Having taught workshops and seminars on ADHD to tens of thousands of people on five continents, one of the most consistent issues Hunters have shared with me is their difficult with organization. “Normal” people seem to magically be able to organize their workspaces, homes, and lives in general; for Hunters, clutter is more often the default mode.
Louise (my wife) will tell you that for years she’s said that I don’t have a filing system, but instead have a piling system. I keep things in piles all over my office, around the bedroom, and even in my radio studio: that way I always know where everything is and can find things quickly.
This is not, however, a system that organized Farmers look upon fondly.
So, what do we do about it? A fellow who attended a workshop we taught at Omega Institute shared his story and the very elegant solution his wife devised.
From Tom in Rochester:
My wife is neat and organized, and, like so many ADHD Hunters, I’m not. This causes some conflict about our bedroom, in particular, because I tend to leave things in piles and she wants everything organized and put away in drawers and closets.
So, after a few years of hassling about it, she finally hit on a solution: she went to the furniture store and bought me a chifforobe (an old-fashioned type of portable closet) and a bookcase with doors on it. She put them both on my side of the room.
“I don’t care if you have a mess,” she said, “so long as I don’t have to look at it.”
So now, when my chifforobe and bookshelves reach a critical mass where things are spilling out and falling all over, I take a weekend day and binge cleaning them up.
The rest of the time, I just keep the doors closed, and our room looks, to her, like a nice and clean and organized place.
I know, by the way, that I’m not unique in this. Lots of guys do this with their garages or work areas!
Bookshelves. Bookshelves everywhere.