Home Organization Tips for ADHD
Hi! I'm Emily. If you are new here I am a 33-year-old mom with ADHD. I was diagnosed when I was 16 years old so I have had more than half my life to come up with coping strategies and systems to help me to succeed. With these systems in place, I'm able to navigate my ADHD in my day to day life. I'm always trying to make our space at home more neurodivergent friendly because everyone in my family is neurodivergent and these systems help make that happen. I want to share how I utilize those systems to make our home function properly.
We spent the last half of 2024 in Argentina. Before we left, I prepped our house to be gone for 6 months and so our family friends could live here while we were gone. Unfortunately, a few things popped up last minute before we left so I wasn't able to get every single thing organized to my liking. Because of that, there are several spaces in our house that were definitely not as organized as I would have liked and now that we're home I need to get them into shape. Looking at these spaces now I'm a little mortified about HOW unorganized they are, but this gives me an opportunity to go through these spaces and organize them to my liking.
Home Organization Tips for ADHD | Kitchen Junk Drawer
The first space I need to tackle is the junk drawer in the kitchen and the cabinet beneath it. This cabinet is full of stuff we use, but it also accumulates junk so I have to sort through it every so often. I need to clean out the drawer while also reorganizing the space to accommodate different needs. For example, I do my makeup downstairs to stay out of my husbands "office" upstairs and also do my daughter’s hair before school downstairs. I need to find space in this drawer for the makeup and hair supplies.
I took this time to take every single item out of the drawer so I had a blank space to work with. Then, I organized everything in here. Like most junk drawers, it had accumulated a lot of unnecessary things like pens and white board markers I don't use as well as three pairs of scissors, two box cutters, and a few other random items. I removed the broken child lock and wiped down the drawer. I measured the space so I was sure it would fit all of the hair stuff as well as all of my makeup. It took me a few tries to figure out the perfect setup and the right combination of drawer organizers, but I ended up using the drawer organizers from the Home Edit line that you can find at Walmart. I have found these tend to be the best for organizing drawers because they utilize the most space. I find a lot of other drawer organizer sets tend to leave you with a lot of unused space. I was able to fit all of my makeup, and then squeezed only necessary scissors, box cutters, and pens and the few keys we need to have close by for our bike locks and the shed.
Home Organization Tips for ADHD | Junk Cabinet
The next place to organize is the cabinet just under the junk drawer, lovingly referred to the junk cabinet. Its another place that for some reason seems to accumulate junk. It didn't help that I shoved a lot of stuff in there before we left for Argentina so now I'm having to deal with it. For the most part, this space is usually very organized and has a really good system. Unfortunately, I just am not incredibly great about using said system. Like before, I took everything out of the cabinet so I had a clean slate.
I already had a set if small drawers that house small things like screws, command hooks and nails, and I didn't touch that except to add a few more things to it. Everything else I categorized into two piles: trash and anything that needs to go back into the cabinet. For the most part, it was just stuff that needed to be put into a container. Once I took care of all of this and put everything back into the system that I previously had in place, things went pretty smoothly. Using the structure I had already created, it was actually pretty easy. I have discovered the best way for me to organize a space is to start organizing a space and create a system I can then go back to and maintain easily later. Having drawers with clear fronts for organizing is crucial for me so I am able to see what's inside the drawer and easily put things back where they need to be. I added drawers for sunscreen, tape, tools, etc. Everything is in its designated spot and makes me breathe a sigh of relief when I open the cabinet.
Home Organization Tips for ADHD | Above Fridge Cabinet
Next up is the cabinet above my fridge. I feel like over the fridge cabinets are some of the hardest to organize because they are tall, hard to reach, deep and random stuff just seems to be thrown up there. I took everything out of the cabinet and in the process, I discovered a few things I don't need like an extra lid for a cake carrying container and the Baby Brezza we definitely don't use anymore. I also discovered the toaster oven in this cabinet and brought it down so we could actually use it. I got cabinet drawer inserts that are expandable so you can decide what size you want them to be.
The other thing I really like about these is that there is a third drawer slide on them, and so that adds a lot of stability for when you're using them, while also adding to the stability of maintaining the width. They're really easy to install and make everything easily accessible. Once they were in, I made a top shelf to fit over the installed shelves so that I could see more things at a glance. The really nice thing about these kinds of drawer pulls is that they work great for people who have ADHD because you are able to look and easily see all that you have and don't have the opportunity to forget it.
Home Organization Tips for ADHD | Office Cabinet
The last spot I'm going to tackle is the cabinet in our family room I use for my office stuff. I keep the copies of my downloads as well as stuff I work on a regular basis. I also have office supplies in here, but this, again, turned into a space I ended up shoving extra things into before we left for Argentina. This cabinet was very overwhelming when I opened it and I was afraid everything was going to fall out. Again, I took everything out of the cabinet and started organizing things into piles. I already had a few systems in place with this cabinet which made this process a lot easier. I already had a place where I kept all of the copies of the downloads as well as a bucket for charging cords. I already have a folder where I keep documents that need to be filed away in my filing system as well as a pile for trash. I also have a folder with a bunch of keepsake items from our trip to Argentina that I'm keeping until I can put them in a book. While it initially looked overwhelming, it was actually pretty easy for me because I already had these systems in place. I like to utilize every bit of space with drawer organizers.
My husband's a musician and so we have a lot of music books for different kinds of instruments. I keep them in a magazine organizer in this cabinet. I also keep the folder that contains all of the current bills, letters, and anything that needs my attention. I also keep my design notebooks on that shelf so I can find them easily and they are easy to grab. I put all of my tripods, microphone and video equipment in this cabinet so it's really easy to access and I know exactly where it all is. The third shelf of this cabinet is for my random ADHD side quests. For example, right now I'm trying to get into embroidery. It's so much better to be able to open up the whole cabinet feel peace instead of being overwhelmed.
My biggest tip in organizing with ADHD is finding a system that works well for you and sticking with it so you can easily go through a space several times a year so it doesn't get too overwhelming for you. Hopefully this helps to get you in the organizing mood too!
