How to keep your home tidy if you have ADHD can be a struggle. This easy method will help ANYONE. Read on for the four simple steps.
The story.
“I’m going to clean my side of the room today.” My younger sister, about eleven years old, stood with crossed arms. A determined glint flashed in her eyes as she glanced at me, then nodded at the mess on her side of the room.
An invisible line divided our shared bedroom right down the middle. My side was always organized. My stuffed animals each had a particular place between my pillow and headboard on a bed that was always neatly made. The few items on top of my dresser were organized in small groups. Their places never changed. If it was an item that I used, like my hairbrush, I always put it back in its spot right after using it.
My half of the bedroom floor contained zero debris. I swept it regularly and never left toys or anything else on it.
The half of the bedroom belonging to my sister? A messy bed, floor strewn with papers and toys, and a dresser top that would have confounded Marie Kondo.
Inside, I laughed cynically at my sister’s declaration. She’d clean her side of the room, all right. Like a whirlwind, she’d make her bed, clean the floor, and put everything in a semblance of order.
Only to have it looking like a tornado had gone through it a week later.
Why maintaining a tidy home matters.
The purpose of this blog is to encourage women, particular my neurodivergent “sisters,” to live a simpler, slower life and thereby live a peaceful and fulfilling life. Self-care is a critical part of slowing down, and keeping a tidy home is part of self-care for neurodivergent women.
Why?
Three main reasons.
First, many – if not most – of us have some level of visual processing disorder. An annoying facet of this is that our brain forces us to see everything, even non-relevant or unimportant things. So when items are disarranged on a shelf; a countertop is cluttered with small appliances and dishes; a coffee table is littered with paper and books; and shoes and bags and boxes are helter-skelter on the floor; our ever-present low-level of anxiety inches up.
The long and the short of it is, a tidy home breeds more peace and contentment in our neurodivergent souls.
Second, if everything doesn’t have a place and the things that do have a place are not in place, you’re going to have a heckuva time finding things.
Finally – and this one is critical for us klutzy autistics – clutter presents a safety hazard. Especially items on the floor.
All of this leads to the question: what is the best method for keeping a tidy home? Your current method may not be much different than my sister’s.
And you know it’s not working.
Or perhaps you declutter and tidy up the entire house once every month or two, and it sticks for quite a while. But the problem is, the chore is so overwhelming and tedious that you spend many of your days dreading the next time you have to do it.
There is a better way. It’s not only simple, but also easy.
At least, once you get things under control. 😉
How to keep your home tidy if you have ADHD.
Or if you’re busy, or if you’re peri- or post-menopausal tired.
The method has four steps.
#1: Determine a place for everything. Keys, wallets, and purses should go wherever you naturally drop them when you get home. But they should have a container, a shelf, or set of hooks that they can call their own.
Most everything else in your house should have a no-brainer place to be: books on shelves, papers in drawers, dishes in cabinets, etc. You just need to determine which go in which specific room or space.
That leads us to the second step in maintaining a tidy house for overwhelmed women…
#2: Divide and conquer so that you are tidying up one small space every single day. Write down seven to fourteen areas of your home. Your list will include a mix of closets, small rooms, and individual spaces in larger rooms (e.g., “the bookcase next to the T.V.”).**
Next, assign a day of the week to each area. If you divide your home into seven zones, then each zone will be tidied once a week, on the same day of the week, every week. If you divide it into more than seven zones, mark the areas that are to be tidied after the first seven days as “2 Monday,” “2 Tuesday,” and so on. In this scenario, you’d be tidying each zone once every two weeks.
Next for how to keep a tidy home if you have ADHD or otherwise struggle with clutter…
#3: Make a “tidy-up” chart that’s visually pleasing and keep it somewhere you’ll actually see it – on top of your computer desk or attached to the fridge, for example.
#4: Follow the chart, and follow it every.
Single.
Day.
Now, if your entire home is like my sister’s side of our bedroom used to be, this will sound like an impossible task. Tidying up just one small space might take thirty minutes or more. If you truly don’t have time for that (a-hem, you may just need to take a week-long screen fast), the first go-round or two divide each zone in half. Tidy one half one day, the other half the next. And so on for all the other zones.
Eventually, you will get to a point where it only takes five minutes or less to tidy up a given space.
The beautiful result of the once-a-day tidy-up.
If you are consistent with following the chart, your home will look completely different within thirty days.
You will feel completely different within thirty days.
- Most items in your house will be in their respective places.
- You won’t have to worry about tripping over things.
- You’ll be able to find your keys, your purse, the scissors, the scented candle… whatever you need. (Although it may take you awhile to remember where certain things now live. But you’ll learn in time.)
- You will feel much more peace and have much less anxiety.
- Cleaning will be easier.
- You may find you like your home for the first time in forever.
- You will feel confident in inviting people into your home.
All of this will help you to live a quieter, simpler, gentler life – exactly what we neurodivergent women crave.
Because it’s what we need.
Do you have a different kind of hack for keeping your home tidy? Please share it in the comments! 🙂
**If you have children over the age of four, you should require them to clean up their toys and tidy their bedrooms every day. Your only responsibility here is to check and make sure they’ve done so (before dinner or a half hour before bedtime are standard times).
