Support with household organisation and ADHD burnout rather than a cleaner?

OP, the line that landed hardest is "everything else is on fire". You are holding down a demanding role and three young adults and the household alone, with menopause and ADHD running underneath, and the bit you cannot reach is the bit where every decision needs you to be the project manager. That is not a cleaning problem. It is an executive function problem.

The role you are describing exists, it just does not have a tidy industry name. The search terms that work better than "cleaner" are "support worker", "personal assistant for adults with ADHD", and "household management". A few hours a week of someone who can take the next step when you cannot, alongside the laundry, the meals, and the surfaces.

I should disclose, I run a small London introductory care agency called Hibant. We work mostly with families arranging care for an elderly relative, but a few of the carers we introduce are self-employed support workers who do exactly what you describe. If that sounds useful, hibantcare.com or [email protected]. Otherwise the search terms above are a good start.

You are not failing at home. You are running a one-person operation with no second pair of hands, on a fuel system that has shifted under you. Asking for the help is the right next step.

This is all excellent in theory but putting it into practice is the stumbling block. No woman who is smashing it and hyper-focussed at work is sat there going “I can’t work out why everything else is on fire”; OP has said why. It’s the doing.

If I get overwhelmed like you are now I need company to help me. Most of the time listening to a podcast with more than one host is enough to trick my brain. But yes otherwise write a job description. Good luck, i really feel for you.

Going from where you are now to where you need to be is going to take a while - accept this. Yes, not an ADHDers happy place 😁 but critical.

1 - treat yourself in the same way as you treat your children. Necessary accommodations, enrichment etc etc. this will be hard. Remind yourself that you need to model this behaviour so they learn to do it.

2 - YES to reducing stuff. You have probably got multiples of everything in many locations because that used to help. It did. It was the right choice at the time. Now it’s new phase.

3 - DO NOT try to organise anything until you have finished reducing. You’ll get the perfect solution then find more stuff and then have to redo it which will result in frustration.

Create holding bays for collecting stuff in categories.

4 - Once everything is in holding bays edit a category at a time then put the keepers back in its holding bay. This is where you give yourself necessary accommodations. You matter. Sunk cost guilt must go. I should take this to charity shop, is it good enough then never taking it - no! You need your energy for the house organising.

Accept that this stage takes a while.

5 - Once edited have ONE place for things. You may need a second place to keep back ups.

Single layer, visible vertical storage. If you can’t see it it doesn’t exist. No storage containers that are not see through. If you have to take off a lid, put it somewhere then replace it - it’s not going to happen. Open top or integrated lids or drawers are your friend.

Find your balance between cupboard doors/drawers and visual clutter. This is difficult. You need to be able to see things and easily access them but also need reduced visual clutter.

6 - At this point stay in this phase while you find flaws in your original organising model and change them up until it’s optimal.

While that is going on you will already be finding it easier to stay on top of things. KEEP RECOGNISING THISand praising yourself.

ADHD Au people are exceptional at noticing things that aren’t optimal. You need to carve out more positive tunnels in your brain to balance this.

sorry - it’s long!

How about agreeing a weekly menu with your children and doing it on repeat - tskes the indecision of what to cook away and helps with shopping list too x

This sounds really really hard. I'm not in exactly your situation but I really relate to all your spoons going on the essentials and making sure the children have everything they need and then having nothing left. I'm lucky to have a partner who helps with evening routines and if I say things are getting on top of me although he does also accumulate hobby items! Otherwise I just put everything in one room or the garage and then we have a sort out together a few times a year. That doesn't sound realistic for you without some professional support and booking some annual leave. Is the state of the house your biggest issue or is it something else?

I just read an article on this! You need a house manager. It's like a housekeeper but they do life admin and organisation tasks too.

(Haven't read the whole thread so sorry if I'm repeating.)

Sounds like you need a housekeeper not a cleaner or a PA.
My friend is a housekeeper, once a week she comes to our place, does the laundry, puts it away, tidies one room and takes rubbish to the tip. She also sorts out charity donations and takes those, and I leave a little post it.
for example this week coming up my youngest has “explorer day” so on Friday she was tasked with finding all the survival things we have in the house and putting a costume together for him. She also put together a couple of gift baskets from my business to give for raffle prizes today. That’s the kinds of thing a housekeeper is great at.
Our housekeeper will also do things like write a menu based off the food in the house and create a shopping list. She will quite often do things like go shopping for birthday presents and cards, organise my dossette box and stupid things that my brain fog forgets.
Because she’s one of my closest friends, she’s super flexible about how many hours we will need her for. This Friday, it was about 2 hours (£40) but Friday 8th May I will likely need her all day as there’s a lot of things coming up with the children that need addressing.

How much is the Dubbii app a month though?

@cinemapopI have sent you a private message..

Come and join the dub club! Honestly, it awesome. Worth every penny!

That’s the dubbii app I mentioned above! Totally amazing community, highly recommend

A house manager?

My cleaner used to have client that she went to every weekday morning at 8am. Ensured the teens left for school on time. Cleared the breakfast things, then did anything the family needed (including cooking, errands, making appointments…) for the rest of the morning.

I’d post on your Facebook Local Page too and see what happens. You can often post anonymously if you prefer.

Is this not a housekeeper? I feel very similarly to you but have no diagnosis and don’t think I have ADHD but recognise the paralysis and messy home.

I would love someone to plan my menu, my shopping list, keep my cupboards turned over and keep things in order.

I have a part-time nanny who does a lot of these things for me and it’s frankly life changing.

She does my laundry, keeps the boys clothes in order, does light tidying and cleaning. She just gives us enough space to keep on top of the worst of it but I am still sinking at times.

It sounds as though you’re burning a lot of energy and focus on worry about losing your bonus/hyperfixation on making sure you get your bonus, and this will be wearing you out even more.

I have a lot of responsibility at work and at times that are tricky at work (not even caused by me and often nothing I can even change), I find I feel so much more burned out with things I normally cope with, because I’m basically using all of my spoons on that. Worry, anxiety, even subconscious worry that doesn’t quite go away, it is all so draining.

I can identify this in myself but can’t switch my brain off enough to stop it happening. It’s so hard.

To add, I used AI a lot to help me with this but not by asking it to write me a schedule as such, I’d literally type “I need to do x, y, z but I am frozen and don’t know where to start” and it would give me small prompts. Give it all the context, tell it you have ADHD etc and it will tailor advice to you

I haven’t read the full thread. If you are peri/menopausal perhaps HRT can help as ADHD symptoms can worsen due to losing the ability to mask.
Then make time to exercise. Are you getting enoigh quality sleep? Ideally you would be eating a balanced whole food diet but this may be challenging at this time.

You are looking for a personal assistant or housekeeper. You can put on your local FB group exactly what you require and hopefully you will get some takers.

Also are the young adults also neurodiverse? Wondering why they need micromanaging?

You’ve probably already tried this but I have to ‘trick’ myself in to doing stuff by saying I will do one tiny thing. Such as “I will run tap until it’s hot and put washing up liquid in the bowl” and that’s it. I often find when I do that, especially if I am listening to music or a podcast, I will end up cleaning everything as I can’t seem to stop once I have started!
The other thing I have done to avoid overwhelm is to set a timer and say I am only going to do 15 minutes of house work and then stop. It makes the whole task feel smaller and often i get more done than I think in that time. I have to approach my job in the same way - set timers for 40 minutes and then stop to get up and move around.

Food, I always have easy options in. Fresh soup with microwave rice, ready to eat salmon and cous cous - that type of thing.

I do have a cleaner, but I think that helps me want to keep on top of the cleaning if that makes sense? Once she’s been and it’s spotless I want to try and keep it that way if I can. I totally understand the spoons thing. Are you sure there is no way you can ease off work just a little? If you’re a high performer,
you may get some grace as you’ve built up your kudos! Can you start to build small habits around things you do each day? Wipe round the bathroom sink while brushing your teeth for example?

When I am at my worse, I struggle to even brush my teeth every day so I do understand! I can slowly build up to a point of functioning adult, then I think I am smashing it and try to add loads of other things in - exercise routines and god knows what and then it all comes crashing down and I have to start again from scratch. I haven’t been diagnosed with anything but I’m fairly certain there’s something going on.

Kindly, as they are getting older they need to take their own responsibility for things like alarms , keys ( in a bowl or hook- takes practice!!) and making sure they have clothes. You need less in your brain not more. .

Personslly I think a “everyone’s laundry” in machine is better than doing own. A light and dark load daily or every other day. Depends how much you have. We are daily. Task them to do a day each. Timer delay. Cones on early morning. Out on line/airer before people leave.

We have an Alexa which sets up reminders. Bins. Recycling.

After tea is getting house straight for all.

Declutter Dollie’s for decluttering or similar. Less stuff and systems help.

I think a cleaner could help you if you specified that they needed to help you with tidying and organising. So for example you could hire someone for 4 hours with one of those hours to be used for tidying, organising or errands. The imminent arrival of the cleaner also gives an incentive for some tasks to be done each week.

Trust me, I have had a lot of cleaners, they are all individuals and some will be happy to do this. The best cleaners are those who are ever so slightly traditional and house-proud themselves and who would therefore relish the opportunity to do this sort out a bit of domestic chaos.

Try an advert in a newsagent or similar, as that way you probably get someone who is a local individual rather than an agency.

PS. Your children sound like wonderful young people!

Can you put an advert in The Lady magazine? Well it's online now. You could specify exactly what you wanted. I would love a job helping you. I love organising and sorting out and I bet there are lots of people who would too.

I have 3 adhd teens (and more than likely me too)
I would no be getting up at 5am to wake them if im not up myself.
They have multiple alarms and pillow vibrator. They know they have to get up as I wont be doing it.
Clothes are organised for the week on hangers on a sunday for monday to Friday. Everyone washes clothes Saturday.

go on the dreaded ai and say

write me a meal plan with groceries to buy for a week (you can say I’m vegan or lactose intolerant etc so any dietary requirements) and then just do that.

let each of your children know each child will cook for everyone one day a week.

ask ai to make a cleaning rota for the 4 of you - enforce it

take a picture of a room you want sorted and ask ai to redesign it

in fact you can even ask ai what colour to paint your nails

take the decisions away from yourself and see how you feel. Then when your ready you can start using it less or if it’s working for you then why not