Lose The Shame About Clutter

ADHD and clutter seem to go hand in hand. The earliest videos (VHS!) about ADHD, featured women showing the ADHD researcher around their cluttered homes. The theme was how unhappy the ADHD women and their families were because of the endless clutter. (I never once saw a man being featured in one of those videos.)

What Is Clutter?

I define clutter as any item that is not in a place where I can conveniently get it when I need it.

Why Do Many Of Us Feel Shame About Clutter?

I think it is because many people (especially my generation and older) considered keeping the house tidy and uncluttered to be the woman's job.

Those who could not were viewed as being lazy, which many believe people to be a moral failure. 

• Maybe you think it should be easy (it's not rocket science after all). 

• Maybe you know you can declutter the house, because you have done it before, (so what is the problem this time?). 

• You may have grown up believing it was your job, not just because of the messages from popular culture, but also because your family modeled that by being visibly upset about their own clutter.

Shame Is Not A Good Motivator

The problem with feeling shame about our clutter is that shame is a miserable feeling that eliminates joy and reduces  our energy and motivation.

Did you know that one characteristic of the ADHD brain is having stronger emotions? This is a fun trait to have when we are happy, but not when we are feeling shame.  

If you have ADHD, operating out of shame is going to make it even harder to tackle the clutter. 

The Executive Functions Of The Brain

Executive functions are those activities in the brain that coordinate the activities of other parts of the brain. (At the end of the post is a list of executive functions with brief definitions of each by Dr. Russel Barkley, Ph.D.)

Going through the list, I can spot at least five that could play a part in making clutter creation easy and in making decluttering hard:

Inhibition:

• Low inhibition leads us to purchase more things than we need.

• It is difficult to stay focused on the decluttering tasks when there are distractions.

Non-Verbal Working Memory:

• This makes it harder to visualize where to put things.

• This makes it more difficult to imagine where things should go when we are creating "a place for everything."

Emotional self-regulation:

• This makes it easier to succumb to feelings of overwhelm.

Self-motivation:

• This makes starting a large task like managing clutter (which has no immediate or guaranteed reward) harder to start.

Planning and problem-solving:

• This makes it harder to imagine different storage solutions.

It's Not All Bad News

I know that living with an ADHD brain is tough but there are some good sides.

Many, if not all, of the ADHD people I know are very curious and adventurous. 

As a result, we often have lots of supplies and equipment from all the fun things we do or did earlier in our lives.

Examples from the last forty years of my life include swimming, hiking, reading, sewing, gardening, diving, boogie boarding, crocheting, biking, windsurfing, kayaking, sailing, camping, learning languages, photography, home videos, games, puzzles, art, guitar, flute, piano, and citizen science projects. I have bits of these activities in boxes, in closets, on dressers, and on shelves all over. I actually have more than I can fit in the house,  so I have a storage unit too!

We are always getting intrigued by something, and having more stuff is a natural byproduct. I am not ashamed of having many interests.

What Can We Do?

We can tackle our clutter successfully with some executive function supports. 

Here are some examples of what I mean:

• Hiring someone to help

• Working during your mentally strong times

• Exercising before you start, and/or having your meds in your system

• Having water and protein snacks nearby

• Using the Pomodoro timer system (work sprints followed by brief work breaks)

• Stopping work when tiredness sets in (physical or mental).

• Using body doubles (read my post about body doubles here)

Choose Your Goals

KC Davis, in her book "How To Keep House While Drowning" (see my review, here), talks about her goal being to have her house be functional, (as opposed to being spotless). She believes that our space is there to "serve us and not the other way around" and that spending all of our time trying to get our spaces spotless does not serve us.

She also lives by the mantra, "Good enough is perfect."

An ADHD Coach Question

A very important question is:

"What will you be able to do when you have the clutter tamed that you cannot do now?"

If you can answer that question, you may uncover a better reason for decluttering than just, "I should."

With a personal benefit to work towards, you may find it easier to get started on and stay with the long-term task of decluttering.

What Are Your Decluttering Goals?

Ask yourself "How much clutter, visual or hidden, am I willing to accept?"

"How much time am I willing to devote to reducing the clutter?"

If your days are already full then ask yourself, "What am I willing to sacrifice in order to have the time to work on the clutter?"

🐙

Below is a list by Russel Barkley, Ph.D of the executive functions that can be affected by ADHD (quoted from an article he wrote for ADDitude Magazine):

1. Self-awareness: Simply put, this is self-directed attention.

2. Inhibition: Also known as self-restraint.

3. Non-Verbal Working Memory: The ability to hold things in your mind. Essentially, visual imagery — how well you can picture things mentally.

4. Verbal Working Memory: Self-speech, or internal speech. Most people think of this as their “inner monologue.”

5. Emotional Self-Regulation: The ability to take the previous four executive functions and use them to manipulate your own emotional state. This means learning to use words, images, and your own self-awareness to process and alter how we feel about things.

6. Self-motivation: How well you can motivate yourself to complete a task when there is no immediate external consequence.

7. Planning and Problem Solving: Experts sometimes like to think of this as “self-play” — how we play with information in our minds to come up with new ways of doing something. By taking things apart and recombining them in different ways, we’re planning solutions to our problems.

Works Cited

Barkley Ph.D., Russel. “Executive Function: 7 ADHD Planning, Prioritizing Deficits.” ADDitude, 21 January 2023, https://www.additudemag.com/7-executive-function-deficits-linked-to-adhd/. Accessed 23 March 2023.

Davis, KC. How to Keep House While Drowning: A Gentle Approach to Cleaning and Organizing. S&S/Simon Element, 2022.