tropylium:

kestrel-tree:

Dealing with
executive dysfunction and ADHD becomes so much easier when you stop trying to
do things the way you feel like you should
be able to do them (like everyone else) and start finding ways that
actually work for you, no matter how “silly” or “unnecessary”
they seem.

For
years my floor was constantly covered in laundry. Clean laundry got
mixed in with dirty and I had to wash things twice, just making more
work for myself. Now I just have 3 laundry bins: dirty (wash it
later), clean (put it away later), and mystery (figure it out later).
Sure, theoretically I could sort my clothes into dirty or clean as
soon as I take them off and put them away straight
out of the dryer, but
realistically that’s never going to be a sustainable strategy for me.

How
many garbage bins do you need in a bedroom? One? WRONG! The correct
answer is one within arms reach at all times. Which for me is three.
Because am I really going to
get up to blow my nose when I’m hyperfocusing? NO. In
allergy season I even have
an empty kleenex box for “used
tissues I can use again.”
Kinda gross? Yeah. But less gross than a
snowy winter landscape of dusty germs on my
desk.

I
used to be late all the time
because I couldn’t find my house key. But it costs $2.50 and 3
minutes to copy a key, so now there’s one in my backpack, my purse,
my gym bag, my wallet, my desk, and hanging on my door. Problem
solved.

I’m
like a ninja for getting pout the door past reminder notes without noticing. If I really don’t want to forget something, I make a
physical barrier in front of my door. A
sticky note is a lot easier to walk past than a two foot high
cardboard box with my wallet on top of it.

Executive dysfunction is always going to cause challenges, but often half the struggle is trying to cope by pretending not to have executive dysfunction, instead of finding actual solutions.

I don’t recall when I learned it formally (and I had already been practicing it to some extent before that), but the concept of “drop zones” in household management has been very helpful to me.

The concept is simple. If there are have tasks that have too many steps for you to reliably follow thru and then remember what you ever doing before it, or if such tasks result in too much running back and forth between tasks… consider setting up an intermediate repository where you can drop off items to wait for another step of work.

Some drop zones are near universal. Nobody washes clothes or dishes one by one when they go dirty. We instead set up a laundry basket and a sizable kitchen sink, to pile up a bunch of laundry or dishes to later do in one go. An ironing basket or a specific location for bills to pay are also things I see very regularly in people’s homes. Trashcans or recycling bins are also basically drop zones. So these are by no means exclusive to people with executive dysfunction.

And you can just scale this up as much as you’d like. If, as per OP, walking over to “the” trashcan is too distracting, you can just set up more of them. Need to sort through the mail for important letters but can’t do it right away? Set up a bin. Need to put away groceries but can’t do it right away? Set up a designated countertop (or designated floor area, whatever). Need to sew back on loose buttons on some shirts? Put the shirts in a common shelf together, and the buttons in a box together (and if you’d prefer, the buttons on the shelf with the shirts; though I for example rather keep the buttons separately in a general sewing supplies box).

The more you get used to this, the more you can “get started on” things right away with some minimal effort. If you have a drop zone for papers that ought to be filed, you don’t need to actually file them whenever something comes along in the mail, you can just leave them queued for filing.

Drop zones also do not need to make sense to anyone but the people in your household actually doing the work. So, in particular… if you live alone, you can do whatever you want. Papers to be filed do not have to have a neatly labeled bin on a specific shelf; it can be just an anonymous pile on the floor in a specific corner. Or maybe you don’t even need to have them in a centralized location at all: maybe you can just draw a big old checkmark ✓ over them, so that you know not to worry about them later on when browsing. Or, if actually binning laundry seems daunting, you could designate the floor on one side of the bed for dirty clothes vs. another side for clothes still in use. Or, if you tend to have empty bottles piling up, perhaps what works for you is reserving a large cardboard box for them, or setting them up in rows beside the walls, instead of some “neat” bin somewhere in a cupboard…