How to Work With Your ADHD to Keep Your Home Clean

I have walked by piles on my bed, my floor, and my closet for weeks on end. And the thing is, my apartment is not dirty. It is vacuumed and dusted, the laundry is washed, but my clothes are rarely put away. I spent years trying out all the perfect organizational systems. I reorganized drawers, bought bins, and implemented hacks that worked for about two weeks, but then I was back to square one. What I did not understand was that I was not failing at organizing. I was trying to use systems that were not designed for my brain.

When we have ADHD, traditional cleaning and organizing strategies, while great in theory, are simply not sustainable. They do not account for how our brains actually work. Instead of chasing the most aesthetic system, I started predicting my challenges instead, and over time, the aesthetics actually followed.

Understanding your executive functioning and how it impacts you specifically is the key to designing an ADHD friendly home. Here is what I have learned.

If it has more than one or two steps, it isn’t sustainable. If putting something away is hard, it will not get put away. I have a behind-the-door organizer in my closet. The intended purpose was to keep our keys, headphones, and the things we tend to drop at the entryway table out of sight. And yet things kept ending up on the table anyway, so we adapted by placing in easy reach a catch-all bowl, a container for mail, and a spot for sunglasses. 

The behind-the-door organizer was repurposed to hold sunscreen, hats, gloves, and lint rollers. Things I need to visually see to remember to grab. It was not a wasted purchase. It just needed a new purpose that actually matched how we live.

Choose visibility and access over perfection. I love a beautiful home. I watch Architectural Digest on YouTube and want everything I see. But those homes are not reality, and I can guarantee they do not look like that all the time – unless they have house elves following them around, in which case I need immediate information on how to obtain one. I have learned to accept that my home may not be a model home, but it is mine, and it works for me.

Make the right choice, the easy choice. Our medication lives next to our spices because that cupboard gets opened every single day. Our cleaning products do not live in a closet. They live next to the things they clean, which means one less barrier between me and actually getting a chore done. Design your environment so that the habit you want to build is also the easiest option available to you.

If you have tried every system and still feel like you are failing, it is not a willpower problem. It is a brain problem, and it is one you can actually work with. This is exactly the kind of work I do with clients. If you are ready to stop fighting your brain and start working with it, I would love to connect.