ADHD: Visit “Organizing Stores” for Tools and Ideas
So my ADHD success story is one that many people will appreciate: go shopping!
Disorganization has been the curse of my life, and I’m guessing that’s true for most Hunters. Sandy found a way around it…
From Sandy in suburban Atlanta:
They opened this new store near my house, called Everything’s Organized. I’ve always been major disorganized. The house is a disaster, I can’t find the kid’s school records, I constandy run out of milk because I forget to make lists, and on and on.
My husband is even worse than I am. He’s so ADHD that he’s on Ritalin, and even that doesn’t make him organized, it just slows him down enough to be able to have a conversation. But that’s another story, this is about how my house was in a shambles.
So I visited this “organizing” store. It’s the size of a department store, and the variety of stuff is amazing. They have books on how to get organized. They have trays and baskets and tables, and systems for just about everything imaginable from organizing your books to your spices.
I know that some rich people hire organizational consultants to come into their houses and tell them how to set up systems. Stephanie Winston in her book on getting organized talks about how she does this for people as a consultant. But we could never afford anything like that, and I’d be embarrassed to death to ask any of my well-organized neighbors to come into my house and help me.
But this store was like having a consultant. It was incredible. And the people in the store knew about the stuff they were selling, and the books on how to get organized that they have there are pretty useful, too.
So I went on a shopping binge there, getting racks for my clothes closets and color-coded filing systems and even organizing my pantry. It’s been almost a year now, and the house is still pretty well-organized!
My mother in Los Angeles says that there’s a store like this near her, too. Apparendy, they’re popping up all over the country. So my ADHD success story is one that many people will appreciate: go shopping!
Dear Sandy : please report back if and how more gidgets and gadgets actually panned out. There is not a file, a giant pen label, any filing cabinet or bookshelf or any flat surface or whatever computer function that I can't clutter up, forget whatever the brilliant idea was, and subject myself to life-wasting hunts and weirdly never coming across again the most important thing I must have put in a special place. It is hard for me to see the "store" as other than marketing stuff that won't actually help with stuff. Best good wishes help to you.