To be fascinated by tidy people

Of course tips will help. Many people with ADHD gain organisational skills, ways to avoid procrastinating, distraction tactics, there is always room for improving.
If it is debilitating to the point a 4 year old has a messy room, full of crap, you need to access some services.
My mother had undiagnosed ADHD, very childlike, it's awful for the children once they recognise their home is different, loaded with crap.
We thought you dumped everything on the floor.
It takes me a long time to tidy as I'm easily distracted, but the reward outweighs any stress.
The simple things like clean pairs of socks, pajamas in the drawer, being able to sit at a table for homework without pushing for space, same with sofa, no piles of clothes or letters anywhere.
I make myself put away things in sets of 5, play my favourite song, it'll never be perfect but little steps get it done.
Sorry to anyone who is offended.

I think it’s probably what you’re used to. My parents were very tired and I grew up in that setting. I have a 2 and 4 year old and when they enter the flat they have been taught to leave their shoes at the door, wash their hands in the bathroom and then play. Once they’re asleep we empty the nursery bag if there are soiled clothes and they go straight in the washing machine. I tidy up once they’re in bed. My DH is far, far less tidy but having been to his family home I can see that is what is normal for him! I can’t unwind or relax if toys, books etc are thrown around! And yes we both work full time in healthcare roles so it’s not that I have a lot of spare time 😆

I’m also curious about “just to think about putting everything away constantly”

I literally don’t know what this means. What is “everything?” What could possibly be taken out all day long and need put away again constantly?

I don’t get any reward sensation from being tidy. I just don’t own too many things, and what I do own I don’t leave scattered all over my home. I
don’t understand the difficulty in that, genuinely.

PPs have talked about pulling out half their wardrobes when deciding what to wear and then leaving it all lying to deal with later. Maybe don’t do that and then there wouldn’t be a mess. Anyone’s home will be a mess if they drag everything out to complete a simple task.

My house growing up was like this.- awful an absolute tip
I felt like an alien that had landed on a different planet

@Somehowgirl exactly
After breakfast dishes went into dishwasher
Ditto lunch
Will run it after dinner and DH will empty
All I will do is wipe the worktops and empty the bins

Tomorrow will be unload shopping, clean fridge and put it away
Do laundry
We both do about an hours cleaning

@Delatron
You are judging tidy people as less empathetic than you, which is rather an unpleasant generalisation probably due to defensiveness
If I'm being totally honest if I go to a very dirty, cluttered house I suspect there is a MH issue/ relationship issue at play so I would be empathetic and am always the first to lend a hand if someone has a new baby etc

If this is aimed at me, I was a child myself at the time. I didn’t think words like “scummy”. I had great fun with my friend but was always happier coming home to order and unbroken toys and no screaming chaos.

It’s not about judging. It’s about preferring to live with some semblance of order.

Tidy people aren’t tidy to the detriment of other qualities. Rather, if I were to use the same family as an example, they were lacking in important qualities such as gratefulness for and caring for their belongings.

I didn’t grow up with much so what we had we knew to be grateful for and look after with the utmost care.

Can you really not see how maybe children would lose a reading book in a house? Especially in certain homes. I know it must be frustrating as a teacher but what a shame that the child suffers.

Yes exactly. But our brains are wired for empathy and have other qualities rather than being ‘a tidy person’.

Rather than ‘god that family are so messy, I can’t believe the 4 year old had a messy bedroom. How scummy. Can’t wait to get back to my tidy house’ I’d probably wonder what else was going on rather than judge. I don’t actually care if peoples houses are a bit messy - especially with young children.

Everyone is different. I am trying today but bloody hell it’s an effort. Just to think about putting everything away constantly. I know it will
make my life easier so I’ll try and stick with it but my brain is definitely not wired this way. It’s not natural and I have to think about it constantly.

A lot of people on this thread have brains that work very differently from mine, and I suspect the OP's.

What many posters are saying makes sense from a logical perspective of course - I can read it and understand it and think "that seems obvious!"

But it's not the idea of it that my brain struggles with, it's the execution. I'm not sure how to explain it, but I don't get the reward sensation from carrying out these sorts of tasks that I suspect other people get, and at the same time my brain is usually preoccupied or overwhelmed with other stuff that does catch its attention. It's not a conscious prioritisation of tasks so it's very difficult to just tell myself to buck up.

I was a sahm for a few years. When my DC played with toys they had them out on the living room floor( play rooms weren't such a thing 20 years ago) and then they helped to tidy away before dinner/ bed. I had cupboards with boxes inside to hide it all away. This is what they will have to do at school so start them early. I as not going to be picking up after them once they were perfectly capable. When they were younger I only got one or two things out. Chn become overwhelmed with too much choice. Rotate the toys to maintain interest

I teach in primary and there are some families that lose school books. I’m always taken aback .One child from a family of two chn has lost 5. She now can’t take books home which could affect her reading progress( she gets to read at school obviously) but how can that happen?

This makes sense and reminds me of a friend’s house I went to as a child. The family were chaos personified and honestly I was always relieved to go back to my tidy and orderly house. Everything was “dropped at their backside” as my gran would say. Home from school? The kids just dumped coats, shoes, and bags wherever they felt like it. There was always a mad scrabble to find homework. Toys weren’t cared for and they had so many the house was just a dumping ground of broken toys with missing parts, VHS tapes all in the wrong boxes, dirty clothes left all over the place in bedrooms. The poor mum was frazzled but the solutions are so simple it boggles my mind.

Looking at what I’ve done today, there just isn’t mess created beyond the unavoidable, basically dishes from cooking and some toys my child has been playing with.

One pot and 3 bowls and spoons for porridge this morning were washed straight after eating. Nothing else to clean up as our kitchen is always left clean the night before. My husband works from home so if he makes something for lunch he cleans up. My son and I ate dinner early, my husband is about to eat now. All dishes in the sink and he’ll wash up before bed.

My son’s toys are still out because he’ll want to play with them when he gets out his bath for a while before bed. He’ll tidy them up with some help from us- takes 5 minutes before bed. There’s a small load of laundry in the machine at the moment, I’ll hang that up after I’ve got my son into his pyjamas and brushed teeth.

So the mess is dishes, which are unavoidable and take less than half an hour out of the day whether you do them at the time or leave them all until the end of the day, and some toys. I don’t really think of it as mess as I like to see his toys out being played with, but it is something that needs put away at the end of the day.

This is where I don’t understand what mess other people are creating. I don’t see anything to tidy up when I look around and I haven’t been running about all day tidying. In fact, I’ve been at home sick doing nothing at all.

Aaaaargh!😂
It's so difficult to explain to messy people.

The task is completed fully, it takes seconds to just do it properly.
It's the same amount of effort to hang up a coat rather than chuck it on a chair
To put the tea in the cupboard or put it on the work top
To put bread, cheese, butter away rather than put it on the worktop -exactly the same time or energy

Now add up all the discarded coats, bags, shoes for a family x 4
They leave out the teabags, cheese etc, don't pick up and put away things -a book goes on the floor not the bookcase.
It will take half a day for it to look like a bombsite
It's depressing and draining
Where do you start?

You also need to cook, try to clean, need to do laundry but you feel overwhelmed already by the mess so those tasks feel harder.
So you don't do them.

In contrast I can whip round and clean properly and quickly because everything is clear
It's not so onerous.
Robot vac whizzes round every day
The floors are clear

What I am figuring is that “tidy people” subconsciously clean “as they go,” and it doesn’t occur to them that they are actually cleaning throughout the day. They’ll say things like “I hardly do any cleaning/tidying” and give drastic underestimations for how long it takes to do cleaning/tidying tasks. They don’t connect cleaning/tidying tasks to their energy levels at the end of the day.

Whereas “people who tidy” have to expend conscious effort to do any sort of cleaning/tidying, whether they do it “as they go” or in bursts. They might overestimate how much time cleaning/tidying tasks take, and definitely connect it to their energy levels at the end of the day.

Edited to include examples: Like I could do dishes in 2-5 minute spurts throughout the day, or I could spend 20 minutes after dinner doing the day’s worth of dishes. I could remind myself to put things away as I use them and tidy up after DD throughout the day, or I could spend 30-45 minutes tidying the whole house after she’s gone to bed. Either way, things doing dishes and picking up after myself/DD is tiring for me and I feel like they’re never ending tasks.

I think some people must create mess in their wake as I am very tidy but also very lazy. My house remains tidy, I don’t think about tidying constantly, and I’m definitely not exhausted from tidying all the time.

The only mess in the house at the moment is my son’s toys out that he is currently playing with, and the dishes from the early dinner we ate today. I’m going to wash those now while he plays. There might be a small pot, bowl and spoon later if he wants a bowl of porridge for supper before bed. Other than that, what mess could there be on an average evening?

He will tidy his own toys away before bed and when he goes for his bath I’ll throw his nursery clothes in the machine with a load of other things.

Just came back to say that after reading this thread, I’ve been trying to behave like a “tidy person” instead of “a person who tidies constantly,” and while my home looks much better, I have found that I am just spending a lot more time and energy on cleaning/tidying tasks “as I go” instead of just in infrequent bursts, and I am very tired at the end of the day.

no you’re just jumping to conclusions. They don’t interrupt conversations and you are being rude.

@Friendlygingercat do you file your books according to Dewey?

We also had an old Edwardian house in London, and it was always neat and tidy.
It looked lovely!
I miss that house.........

Do you think? Our home is early Victorian and very tidy. It’s got a lot of character for sure, but our belongings are very minimal and everything is cosy but tidy.

Ooo I like this gamification of chores! I have a day off today, might try it 👏

Im single and live alone. So if I put something down it is right where I left it next time I need it. I was also a librarian in my youth and its a profession which teaches you to put things in the correct places. Needless to say all my books are filed in order. All my important papers are filed into folders abd I work through a list of tasks each day. Its important to me to be in control. I hate it when anyone disturbs or distracts me. I am a planner and always have a backup plan.

I am a very tidy person and it comes naturally to me, as it did my mother. However, I wonder what kind of house you have, OP? My former home was a new-build and looked spotless all of the time, like a showhome. My current home is Georgian and although lovely, has its flaws! It’s just a lot harder to make it look pristine, because it’s old and in need of a bit of work.

Cards. I write down all the stuff I want to achieve on colour-coded cards (jobs around the house, things I want to do with the kids, self-care stuff). Then I'll challenge myself to do 5 cards from the chores pile followed by two things with the kids, and then two items of self-care.

For example, the chores might be "Hoover the hallway", "Clean the sink", "Chuck 5 items away", "Sort one upstairs drawer out", "Hang out the washing", "Check the swim stuff is sorted" or "Lay out clothes for the week". I let myself choose the ones I want to do, but I move the ones I've done to the back of the pile if they're not everyday ones like doing washing or the dishwasher.

Stuff with the kids might be "read together", "play a boardgame", "go for a walk" or "do some baking". Again, I move the ones that we've done to the back of the pile.

Self-care might be "read a book", "have a bath", "listen to some music" or even "drink a glass of water very slowly".

I have ADHD and so have trouble establishing and embedding consistent routines, and I become bored and overwhelmed easily. But I find visual methods helpful in staying on track. I don't always manage to do everything that needs to be done at the ideal time (for instance, I can go a couple of days without realising that the kitchen surfaces need a clean, or getting round to hoovering the kitchen), but at least it's on my radar and I don't lose sight of the long-term organisational things that will actually make a big difference (e.g. sorting and getting rid of the kids' old clothes) because I'm so stressed by the everyday mess. And I find reminding myself to do stuff with the kids and to take some time for myself stops me from feeling frazzled and inadequate as a parent. I might not manage to read daily with my DC, for instance, but the cards system at least reminds me to take some time to do something with them every day and to assign this the same value as doing chores without the chores being neglected and the house getting even worse and us all more stressed.

I was starting from a very low bar though, and my house was probably a lot worse than yours.