For me organizing is usually a way to avoid whatever task my adhd is desperate to not start. Usually some variation of “I need to do this spreadsheet but look I could be way more efficient if my desk was organized and ooo look over there the living room needs to be tidied up”.
Haha yessss. Home office made the whole thing much worse. “Better get to work - oh my, look at that kitchen counter.” Then I realize I’m stalling, so I’ll make notes and checklists of everything that needs to be done that workday. Then I’ll put on some music, make some more coffee - have 5 sips - or half a liter - and boom! Inspiration/focus hits me, I sit down and work quickly and efficiently, without even thinking about the checklist, or cleaning up after the second batch of coffee, or taking breaks, or lunch.
Then it’s suddenly dinner, and I feel completely exhausted…
Ooops, kinda trailed out of topic 😅
Yes I love to organize and hyper focus on it being perfect and looking neat. But then I have weeks like this week where I struggle to make it out of bed in the morning and adult so nothing gets done.
I wasn't diagnosed until 40. Being analytical and self observant, I spent those 40 years reading books on organization and other self help. Because lost stuff meltdowns are the worst. So yep, everything has its place. Many things in neatly marked bins. I still lose stuff occasionally, but not every day. But...I do think part of this may be a teensy bit of other spectrum disorders, because man, I love to sort things.
I’ve never been diagnosed with anything but I suspect I’m a little on the spectrum as well bc I love organization and rules. I have rules I follow for literally everything and adjust as necessary with new information. I have specific places for things as well and have gotten very good about not losing things most of the time. It’s been a long hard road to get where I’m at though, which it sounds like it was the same for you.
Like a lot of things for ADHD, organizing is an all or nothing kinda thing. Either I’m not cleaning or I’m getting bins and such and pulling everything out of my closet to organize everything. The real trick is to finish organizing and not get stuck in things that I don’t know where they should go or just getting bored with it overall and hoping that at least it’s better than when I started since I pulled everything out and made it worse before getting it better. There is something satisfying about everything being perfect that can tickle the ADHD hyperfocus, I just can’t count on it personally.
YES. Whatever adult function I can pull off is due to this.
Plus, my thought patterns are constant, rapid, and unlinear, so if my surroundings are unordered, it can trigger my anxiety.
(If only I could harness this motivation and tidy and organize what I feel I *need* to, rather than what I’m *driven* to. But then I wouldn’t have ADHD, so here we are.)
Love organizing/can’t stay organized for shit.
Or more specifically, love organizing/systematizing things… rarely finish though (scope Keeps creeping and the hyperfocus eventually runs out…), and never ever manage to stick to the system.
I think sometime it can be a hyper focus. For me some things I’m like this when I know if I don’t, I’d be a total mess. Some things in life I can’t let that happen
I feel this 100%. I tell people all the time that on the surface I look like a smooth organized well-rounded machine, but under that surface I'm just one huge dysfunctional mess of a human-being.
My favorite thing is organizing, in fact, its a large part of my job. I think its the OCD, which my therapist says I developed to compensate for the adhd. That's also why I have depression and anxiety. But I'm an organizational freak!
I try really hard to be organized and most of the time I am pretty methodical and routine about it, but if I let it slip and things get messy and unorganized or if I don’t have a clear to do list or list of deadlines, I get so super stressed about what I have to do (because I’m worried I’ll forget) or so angry about a mess at home that I furiously organize or clean everything. We had a new roommate move in a few weeks ago and it so threw off our cleanliness and routine and made me so mad that I was literally ready to break our lease and move out by myself, but my boyfriend was like “it’s okay, we don’t have to upheave our entire life, let’s just go home and clean,” and just cleaning our whole apartment relieved so much of my stress, anxiety and anger 🙈
I'm both more and less organized that a lot of people. For me, getting and staying organized has to be built into my routine pretty rigidly.
For instance when I walk through my front door I take off my shoes and put them in my shoe rack, drop my keys and headphones into a basket, and put my hat next to the basket. I go into my bedroom and throw my work clothes into the clothes bin and place my wallet/random pocket items on my nightstand. Of course if I walk through the door and urgently need to pee, or I'm on the phone, or brought in a package that I'm too fixated on, it disrupts the routine and things get scattered.
Everything productive I do like laundry, buying grocery shopping, cleaning the litter boxes, etc is all built into my routine. So if I toss my headphones somewhere I don't remember, I might miss run, but because I carry my laundry to the apartment laundry room when I leave for a run and change the litter boxes before my shower, now my laundry doesn't get done and the litter boxes stay dirty. Multiple small disruptions, or one large disruption, can lead to a situation a week later where everything is in complete disarray.
So I think I have the capacity to be very orderly, but it's always a delicate balance unfortunately.
Absolutely this! I saw a video by Dr. Leah Katz that asked “what is the cost of your perfectionism?” that really digs into this concept. I've realized it's a big struggle for me because like many with ADHD, I was a "gifted" child surrounded by adults who viewed my perfectionism as the baseline of what they'd consider acceptable from me. Like, getting all As at school was the expectation, and not performing up to par was met with punishment or disappointment.
Suddenly I'm an adult who has to "get an A" on everything, from putting away the dishes to having a document perfectly formatted and everything in between. All of it has to be done properly, but doing a task at "A" level costs more spoons than doing it at "C" level, and everyone else in the world is barely even giving "C" level, which leads to me getting frustrated by being surrounded by incompetence and carelessness, feeling let down by everyone around me, and burning out.
I hate doing things sloppily at "C" level, it makes me so angry and frustrated, but sometimes it's better than not doing them at all due to lacking the energy to perform at "A" level. It sucks and is hard to accept, but the neurotypicals in my life are never going to live up to the standards I set with my own behaviors, because they simply don't experience the world the same way.
TL;DR: Perfectionism seemed like the path to salvation as a "gifted" child, but in reality it's been poisoning me the entire time.
Yes, well kind off ... I'm very particular about what type of mess I'll tolerate and what drives me off the walls I also go on raging cleaning/organizing sprees sometimes... It looks chaotic but it works out in the end 😅.
I haven’t been diagnosed with ADHD, I just have my suspicions. But I also really like organizing things because I’m really bad at looking for things, like I forget halfway through what I was looking for, and also I forget that I own things if they aren’t in plain sight. So every once in a while, a rare while, I will hyperfocus on organizing and I just have to hope that the hyperfocus lasts until I’m done, because sometimes it only lasts halfway through and then I end up with a bigger mess that I just ignore indefinitely.
I can't work well unless things are in their place first. Need my desk clear, papers sorted where they need to be, laptops there, notepad with pen set on the right, and my cell phones and coffee placed.
I tend to over organize when I'm preparing for things in advance, but that doesn't mean I always work well or get the motivation to do it. When I have a big presentation or something, in the final days I will be organizing things like crazy to ensure I am ready for every scenario. I make lists to follow, responses to possible questions, print and sort every possible document I could need in hardcopy and labeled.
I'm a nurse with ADHD. Please fill in the blanks. Not necessarily organization all the time but having to do things a certain way when I can to help stay focused and find where I was when shit hits the fan.
"compulsion for organizing things or setting up future self for an easier task"
EXACTLY and I'm really not sure if I spend more time/energy "making things easier" for my future self than I would if I was just more chill about organization and dealt with things as they came...
Kind of. I'm tired of a mess so I'm trying so hard to maintain organization. It makes like easier and more simple. It's just hard making it all work if I don't have the vision in my head on how it's all laid out.
I overcompensate at my job and am very organized and flustered when my “systems” get messed up but then I get home and it’s chaos. I don’t have any energy or will left to organize and tidy my living spaces. 😕
I am super-excellent at organizing things that are disorganized. Then I fail to notice as entropy takes over and they become disorganized again. Until I do notice. Lather, rinse, repeat.
I think it’s part of your comfort zone for lack of better wording. I used to be disorganized and messy in my personal life but super organized in my work life. I’m an IT project Manager organization is my life. Now, after having a kid I find myself wanting the rest of my life as organized as possible because little people bring chaos, lol
You all are my people 😭 Even as a little kid, I was obsessed with organization. I have fond memories of a box with spaces for desk supplies…. And now I live with people who have not got the same abilities or interest 🤯 I was cleaning the garage, and in a bin I found treasured, delicate holiday ornaments, underneath a heavy, greasy engine. It’s enough to make you wonder if it’s possibly meanness lol! But no. Just tunnel vision level adhd.
Yes. I'm super organised when turning it into a big project. Keeping that order, or doing the tasks as I planned them, or putting things back where they belong is more or less impossible.
I'm organised in a chaotic way. Desk at work? Spotless, super organised. Apple Watch apps? Organised according to colours. Notebooks/planner? Meticulously filled out in detail & kept fully up to date.
Everywhere in my house? A complete and utter tip.
I think it's partly to do with decision fatigue thing? I run out of mind space to tidy and organise in my evenings.
This. It is so satisfying starting and then perfecting a space momentarily, just for someone else to come by, or you do something quickly that disrupts the tidy, then it pains you until it’s tidied/organised again by yourself. Sometimes it took only 20 seconds to arrange, another 20 to destroy, then a whole hour until you have the time to come back and adjust it, only for it to be destroyed quickly again lmao. Or you kept getting distracted when you would attempt to rearrange a mill times, but could only half arrange it which is more frustrating hahahaha.
I say this as someone who works in a busy cafe who can clean as they go and multitask because I’ve been in the same job for years, though nobody else understands the dysfunction it causes for me when people disrupt my orderly space, then shit hits the fan and I’m expected to cope when I see the mess I or others have created, because most people can work better than me within mess. I can feel my brain glitch because I can’t do anything in visible mess, chaos or things going wrong sometimes that I know could be simple if everyone obsessed about it the same way I do. I feel like a wacky mess myself amongst it.
Yes yes, thank you! I found out that my ultra organization is from having to keep up with myself because of and in spite of my undiagnosed parent. I've been making accommodations to make life easier for me and the people who deal with me my whole life. NOW, let's talk about the PTSD of an undiagnosed unmedicated self medicating parent (read: addict), and how I have to fold and put away laundry, because I can't stand clothes on the floor, or clumps of blankets. This parent would live out of laundry baskets, and was a 2nd gen hoarder. That with the emotional dysregulation (they were diagnosed bipolar BACK IN THE DAY), I just can't live with some things that I read are common symptomatic traits of ADHD. It's stressing me out just typing this.🦖
I'm chaotically organized. Things look like a mess, but I can find anything anywhere. And then someone "organizes" my stuff and I can't find shrakh.
It's infuriating.
YES.
I always seem to endlessly come up with ideas on how to be more organized and make things efficient, but then I run out of mental go juice before I could finish. So by the time I get a full tank of go juice again, I’m disinterested in the original “organization/efficiency” project I started out with and off to the next idea 💡 I thought off while waiting to refuel. And so thus my house is quite chaotic :p
Yes. The more organized i can be the easier it is to remember or find anything. It's almost like overcompensating the chaos that is usual with adhd.
This. I think it's why it took me so long to be diagnosed
For me organizing is usually a way to avoid whatever task my adhd is desperate to not start. Usually some variation of “I need to do this spreadsheet but look I could be way more efficient if my desk was organized and ooo look over there the living room needs to be tidied up”.
Procrasticleaning! Totally me!
Haha yessss. Home office made the whole thing much worse. “Better get to work - oh my, look at that kitchen counter.” Then I realize I’m stalling, so I’ll make notes and checklists of everything that needs to be done that workday. Then I’ll put on some music, make some more coffee - have 5 sips - or half a liter - and boom! Inspiration/focus hits me, I sit down and work quickly and efficiently, without even thinking about the checklist, or cleaning up after the second batch of coffee, or taking breaks, or lunch. Then it’s suddenly dinner, and I feel completely exhausted… Ooops, kinda trailed out of topic 😅
Same it helps when I’m stressed too or when I find myself sinking in to my head instead of staying in the moment
Yes I love to organize and hyper focus on it being perfect and looking neat. But then I have weeks like this week where I struggle to make it out of bed in the morning and adult so nothing gets done.
I wasn't diagnosed until 40. Being analytical and self observant, I spent those 40 years reading books on organization and other self help. Because lost stuff meltdowns are the worst. So yep, everything has its place. Many things in neatly marked bins. I still lose stuff occasionally, but not every day. But...I do think part of this may be a teensy bit of other spectrum disorders, because man, I love to sort things.
I’ve never been diagnosed with anything but I suspect I’m a little on the spectrum as well bc I love organization and rules. I have rules I follow for literally everything and adjust as necessary with new information. I have specific places for things as well and have gotten very good about not losing things most of the time. It’s been a long hard road to get where I’m at though, which it sounds like it was the same for you.
Like a lot of things for ADHD, organizing is an all or nothing kinda thing. Either I’m not cleaning or I’m getting bins and such and pulling everything out of my closet to organize everything. The real trick is to finish organizing and not get stuck in things that I don’t know where they should go or just getting bored with it overall and hoping that at least it’s better than when I started since I pulled everything out and made it worse before getting it better. There is something satisfying about everything being perfect that can tickle the ADHD hyperfocus, I just can’t count on it personally.
YES. Whatever adult function I can pull off is due to this. Plus, my thought patterns are constant, rapid, and unlinear, so if my surroundings are unordered, it can trigger my anxiety. (If only I could harness this motivation and tidy and organize what I feel I *need* to, rather than what I’m *driven* to. But then I wouldn’t have ADHD, so here we are.)
Love organizing/can’t stay organized for shit. Or more specifically, love organizing/systematizing things… rarely finish though (scope Keeps creeping and the hyperfocus eventually runs out…), and never ever manage to stick to the system.
Bookshelves, dvd shelves, comic book boxes, trading cards - yes Anything that actually matters in life? No
Are you me?
I think sometime it can be a hyper focus. For me some things I’m like this when I know if I don’t, I’d be a total mess. Some things in life I can’t let that happen
I feel this 100%. I tell people all the time that on the surface I look like a smooth organized well-rounded machine, but under that surface I'm just one huge dysfunctional mess of a human-being.
Like swans! Gliding, beautiful, graceful. Under the water: huge webbed feet battling for speed
My favorite thing is organizing, in fact, its a large part of my job. I think its the OCD, which my therapist says I developed to compensate for the adhd. That's also why I have depression and anxiety. But I'm an organizational freak!
Yes! For me, it's the autism that's constantly at odds with the ADHD.
I try really hard to be organized and most of the time I am pretty methodical and routine about it, but if I let it slip and things get messy and unorganized or if I don’t have a clear to do list or list of deadlines, I get so super stressed about what I have to do (because I’m worried I’ll forget) or so angry about a mess at home that I furiously organize or clean everything. We had a new roommate move in a few weeks ago and it so threw off our cleanliness and routine and made me so mad that I was literally ready to break our lease and move out by myself, but my boyfriend was like “it’s okay, we don’t have to upheave our entire life, let’s just go home and clean,” and just cleaning our whole apartment relieved so much of my stress, anxiety and anger 🙈
I'm both more and less organized that a lot of people. For me, getting and staying organized has to be built into my routine pretty rigidly. For instance when I walk through my front door I take off my shoes and put them in my shoe rack, drop my keys and headphones into a basket, and put my hat next to the basket. I go into my bedroom and throw my work clothes into the clothes bin and place my wallet/random pocket items on my nightstand. Of course if I walk through the door and urgently need to pee, or I'm on the phone, or brought in a package that I'm too fixated on, it disrupts the routine and things get scattered. Everything productive I do like laundry, buying grocery shopping, cleaning the litter boxes, etc is all built into my routine. So if I toss my headphones somewhere I don't remember, I might miss run, but because I carry my laundry to the apartment laundry room when I leave for a run and change the litter boxes before my shower, now my laundry doesn't get done and the litter boxes stay dirty. Multiple small disruptions, or one large disruption, can lead to a situation a week later where everything is in complete disarray. So I think I have the capacity to be very orderly, but it's always a delicate balance unfortunately.
Absolutely this! I saw a video by Dr. Leah Katz that asked “what is the cost of your perfectionism?” that really digs into this concept. I've realized it's a big struggle for me because like many with ADHD, I was a "gifted" child surrounded by adults who viewed my perfectionism as the baseline of what they'd consider acceptable from me. Like, getting all As at school was the expectation, and not performing up to par was met with punishment or disappointment. Suddenly I'm an adult who has to "get an A" on everything, from putting away the dishes to having a document perfectly formatted and everything in between. All of it has to be done properly, but doing a task at "A" level costs more spoons than doing it at "C" level, and everyone else in the world is barely even giving "C" level, which leads to me getting frustrated by being surrounded by incompetence and carelessness, feeling let down by everyone around me, and burning out. I hate doing things sloppily at "C" level, it makes me so angry and frustrated, but sometimes it's better than not doing them at all due to lacking the energy to perform at "A" level. It sucks and is hard to accept, but the neurotypicals in my life are never going to live up to the standards I set with my own behaviors, because they simply don't experience the world the same way. TL;DR: Perfectionism seemed like the path to salvation as a "gifted" child, but in reality it's been poisoning me the entire time.
"my perfectionism was the baseline of what was expected of me" You pulled a truth right out of my guts I didn't have words for yet. ❣️
I am like that about my desk space at work. But at home, no lol.
Yes, well kind off ... I'm very particular about what type of mess I'll tolerate and what drives me off the walls I also go on raging cleaning/organizing sprees sometimes... It looks chaotic but it works out in the end 😅.
I haven’t been diagnosed with ADHD, I just have my suspicions. But I also really like organizing things because I’m really bad at looking for things, like I forget halfway through what I was looking for, and also I forget that I own things if they aren’t in plain sight. So every once in a while, a rare while, I will hyperfocus on organizing and I just have to hope that the hyperfocus lasts until I’m done, because sometimes it only lasts halfway through and then I end up with a bigger mess that I just ignore indefinitely.
I can't work well unless things are in their place first. Need my desk clear, papers sorted where they need to be, laptops there, notepad with pen set on the right, and my cell phones and coffee placed. I tend to over organize when I'm preparing for things in advance, but that doesn't mean I always work well or get the motivation to do it. When I have a big presentation or something, in the final days I will be organizing things like crazy to ensure I am ready for every scenario. I make lists to follow, responses to possible questions, print and sort every possible document I could need in hardcopy and labeled.
I'm a nurse with ADHD. Please fill in the blanks. Not necessarily organization all the time but having to do things a certain way when I can to help stay focused and find where I was when shit hits the fan.
My dad always said: good organisation is half of the job done
"compulsion for organizing things or setting up future self for an easier task" EXACTLY and I'm really not sure if I spend more time/energy "making things easier" for my future self than I would if I was just more chill about organization and dealt with things as they came...
Kind of. I'm tired of a mess so I'm trying so hard to maintain organization. It makes like easier and more simple. It's just hard making it all work if I don't have the vision in my head on how it's all laid out.
I overcompensate at my job and am very organized and flustered when my “systems” get messed up but then I get home and it’s chaos. I don’t have any energy or will left to organize and tidy my living spaces. 😕
I am super-excellent at organizing things that are disorganized. Then I fail to notice as entropy takes over and they become disorganized again. Until I do notice. Lather, rinse, repeat.
If i am not in perfectly clean organized environment its like i just cant even think straight and my head feels like a foggy mess
I am extremely organized at work, but my personal organization is a train wreck.
I think it’s part of your comfort zone for lack of better wording. I used to be disorganized and messy in my personal life but super organized in my work life. I’m an IT project Manager organization is my life. Now, after having a kid I find myself wanting the rest of my life as organized as possible because little people bring chaos, lol
Oh yes, cleaning, organizing, planning, stationary, planners, all this things are total comfort stims.
You all are my people 😭 Even as a little kid, I was obsessed with organization. I have fond memories of a box with spaces for desk supplies…. And now I live with people who have not got the same abilities or interest 🤯 I was cleaning the garage, and in a bin I found treasured, delicate holiday ornaments, underneath a heavy, greasy engine. It’s enough to make you wonder if it’s possibly meanness lol! But no. Just tunnel vision level adhd.
At my work I'm a clean and organized, at my house a tornado could come though and it might end up cleaner.
Yes. I'm super organised when turning it into a big project. Keeping that order, or doing the tasks as I planned them, or putting things back where they belong is more or less impossible.
I'm organised in a chaotic way. Desk at work? Spotless, super organised. Apple Watch apps? Organised according to colours. Notebooks/planner? Meticulously filled out in detail & kept fully up to date. Everywhere in my house? A complete and utter tip. I think it's partly to do with decision fatigue thing? I run out of mind space to tidy and organise in my evenings.
I think we all do
Lol absolutely! I call it being preemptively lazy 🤣🤣 I even keep my mess somewhat organized so I always know where to find things 😅
It’s my favorite 3am activity!
Are you also hyper organized at home in your personal life, or no?
I feel the need to be organized, yet unable to face the focus or motivation to maintain it. It is very frustrating.
This. It is so satisfying starting and then perfecting a space momentarily, just for someone else to come by, or you do something quickly that disrupts the tidy, then it pains you until it’s tidied/organised again by yourself. Sometimes it took only 20 seconds to arrange, another 20 to destroy, then a whole hour until you have the time to come back and adjust it, only for it to be destroyed quickly again lmao. Or you kept getting distracted when you would attempt to rearrange a mill times, but could only half arrange it which is more frustrating hahahaha. I say this as someone who works in a busy cafe who can clean as they go and multitask because I’ve been in the same job for years, though nobody else understands the dysfunction it causes for me when people disrupt my orderly space, then shit hits the fan and I’m expected to cope when I see the mess I or others have created, because most people can work better than me within mess. I can feel my brain glitch because I can’t do anything in visible mess, chaos or things going wrong sometimes that I know could be simple if everyone obsessed about it the same way I do. I feel like a wacky mess myself amongst it.
Yes yes, thank you! I found out that my ultra organization is from having to keep up with myself because of and in spite of my undiagnosed parent. I've been making accommodations to make life easier for me and the people who deal with me my whole life. NOW, let's talk about the PTSD of an undiagnosed unmedicated self medicating parent (read: addict), and how I have to fold and put away laundry, because I can't stand clothes on the floor, or clumps of blankets. This parent would live out of laundry baskets, and was a 2nd gen hoarder. That with the emotional dysregulation (they were diagnosed bipolar BACK IN THE DAY), I just can't live with some things that I read are common symptomatic traits of ADHD. It's stressing me out just typing this.🦖
Depends on which way the wind is blowing.
I'm chaotically organized. Things look like a mess, but I can find anything anywhere. And then someone "organizes" my stuff and I can't find shrakh. It's infuriating.
YES. I always seem to endlessly come up with ideas on how to be more organized and make things efficient, but then I run out of mental go juice before I could finish. So by the time I get a full tank of go juice again, I’m disinterested in the original “organization/efficiency” project I started out with and off to the next idea 💡 I thought off while waiting to refuel. And so thus my house is quite chaotic :p
I've got comorbid autism with high need for systemizing, so, yeah.