The ADHD/ suspected ADHD/poor executive function/ generically disorganised and overwhelmed housekeeping thread

[MissKeithsNeice]

Diagnosed adhd. Medicated (hooray!). But no amount of medication can help me do anything when my dc and dh are in the house.

Dc are teens BTW

I work 4 days a week, term time only. On Fridays, I get shit done. Dh is also term time only. By the end of the summer holidays, the house us destroyed. Its just really hard to explain how bad it is.

Dh works really hard to keep on top of it but I'm just so messy that its an impossible task.

Today is my first Friday to myself for 8 weeks. I am so excited. Its going to take weeks to get this place straight but once it is, I'm getting a cleaner.

Hello and welcome!

Hi!
I've found so many useful strategies and techniques already

I've fairly recently doubled my hours and number of working days so I feel your pain.

Telling you to do the dishes and a five-minute pick-up is probably the last thing you want to hear but please give it a go.

Completely agree. Doing the dishes and a 5 minute tidy up each day is KEY to keeping the show on the road
Everything else gets easier and less overwhelming then

It's funny looking at my old posts on this thread because I was so not convinced by the dishes thing and now I 100% am. It makes such a gigantic difference.

I listen to the Dana K White podcasts while cleaning in general and it has helped me get my head around her strategies.

Is it just the simple act of doing the dishes and seeing quick results that make the difference you think?

in terrible at leaving the dishes.

Yes. But also it's the lack of the visual to do list screaming at me on how crap I am.
Then the kitchen is tidy. Then eating is easier. The house isn't embarrassing.
It's like a snowball effect.
Plus the dishes are done!

I listen to Dana KWhite podcasts. Then I looked up the get your house back course. Took the plunge. Worth the £70etc it costs.
I have listened to the whole course while on my commute. Now I'm playing through episodes again whilst in that room decluttering. I find my brain can only take on so much at once. So I get more from each episode.

And I have been listening to clutterbug & the minimal mom podcasts too. I'm a bee! DH is a butterfly so we have a tendency to have to see everything. Argh. But major decluttering is underway in our house. Whole life really.

So thanks for signposting to slob comes clean! Quite a journey for me from fly lady.

I do find it interesting that those who really struggle do tend to be creatives and lots ADHD diagnosed. And yet ironically a streamlined environment is positively GOOD for our brains.

I bought a book that was discussed in one of the podcasts, the science of being stuck. So I'm unsticking myself. Life changing.

I just want to get everything sorted and teach my DD good habits. Dont want her waiting til she is in her 40s too

I'm glad you resurrected it Francis as our house is very bad at present and it's the barrier to us moving house. Hoping to get it sorted over summer.

Mine is just making me feel overwhelmed
I have days where I'm really efficient and feel like it's tidy but it never lasts I'm terrible at putting stuff back where it belongs

No, I think it's multiple things.

Dishes being left everywhere looks awful and if they have leftover food in them, it causes a smell. A lack of this is a significant improvement - the only thing which causes smells now is the bins not being taken down (my teenager's job) or the sink being used as a sluice - which again, happens much less when there aren't dishes piled up in it.

Dana talks about the fact she would look at the dishwasher being half full and think "I had better not run it. It's not economical to run a half full dishwasher." But when she resolved to just run it every night no matter what, it prompts her to look around the house for things to put in it "because it's going on anyway" and 9/10 she'd find enough items to fill it totally full. The 1/10 she did not, she ran it anyway. - I had exactly the same realisation, and this helped with keeping on top of things and not ending up with dishes all over the house.

When you have washed a sink full of dishes or filled the dishwasher and now have clear counters, it is a pretty natural next step to wipe the counters down. And that means the kitchen is clear to cook or bake or whatever in, and makes the kitchen in general feel a whole lot more organised and less chaotic.

It is also REALLY nice to just be able to put dirty stuff straight into the dishwasher rather than everyone's automatic habit being to pile it on top (this is also slowly changing). It just feels magic like there is this machine that does the dishes for me.

Sorry this is very dishwasher orientated. If you don't have one then some of the benefits won't apply. I sympathise because I utterly despise washing up. I do recommend a dishwasher if it is an option at all. I got a shit second hand one from ebay for about £20 when I was a single mum and found it life changing 😂 even though I had to climb over the back and swap over the cold water inlet from there to the washing machine every time I wanted to run a cyle as I only had one pipe!

I do have other positives but my youngest has woken up very upset.

Francis take a look at the Clutterbug website. You can find your style of organisation that you actually use, not what you like to use. Knowing this has made a difference to how I'm organising after the decluttering. Ie all our hats are in a basket by the front door. They get dropped in. You rummage to find the right one on the way out the door. Tidying them back in is easy, just drop in.
So having baskets as places for things really helps. I've been getting out of the house about 6 extra bin bags for a few weeks now, and we are finally starting to feel and see the difference in the house.

It's like things are staying sorted, that's never happened before.

Thanks Bertie. Actually think you’re right re the half full dishwasher. I do have one but try not to run it often due to cost. And I hand wash pans anyway which is a pita.

I remember doing flylady with her shiny sink idea. And that did work for me for awhile. I just lose interest In keeping it up. Must do better!

What do I do with toys?! We have stacks of really expensive Lego and playmobil, all muddled together. It seems such a shame to bin it. Even charity shopping it breaks my heart. It’s their toys! So many memories! But what in earth do I do with it all?

My mil boxed and labelled her dc toys and brought them out once grand children appeared. I think I’ll do similar. But I might sell some lego sets.

Lego sells really well second hand, you can just mix it all and sell by weight if you don't want to sort into sets.

Or, get the kids to sort into sets, (this is a great job for teens) build them and then stick in a Ziploc type bag - you can download the instructions online. If I can't remember what sets we have had, a really good tip is to take any piece which looks fairly unique, take a photo and use google lens on it, it should bring up one of the websites where people catalogue every single Playmobil/Lego set and it will tell you which sets that item has appeared in and from there you'll probably recognise which one you had. If you've had the kids do it themselves, motivate them by offering them half the money for the sales or even just let them stick it on ebay themselves using your account and they can have all the money if they do all the work.

If a charity shop makes you feel sad, choose one which supports a cause that you care about and that helps, I think. For example my mum always used to donate stuff to the Cancer Research shop because my grandma died of cancer.

With the dishwasher, I just put everything in it. I don't care if it says it's not dishwasher safe, the IKEA non stick frying pans go in there fine and I don't buy non stick anything else, just stainless steel. I don't find that things actually stick much more with stainless steel, and it's a lot easier to clean.

It does wreck the handles of some pans. You can replace the handles or sometimes I just buy new pans if they were cheap ones.

I used to have stainless steel pans for this very reason. Much simpler to dump in dishwasher.

I’ll go back to that I think. The non stick are easy to clean when I do it and stainless steel isn’t that much more difficult.

ive also been seeing a lot on forever chemicals and that seems a good reason to go back to stainless steel.

I don't have capacity to deal with fussy possessions. If it's not going to survive the dishwasher/ washing machine, it's not compatible with me. I need to keep it simple to function.

Water bottles annoy me as it's hard to stack them in the dishwasher due to the layout of the supports. They're a necessary evil though.

Thank you for the Lego tips!

On the subject of dishwashers, my kitchen is very small but even so I had a cupboard removed to make space for a dishwasher. It made a huge difference and I'd encourage anyone who is able to do it to get one. I got a cheap Beko slimline dishwasher and it's absolutely brilliant.

I bought some stainless steel trays and Pyrex dishes and absolutely everything goes in the dishwasher. I run it every night and as mentioned above, you can usually find things to fill up space (we call it doing the 'cup run' and either DD or I run round the house looking for cups, the toothbrush mug, packed lunch pots etc. to go in.

On another topic, I've finally made it to the front of the assessment waiting list and I have my ADHD assessment in a month's time. I now have the fear that they'll say that I'm not ADD and there won't be any reason for my failings!

@INeedNewShoes amazing you’re nearly there. How long where you waiting

@Rummikub I’ve actually been very fortunate. My GP made the referral under 2 years ago. It’s getting on for ten years though since I first asked a different GP about ADHD assessment and the referral wasn’t forthcoming then. Times are changing!

That’s good. I must check up on mine. I’ve been on the list for nearly two years too!

And I agree about the worry that you won’t be diagnosed and then there’s no excuse!

But then if you do get diagnosed, you can wonder if maybe they got it wrong! 😂 (probably the clearest sign of adhd)