fit.  I’m sorry.  I must be a mutant or something”.

At the time, I was a good sixty pounds overweight, and pants shopping was a nightmare.  I assumed that it was because I was fat; for some reason, a lot of stores — my employer included — seem to assume that fat people don’t exercise or go outdoors.  By their standards, I was the mutant.  Right?

But if that were true, why were all these fit, athletic women struggling to fit into pants?

The answer is that Pants are Evil.

Pants, you see, don’t fit any woman, at all ever.  At least, not until her spirit has been broken by trying on the 30th pair in four hours, and even then, only if she’s lucky.  It has nothing to do with how fat or thin a woman is.  It has to do with the fact that she’s a woman who dares to shop for Pants.

Back then, I was a size 20.  When I started working at that store, nothing we sold off the rack fit me (I had to go to the website for extended sizes, and even then it was a maybe).  Shopping for pants was a miserable, horrible experience that made me feel like a short, fat blob of blobbiness.  I was sure that if I could get into shape, lose some weight, everything would be different.

Now that I’ve gotten into shape, shopping for pants is a miserable, horrible experience that makes me feel like a short, fat blob of blobbiness.  I’m a size 8, or 10, or 12, depending on who’s asking.  There’s actually one retailer’s size chart where I’m an 8 in the hips, a 10 in the waist, and a 12 in the bust — except of course that size 12 shirts haven’t fit me in six months.  Except that one time, when it did.  And I recently had to return a size 8 I ordered because it was too big.   Of course, it should go without saying that whatever pants I get are 5 inches too long.

Talking to those athletic women who came out of our fitting rooms with armsfull of pants should’ve given me a clue.

However, heading outside can be also [...]]]> A lot of people with ADHD find that they love being outside.  Personally, I feel like my ADD vanishes the minute I leave civilization.  I’m usually the first one to spot wildlife, catch birdsong, or to notice a change in the weather.  Maybe there’s something to that whole Hunter/Farmer thing.

However, heading outside can be also be intimidating if you have ADD.  We forget things a lot, and when we’re packing to go out into the wilderness, that can be a scary prospect.  If you’re traveling to Paris and you forget your water bottle, you can buy another one.  If you’re traveling the John Muir Trail and you forget your water bottle, you might be toast.

Well, my buddy Deb Lauman, aka Ramkitten, has just the thing for you.

Ramkitten befriended me when I was brand-new to the communities over at Squidoo.com and Tagfoot.com.  It turned out she’s an avid hiker (as serious as I would like to be, but am not) and had recently visited my favorite place on earth, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.  She’s also a Search And Rescue volunteer.

Her SAR work made her realize how many rescue situations could be prevented if people set out with the proper equipment.  This led her to invent the 24-Hour Pack.  It’s a day pack that comes pre-packed with all the supplies to get you through a night in the wilderness if you find yourself unexpectedly stranded.

The keyword there is “unexpected”.  Nobody Ramkitten has ever rescued expected to be lost, hypothermic, dehydrated — or, in the most tragic cases, dead.   Fortunately, many of her missions end happily.  Deb blogs here about why she never feels silly carrying her 24-Hour Pack, even when she’s only expecting to be gone for a 20 minute walk.

I’ve got to admit, I’m not always as cautious as I should be, and I know better.   I’m an experienced backwoods canoe camper.  I’ve been a wilderness guide and a Girl Scout leader.  But I still take chances I shouldn’t.  Let’s be real; I have ADD.  I’m impulsive.  When I’m outside, I hate to sit still … which means I’m constantly fighting the inclination to head out farther and in worse weather than I really should.

Ramkitten’s writing has gotten me thinking deeply about the precautions I need to take next time I head out on a hike, even if it’s just up crowded Mt. Tam.  If you’re an ADHD hiker you should check out the following:

Hikers: Common Mistakes to Avoid If you think you know everything about hiking, you don’t.

The 24 Hour Pack: Hike Smart, Be Prepared, Be Safe If you’ve already got a day pack or three, read this article about what to put in it to make your own 24 Hour Pack.

The PRE-Pack: A Pre-Equipped Day Pack for Hikers New to hiking?  Lost your gear in a flash flood?  Let Deb do the work for you.  And remember to read Common Mistakes To Avoid before you head out!

Yesterday I started the fifth step of organizing the entryway: Containerizing. Earlier in the week I went to The Container Store to get supplies. I got two clear acrylic sweater drawers, a set of matching clear dividers, and two plastic bins to try out [...]]]> Welcome back to the series, “How to Organize an Entryway”.

Yesterday I started the fifth step of organizing the entryway: Containerizing. Earlier in the week I went to The Container Store to get supplies. I got two clear acrylic sweater drawers, a set of matching clear dividers, and two plastic bins to try out as backpack storage.

Here’s the closet before containerizing:

The Closet, Before Containers

The cold-weather hats, gloves, and scarves, are in a leaning stack, threatening to topple out of their stop-gap container. The backpacks are in a pile on the floor of the closet. Some of the everyday hats are in boxes, but the others are stacked on top.

The cold-weather accessories have a home, but it’s not a good one; the backpacks don’t really have a home at all.
I know from personal experience that if this continues, the piles will eventually metastasize and merge. Pretty soon we’ll be back where we started — with a big pile of vests, gloves, backpacks, and hats on the floor of the closet.

Clockwise from top right: scarves and gaiters, hats, gloves and liners, ear-warmers

I put the spare vests in one of the sweater drawers. Next, I put the drawer dividers in the other sweater drawer, and used it for cold weather accessories. Gloves and gaiters have a space, hats have a space, gloves and liners have a space, and my ear warmers have a space.

My next task was to solve my backpack problem. We have three day packs in different sizes as well as a fanny pack. Depending on where we’re going and how long we’re going to be out, we might need to take a different pack — the large internal frame packs for rugged hikes or short overnight trips, or the small ultralight day pack and the fanny pack if it’s short hike and we’re just carrying water.

The back packs have never had a home assigned to them before. They wind up in whatever closet is most convenient, stuff gets piled on top of them, and then we need to use them we have to do a mad search. I decided that the ideal way to handle this was to find a way for them to stand up on end in the entryway closet, almost like vertical files. But how would I do this?

Since I was at a loss, I took up the first offer of help extended to me by a friendly Container Store employee. I described the problem to her. She thought for a minute, and then her eyes lit up. “I’ve got it!” she said. “Come with me.”

I followed her to a corner of the store I’d never noticed before. “This is all stuff that’s on clearance, either because it’s been discontinued or damaged out. A lot of what winds up here are bins that don’t have lids. If you stand your packs up on end, the container will keep them from falling over, but you don’t need a lid — so why pay for a lid?”

SCORE! I found two possible candidates, both at 70% discounts. I decided to take them home and try them both. I could either return the one I didn’t need, or use it to solve another organizing problem.

The smaller of the two containers turned out to be perfect for the back packs. They all fit, standing up on end, and they’re clearly visible, allowing us to grab a pack and go. What’s more, the day packs now have an obvious, official home assigned to them, making it easier to put them away after hiking.

Containerized closet! Everything is visible, accessible, and easy to put away.

So there you have it. A neatly containerized closet. So my entryway is done, right?

Well, no.

Remember, I still have some used clothes to mend, alter and sell. I also promised myself I’d sell the old bike I never ride. And then there are the casual hats, living unsustainably in bins in the corner of the closet … oh yeah, and there’s the cat box, still in front of the door, which I need to move to the side. In order for my entryway to be “done”, it needs to be functioning more or less the way I want it to. Here’s what I need to do to make that happen:

1) Sell or donate bike, accessories, and skis
2) Sell or donate used clothing
3) Alter clothes that need to be hemmed or taken in
4) Solve hat storage problem — wall mount hat cubbies, perhaps?
5) Move cat box to the left of the door
6) Get shoji screen to put in front of cat box
7) Consider whether the entryway needs a “mission control” area — a place for bags, keys, library books, outgoing mail?

I’m giving myself a deadline of November 20th to deal with the sale/donation items and the alteration/mending items. If I haven’t listed the items by then, I’m calling up the VVA and arranging a donation. As long as I’m setting deadlines, wouldn’t it be nice if I could have company over the Thanksgiving holiday, and not have them greeted by the cats’ litter box as they walk in the door? I think I’ll set the goal of fixing the cats’ litter area by Thanksgiving weekend. As for the hat storage, I’ll keep looking for a solution, and hopefully I’ll find one by the end of the month.

Will Addy reach her goals? Will she sell her used stuff like she’s been meaning to, and make a few extra bucks, or will she slack off donate it to the VVA? Will her cats’ litter box we greeting her guests until the end of time? TUNE IN NEXT WEEK FOR THE CONTINUING SAGA OF … THE ENTRY WAY!!!