3 Easy Steps for ADHD Organization | ADHD Skills Part 3

Disorganization causes a lot of frustration and wasted time looking for things. And it can frustrate the people around you. Here are 3 steps to keep up with your stuff - Place, Retrieve and Return.

The starting point for organization is making a place for everything. Even small things have a designated place. This can be a drawer for your pens, a container for your mail and a hook for your keys.

When you have organizational problems, the tendency is to want to keep things within reach. So you may have a lot of clutter lying about, but you feel you need it to look like that so you can keep up with things. Well when you are assigning your places, you do want to have the things you use most often in the most convenient place or within easy view. But the placement of things needs to be a little more intentional.

Once you decide where things should go, you have to commit to putting them back in their place right after you use them. So when you need something, you go retrieve it from it’s place, then you immediately return it when you’re done.

Disclaimer: All of the information on this channel is for educational purposes and not intended to be specific/personal medical advice from me to you. Watching the videos or getting answers to comments/question, does not establish a doctor-patient relationship. If you have your own doctor, perhaps these videos can help prepare you for your discussion with your doctor.

[jayb]

My biggest mistake is setting something down and thinking I'll remember that place easy, no problem, and then 2 minutes later I will have completely forgotten it. Gets me all the time.

[SweetStuffOnMonarchLane]

The best advice I ever heard on organization is, when deciding on where an item's home will be, ask yourself "where would be the first place I would look for this?" That's where you should keep it.

[vincenttaurus]

These videos crack me up. People that don’t have ADHD don’t get it but every time she talks about something I do, it cracks me up. It’s like a total stranger understands me more than people I have known my whole life.

[jaymefunny]

"If you find something like a photo book resist the urge to look through it" this is me EVERYTIME. I always look and then I'm exhausted after!

[gledwood]

**Do not ever answer the phone while dealing with money, keys or anything important!**
This is my top tip to myself and I only learned by bitter experience. I never answer the phone while locking or unlocking a door or using a cashpoint or anything like that. Somehow the phone call wipes my memory of what I did with the keys, money, debit cards etc. And things you thought you'd done (like locking the door) somehow remain undone. And you have no idea.
So even if you feel like you're being rude, let the phone call wait. It saves so much hassle.
I'm 48 years old BTW and I only learned to do this in the last few years. Before this I got into some real pickles!

[Venus-bbcd]

I seriously believe minimalism is key with ADHD.

[divinetrouble]

The part about not being able to find things and frustrating others really hit me deep. I lost count of how many times I have been yelled at in my life for not being able to see/find things.

[beautifulsunset]

I once heard that one problem for people with ADHD or executive disfunction is having too much stuff. If there's so much stuff that there simply isn't room to organize and have a spot for everything, you'll need to downsize some things. That's what I'm working on today. 🙂

I keep EVERYTHING in its place. I hate a messy place, because it overwhelms me. So everything in my house has a place, and once I'm done whatever thing, it goes right back to its place. People call me a highly organized person, but I like to think it's because I'm lazy...it takes waaay longer to look for something than to just find it right away 😊)

[efs]

Nearly in tears. I never would have been able to pay for this coaching. Amazing stuff.

[addysaw]

I have another revolutionary suggestion, that helped me a lot and hopefully could help a lot of you:
If you have a ton of documents, go ahead and scan them using a scanning app on your phone, and then save them onto a Google drive file.
You wanna name the document files something short, simple, and obviously relevant.

Take your time with this. It took me 6 months to abolish the mountains of papers I had. Now, I can find almost any document instantaneously AND I have a full emtpy closet and a lot more space.

Extra tip: also scan and back-up important documents such as your passport. Its always good to have a copy of that in a secure place, and to be able to retrieve its information with your phone.

Smartphones can be so useful in things like these.

[saml]

I DEFINITELY laughed out loud when you said to refrain from looking at the interesting things you find....that’s so me. As you said, this all seems very basic, but as you were going through everything I was thinking “that all seems like a LOT of work”. Lol

[pandabeargogo]

Guarantee after a week someone's going to suddenly remember this video and won't be able to find it

[mkmcl]

I use a flashlight to look for things...It helps me focas on individual items as I search. You put into words what we ADD folks deal with everyday. Thankyou for that!

[danamoss]

This video is super well done. I know this because I feel very called out by it 😂

[inezvlasich-brennan]

I'm finding that having what I call 'clutter baskets' at strategic points through my house is really helping me with this aspect of my adhd. Putting things away where they came from is sometimes too much so dumping it in a basket in clear view means that I'm A. Less likely to misplace things and when I can focus on cleaning up I can just take the basket and put things back later.

[asdfghjkl]

Just the concept of someone being able to just do this without thinking about it 10000 times blows my 😂🤯

[Hber]

She is one of the best video instructors for adhd...

[makingitthrough]

Label stuff with a sharpie on blue or green masking tape. It removes easily so boxes etc can be relabeled if necessary. I’m in my mid 60s and this strategy has at least given me a fighting chance. For a more permanent label use a labelling machine. It’s a wonderful feeling. Also papers that relate to current projects go into three ring binders, if a page is needed for a phone call, the paper doesn’t get removed from the binder, you simply open up to the right page. That means the paper doesn’t somehow go off for a wander into the stratosphere never to be seen again. My life has been super complicated, dealing with various elderly parents etc; this binder system is what has kept me somewhat sane.

[chrisbodor]

"And if you find something like a photo album, resist the temptation to sit down and look at it while you are organizing." I have been called out. LOL. Great video and I live by the "Place, retrieve, return" mantra when I create spaces for my teams at work. Thanks.