Sorry, I Missed This: Why ADHD makes decluttering so hard (and how to fix it)

If your home has ever felt like it’s working against you, this one’s for you. Certified professional organizer Alison Lush joins the show to unpack the ADHD relationship to stuff. Learn what chronic disorganization actually means, why the Marie Kondo method can backfire, and how to build systems that work with your brain. We also get into the emotional weight of clutter, organizing as a couples issue, and why community might be the most underrated tool of all.

• Watch: Tips from an ADHD Coach: Big feelings around clutter

• Explore: Free self-guided activity for women with ADHD

Cate Osborn: Hi everybody, and welcome back to "Sorry I Missed This," the show where we talk about all things ADHD and its impact on relationships, intimacy, sex, communication, and more. As always, it's me, your host, Cate Osborn. Today we're talking about our relationship to stuff with Alison Lush, a certified professional organizer based in Canada who specializes in chronic disorganization, neurodivergence, and ADHD.

I think it goes without saying, dear listener, that this is going to be an episode that is very close to my heart. I'm not even joking when I tell you that immediately, immediately before sitting down to record this intro, I was upstairs trying to reorganize my sewing room and having to decide what fabric to keep, what fabric to give away, what stuff I'm using, what stuff maybe might come in handy some other time. I got really overwhelmed, I got really emotionally dysregulated, and I know that that shows up a lot in the ADHD community.

I cannot tell you what a fan of Alison Lush I am. I have been a fan of her work for years and years and years. And the way that she talks about disorganization, the way that she talks about clutter and mess, is so fundamentally kind and gentle and accepting. And that was one of the reasons why I really wanted to do this episode, because for a really long time, I carried a lot of guilt and shame and embarrassment around the clutter, around my struggles with keeping up with keeping things organized and perfectly clean.

And so in today's episode, that is exactly what we're going to be talking about. We're going to be talking about the ADHD brain and our relationship to stuff, the way that chronic disorganization and messiness shows up in our lives, and, of course, what we can do about it. Hi, Alison, welcome to the show.

Alison Lush: Thank you very much. I'm delighted to be here, such an honor.

Cate: I don't know about you, dear listener, but I have some pretty complex relationships to my stuff. And so I guess, Alison, that's the first question. As somebody who works with a lot of people who have ADHD, talk to me about the ADHD relationship to stuff.

Alison: Oh, how long have we got? It's a very big topic. Bottom line is — ADHD folks are among the largest population of people who show up with chronic disorganization. I'd like to take a second to tell people what that means, chronic disorganization.

Cate: That was going to be the next thing I asked.

Alison: Three parts to the definition, according to the Institute for Challenging Disorganization, which is my school. Number one, it persists over a long period of time. Number two, it frequently undermines quality of life. It's important stuff. It's not that you don't like the way your pantry looks like it's not rainbow, it's because like you can't find your keys, you're late for work, all your friends are upset with you — like it's problematic for quality of life.

And number three, it recurs despite repeated self—help attempts. People try and try and try and try to get themselves out of it and it's just so complex. And ADHD just fits into this like a hand into a glove because ADHD — like we — and I was diagnosed two years ago, by the way, I just found out like at the age of 61 that I've got ADHD, big surprise.

So most of us are creative. Most of us have multiple interests. Most of us need more dopamine. Most of us are forgetful and inattentive and impulsive and like all those things, and those do not help with the management of our belongings and the management of our schedule and the management of our time and our attention and our energy and our resources. And so we end up with problems.

Cate: So, Alison, if there is chronic disorganization, which I definitely deeply relate to on a spiritual level, then what is organization? How do you define that and how do we talk about that in our lives?

Alison: My definition of being organized is I can put my stuff away without too much difficulty, and I can find my stuff without too much difficulty. So it doesn't matter if you put your socks in the pantry. If you want your socks in the pantry and that's where you know that they're going to be and you can put them away there, you're organized. That's all it is. It's so that you can get through your life, accessing your stuff and doing the big important things in your life and your stuff and your space doesn't get in your way.

What we're trying to do is get to a point where you can deal with your stuff and keep up with the maintenance. Maintenance is a huge part of disorganization, and what I always tell clients is, if you don't know what else to do, just do some maintenance tasks. Do some dishes, fold some laundry, clear off a surface, because all of that is going to help you. Maintenance will never let you down. But in order to be able to do maintenance, it helps a lot already to have done the work to become a little bit more organized. That's a little bit more complex.

Cate: I love how you talk about organization because when you talk about organization, you make it feel possible.

Alison: Well, I think part of that is the fact that I come from chronic disorganization. I spent my entire adult life living with chronic disorganization, and I worked my way out of it. And so I recognize that it — it's just chipping away and chipping away and chipping away and working at the same time as working on the physical stuff — working on reprogramming ourselves, because we have been so heavily programmed by the media and social media, and it's telling us this is what it should look like and this is what it should be like, and I hate the word "should."

(05:01) The role of aesthetics in organization and strategies for sorting and decision-making.

Cate: That's something that I really struggle with because I have developed an organizational system that really works for me, but it is not aesthetic. It's not the rainbow color-coded "The Home Edit," you know, Pinterest-friendly version. It's a lot of clear containers with stuff in them. Do you see that kind of connection to aesthetics hindering people sometimes when it comes to really actually getting organized?

Alison: Yes. I encourage clients to start with the systems and start with figuring out where the stuff belongs in a way that works for them. If you can't find your stuff, it doesn't matter if it's in a pretty container. Like honestly, that's what it comes down to. Imagine that you're rearranging a drawer and you want to figure out where all the stuff's going to go in the drawer.

You can take boxes out of your recycling bin and cut them down and put them in and figure out what the groups are, what the containers are, what the families, the categories are, and then take a picture of it, and that's what you're aiming for. You've got your system and if you really feel that you want to upgrade it, you can take that picture and go to the store and try to upgrade the containers if you want to. And with clear containers, I mean, if you don't like the look of them, put up a curtain and draw the curtain when you're tired of looking at them. We can polish the look of it after the system is in place. That's the important thing. The system has to come first.

Cate: So I want to talk a little bit more about just relationships to stuff, because you deal a lot with chronic disorganization, but a lot of the ingredients in chronic disorganization is clutter. Can you talk a little bit about clutter and like what is clutter, how do we work with clutter?

Alison: So clutter could be two things. Clutter could be — the stuff that I just used. If I just did a sewing project and got out all my sewing stuff and I had it all over the dining room table and I was working on a project, if I walk away — I'm done, I finished my sewing project, I'm happy with myself. And that's the important thing about owning stuff, is that we can do things that are meaningful for us.

I am not in service to my belongings. My belongings are in service to me. So I always try to remind people, please keep an eye on what's important in your life so that you have a satisfying life and use your belongings to help you have a satisfying life. So if I spread all my sewing stuff all over the dining room table and I'm finished and I walk away, it's clutter. But all my sewing stuff has a home. It was just stuff that needed to be put away.

But if my table is covered with stuff that doesn't have a home, that's like classic big-time hard-to-deal-with clutter. And there's strategies to deal with that. Fundamentally, the bottom line is — it's helpful if we're willing to sort of slow down and look at the stuff and ask ourselves where we might be able to make a home for it. Doesn't have to be perfect, doesn't have to be pretty.

I sometimes even recommend to my clients that they just end up with a box of random stuff that was on the dining room table that doesn't have a home, and put a label on it that says "random stuff that was on the dining room table and didn't have a home," because I might remember I saw it on the dining room table, and at least if it was in a box with a label, I have a chance of finding it. Because every single thing we try to find a home for, that's a decision-making process, and at a certain point, we're just saturated and burnt out of making decisions.

We can't make all the decisions. It's okay to have a certain percentage of our belongings just remain random because we just run out of gas. As long as it's not in our way and we can have a chance of finding most of our stuff, that's good enough for most people most of the time, I think.

Cate: Oh man, it's Renaissance fair season. So when I tell you about the sewing project clutter that is currently covering my house, it is — it is real, Alison. So I'm wondering, I guess just about the skill gap. Because I know that nobody really ever taught me how to organize. Nobody ever really taught me how to make decisions about what to keep or what to let go, and the work that you do is really interesting because you do a lot of virtual stuff. So you're not like in the room doing stuff for someone, you're really building skills with them so they can do it for themselves.

Alison: You are absolutely correct that in virtual organizing, my goal is to help identify the gaps that the client has because every person is absolutely unique. So, for example, sorting. Sorting into categories can be a real big stumbling block for a lot of people. So I have like a table that I offer people as examples. This is like some examples of some major and minor categories that many people have in their homes, just to give you an idea of how categories are helpful. Because if you can't put them away in any kind of a logical way that makes sense in your brain, you're never going to find them.

So categorization is like one major, major skill. Sorting is a major skill. Reviewing, pausing to review. If you just pick up one of your belongings, the natural question if you're trying to declutter is to say, "should I keep this or should I let this go?" But that is such a threatening question because if I let this go, I've got nothing in my hand. Whereas if I get all of my office supplies sort of together first, I can see maybe I have five staplers.

And if I have five staplers, I have context. So then I can choose my favorite stapler and maybe one backup, and then maybe it would be easy for me to let the three go to donation, for example. But if I only have one stapler in my hand, even if it's the crappy old crunchy one, I'm going to keep it because I don't want to be without a stapler. So sorting is extremely helpful towards decision—making because it reassures us about what we've got. And that's just one example of some of the skills that can lead — affect — us being able to make decisions to let go of some of the excess.

(15:01) The emotional weight of disorganization, including the concept of "overwhelmed" as a brain dysfunction and the importance of community support.

Cate: I'm curious about the emotional component too, because there's skills, right? There's like the skills of like sorting into categories, and I love that part. I love reorganizing and like I'm going to put everything in its little — with its little family. But a lot of times where I get hung up is in like — I guess insecurity around — like am I making the right decision? Is this the best decision for my space? And then, you know, you can't see it because it's, you know, this part's very organized, but off camera you can't see that I've been working on my closet for a couple of months now, and so it's — it's kind of rough over there. And so like that has gotten overwhelmed. And so there's like an emotional component of "I'm never going to finish this." So how do we develop skills around those emotional components?

Alison: Well, that emotional component is overwhelm, which I would actually think of it more as like a brain dysfunction. Like it's when your brain gets overwhelmed that you shut down and you get — you just go "I give up because I can't do this anymore." If I think about emotional — the emotional component of chronic disorganization, it's more typically used for describing people's attachment to things and people's insecurity, "I don't think I can let this go because I'm going to suffer if I let it go."

When we're talking about like a closet that a person has — like, I remember when I tried the Marie Kondo method and I emptied my entire closet onto my bed. And I was already a professional organizer, but I wanted to try her method to see what it felt like and what it looked like so I could tell my clients if I thought it was any good. And I immediately felt panic-stricken because I had just put like three or four hundred decisions on my bed. And I couldn't go to bed until I made all those three or four hundred decisions. It was — it was brutal.

One of the more basic strategies that I encourage people to focus on is breaking things down into smaller chunks. So I've developed, for example, a thing called the Wardrobe Review Method, and it gives structure of question asking, and then it encourages a person to just take just one category, like just your t-shirts. Get them all together so that you can see them all at once, and then you can choose your treasures, and then you can review the other ones with the questions that I provided to help a person work through it and make some decisions.

And then it helps people let go of things with some confidence that they have made decisions that make sense to them. But I always — I caution people, you are vulnerable to overwhelm, it's always better to do a tiny bit and get it done and get it finished and tidied up rather than doing a big thing and getting overwhelmed.

Cate: I feel like there's always this like infinite number of choices that we have when it comes to what is actually the decision that we make and what if that decision isn't the best possible decision. So how do we learn how to experiment without getting in our own way?

Alison: There's several parts to that. One is I encourage using tools that are ADHD-friendly. So, for example, I don't recommend using a label maker, especially right out of the starting gate. I recommend using painter's tape and a Sharpie. Because then you can decide your category, you can put your label on — labels are so helpful so we don't keep it all on our brain and they tell us where the thing is, they tell us where to put it away, they tell us where to find it. But when it's done with painter's tape and a Sharpie, I can rip it up and throw it out if I change my mind.

So it gives me the flexibility. I'm not committed to anything, I'm not forced into anything, the stakes are low. I love that. When we purchase containers or acquire containers, I recommend as much as possible generic containers that could be used today for paper and tomorrow for cables and the next day for socks. Another thing is the mindset. I take it for granted that we're not going to hit the target the first time around when we're creating a system.

We're just experimenting and we're trying to make it better than it was before. I think this is a really helpful mindset. I want to make it better than it was before. I'm not expecting to get the perfect system that's going to last forever. Yes, I'm going to have to come back and revisit this and tweak it in the future, but that's just life. Finally, I'm reminded of a quote that I heard one of my mentors say at one point and this just so hit the nail on the head for me: "pick a lane and stick with it." Organizing systems are low-risk, low-cost endeavor, and I encourage us just pick a lane and stick with it and then try it out. That's the best way to know if it's good or if it needs tweaking, is by living with it and using it. As long as it's in our head and we're just ruminating on it, we're not making any progress.

(22:21) The "resetting" concept and provides advice for couples navigating different organizational styles.

Cate: I sometimes find that I rejection sensitivity myself when it comes to having confidence around keeping a space organized or decluttered. Because I fall into the habit of like the "grand clean," where I spend, you know, three days just absolutely making the space completely immaculate and it's amazing and it's great and it's perfectly organized. And then a little bit at a time, and a little bit at a time, and a little bit at a time, starts to be like a piece of mail here, maybe some socks over here, and then — and then I wake up, you know, six months later and the space feels like there was never any progress made at all. What do we do when we find ourselves kind of in that like cycle of organization versus disorganization?

Alison: We use the term a lot "reset," resetting a space. So I have absolutely still — a vulnerability to falling back into chronic disorganization. It doesn't just never go away. It's like ADHD, we're going to be living with it forever. But we can develop strategies to manage it better. So, for example, that pile of crap on my dining room table, it happens again and again and again because of where the table is located in our home.

So in my mind, I have developed with personal — like experimentation and reflection — I have come to the conclusion that if it stays on that table for like a week or 10 days, it's starting to grow roots. And when it starts to grow roots, it becomes more dangerous because then it starts being Velcro and things start attaching to it and I start not believing that I can clear the table. I start losing my confidence, and that's dangerous.

It's extremely important for the maintenance of our home that we have a fundamental sense of "I can do this, I can keep it up." And in order to develop that sense of confidence, it's very helpful to use the reset mindset. So, for example, if I notice that it's been like 10 days that we haven't been able to use the dining room table because it's all covered with my crap, I'm going to like put on my big girl pants and I'm going to say, "Alison, it's time to clear off the table."

And so I spend like 20 minutes or half an hour resetting. And half of the stuff just had a home to go to and only a few things didn't have a home to go to, and so I deal with those, and then we have the table back and it restores my confidence in my ability to maintain my table.

Cate: I love how you talk about stuff growing roots. Like that's exactly what happens is it goes, "Well, it was there for a while. So I guess it just like — that's just where it goes. Like that's where it lives for the rest of my life. I'm doomed." Can you talk just a little bit more about the process of reflection, the process of experimentation, and like where to start with that or like what that can look like in — in the ADHD life?

Alison: One of the strategies that I encourage clients to use when we're first starting to work together is what I call the grounding exercise. So, for example, I look at my desk and I — the grounding exercise is to ask myself, "what is it I want to accomplish when I'm sitting here at my desk or standing here at my desk, in my life?" Because when we don't ask ourselves this question, we're just defaulting to the programming that we received from society, which is usually not helpful.

So if I pause and I reflect, "what do I want to accomplish at my desk?" it's connecting me with my bigger picture goals, with who I am and what I want to accomplish in my life. And the things become like bit players in my big story, which is exactly the way it should be. So the first part of the grounding exercise is "what do I want to accomplish in this space?" And then from that list, that tells me what's important to me to accomplish.

Then when I extrapolate from that list, it can tell me, "therefore, what are the things that I need here?" And then when I look at my desk after I've got those two lists, then it's so easy to identify what doesn't belong here. I can do the same grounding exercise at the kitchen counter, at the bathroom counter, in the entryway, on the couch, like any key area, the bedside table. And that helps give us clarity up here about what belongs there and what doesn't. And I can pull closer to me things I need and push further away things that don't belong there. That's already a really big step towards getting clarity about managing our belongings in that space in a way that contributes to our bigger picture of what we're — what we want to be doing in our life and what's meaningful for us.

Cate: A lot of ADHD folks, especially folks who are newly diagnosed, who are sort of coming to the conversation for the first time, there is this idea around "should." There is — you hate "should," I hate "just," I feel we are the same. But there's this idea that you have to match your socks, you have to line your shoes up in nice little rows, you have to do your laundry a certain way.

But a lot of times folks run into this disconnect between what I am capable of, what I have time for, what I have energy, what I have executive functioning for, and like what I see on Pinterest, what I see the "momfluencers" doing, what I, you know, even my friends, even my friends who live in like their perfect magazine houses and I'm like, "that's — that's not me." What do you say to those people who are feeling that shame, that guilt, that embarrassment around "well, I can't do it like everybody else"?

Alison: A person affected by CD [chronic disorganization], okay, they have the people in their lives, family, friends, and colleagues who are impacted by the chronic disorganization, right? They may feel burnt out, they may feel pessimistic, they may feel resentful, right? What the individual needs rather is a community where it's a safe place, it's non-judgmental, the person is not isolated. This is one of the terrible sad things about chronic disorganization, is that people end up living a more isolated life because they're so ashamed to bring people into their homes and to be honest about how they're living.

But when you find other people who are dealing with the same challenges, you can actually be your true authentic self and get the support and the empathy and the ideas and the brainstorming and the body doubling and the no judgment and the enthusiasm and the optimism from a safe space community, and I can't emphasize enough how important community is for folks who are affected by chronic disorganization and ADHD. It's absolute game changer.

Cate: I'm just so curious about how chronic disorganization shows up in relationships.

Alison: So if we imagine, for example, a couple living together and one of the partners is neurotypical and doesn't have challenges with their belongings and the other partner is neurodivergent, maybe ADHD and affected by chronic disorganization. That's a scenario that I see a lot in my work. And it's always the person coming to me is the person who's neurodivergent, probably has ADHD, almost all my clients have ADHD. And they're trying to do better, they want to do better, and their partner doesn't understand their challenge and is really exacerbated.

I work with them first of all on — your number one responsibility is to yourself. All you can do is work on yourself, do the work on yourself and try to make your management of your own life better for yourself, and hopefully it will have a positive impact on your relationship. It's a lot to ask of an individual who's experiencing chronic disorganization to advocate for themselves to someone who's neurotypical. It's not easy.

So I don't actually recommend it immediately in the beginning. In the beginning, I sort of encourage them to just work on your own self quietly. You don't make a big deal of it, and when you start feeling some sense of accomplishment and confidence, then you can start like say, you know, "Have you noticed that now this is going better in the house? That's because I'm understanding better what works for me and I've developed a system that works for me, and I hope that that's working for you too." They can start talking about it, but you've got to have a little bit of traction underneath you before you can start talking about it. Otherwise, you're just working from a place of insecurity and — that's just too hard.

Cate: We have a lot of listeners who have loved ones with ADHD. Like they may not have the ADHD themselves, but, you know, they're listening on behalf of their loved one. So what advice do you have for them if they are the person who finds themselves kind of living with the person who's a little disorganized, maybe?

Alison: The person who is frustrated living with someone who's got chronic disorganization or ADHD, one strategy that can be helpful is to have a conversation about — are there any zones in the home that can be like "this belongs to this space, I get to be in charge of it" and "that space you get to be in charge of it"? That can be really, really helpful. Like I have my own bedroom and my husband has his own bedroom, and I can do whatever the heck I want in here and he can do whatever the heck he wants in there.

That already removes a tremendous amount of stress from our little four—room apartment. Second of all, pick and choose the things that you really want to argue about, because you can't resolve everything and you can't argue about everything. If it's really important to them, for example, that the dishes get done before they go to bed at night, then let's talk about how that feels so important to you and let's try to figure out a way to make it happen, because your needs are important as well. We don't want you going under the bus just because the other person has, you know, all this stuff going on. Compromise, communication, compromise — it's like relationship 101.

Cate: Interesting thing that I run into a lot in terms of navigating those sort of interpersonal household relationships. One partner will have a lot of opinions and one partner will have not very many opinions at all. They go, "No, I don't care, I don't care how the living room is, I don't care how the kitchen is," but then you start asking them a little bit and there's this like "Oh, well, actually, I was thinking that maybe it could be like this or that or the other thing."

How do you navigate a conversation with a partner who says that they don't necessarily have an opinion, but that lack of opinion might come from they've never seen the space in any other way or they haven't taken the time to envision it? What are processes that we can go through to really share the space with a partner instead of taking over or just letting our chronic disorganization sort of spread into the everything?

Alison: Again, I think it has to do with clarifying what are the bits that are the most important for the individual who's feeling imposed upon. So, for example, the person might say, "I always want the couch to be available." That might be like a rule that they could agree on together. Okay, no crap on the couch. "I want there to be enough room on the coffee table for me to put down a tray."

So that could become a rule. It's not saying all the stuff has to disappear, it's not saying that the other person can't share the living room, the person with all the stuff, but there are boundaries. And if they are simple enough and clear enough and respectfully, you know, with kindness expressed in a way that the other person can hear, then they can be negotiated and respected. But they have to be fair and they have to be reasonable. Bottom line is, we get benefits from living with someone, but it comes with a price.

Cate: So, Alison, talk to me a little bit about just supports and methodologies that are out there that we can use, we can try in order to start facilitating this process.

Alison: My favorite resource to recommend is the Institute for Challenging Disorganization, which is the school that I went to. It's a subgroup of professional organizers and it's the most reliable resource for finding a professional organizer that I know of. If you live in a remote area or there's nobody near you, virtual organizing is a developing field and ICD also has on that directory a thing you can toggle to say "I'm looking for a virtual organizer."

The thing I love about virtual organizing is that it's based on helping the client become more competent. So you build life skills that you're going to have forever. So even if it takes you a couple of years or a few years to work through your stuff and your challenges and fill the gaps, you're going to have the whole rest of your life to benefit from that and be competent, as you said, doing the hard thing. It's magnificent what's possible with virtual organizing.

Cate: Speaking very honestly from real personal experience, I cannot recommend virtual organizing enough. Because I have been the person who hired a professional organizer. I spent thousands of dollars on a professional organizer who came in and made my house look immaculate, but it wasn't a system that worked for me. It wasn't structures that I had built to work with my brain instead of against it.

And I think it was a month before everything just went exactly back to the way it was. And virtual organizing is amazing because you're getting the benefit of body doubling, but you are specifically doing it yourself. And so you are developing skills, you are learning about your brain. And so like I'm not here to shill for — actually I am, I'm here to shill for Alison personally. Alison, thank you so much. You are so cool. I like your work so much and you're helping so many people. We will assuredly have you on again sometime soon.

Alison: It would be my pleasure. And in the meantime, don't forget to go out and buy your book.

Cate: Thank you for listening. Anything mentioned in the episode will be linked in the show notes with more resources. Have a question, comment, burning story you'd like to share? Email us at sorryimissedthis@understood.org. This show is brought to you by Understood.org. Understood.org is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences like ADHD and dyslexia. If you want to help us continue this work, donate at understood.org/give.

"Sorry I Missed This" is produced by Jessamine Molli and edited by Jesse DiMartino. Video is produced by Calvin Knie. Our theme music was written by Justin D. Wright. Production support provided by Andrew Proctor. Briana Berry is our production director. Neil Drumming is our editorial director. From Understood.org, our executive directors are Laura Key, Scott Cocchiere, and Jordan Davidson. And I'm your host, Cate Osborn. Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you again soon.