So my therapist has been helping me get to grips with my ADHD, and also the concept that I’m not shit at being an adult, I just can’t do things the way everyone has always told me to do them. Like every single “organize your life” books have always left me wanting to cry with frustration, and after I got hold of a copy of Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD
by Susan Pinsky I realized that was because they primarily focus on “aesthetic” over “function”. And the function of most standard “organize your life books” is to “make things look Show Home Perfect”.
So the standard “hide all your unsightly things by doing xyz” may look nice for the first week or so, but by the end of the week it’ll look like a tornado made of pure inhuman frustration ripped through the house as I try to find the fucking advil.
To give you an example of the kind of hell I’ve been fumbling my way through the last 20 odd years: dishes will be washed and left in the drying wrack but never put away. Which means I can’t wash more dishes, which means dishes pile up, which means I can’t make food, which means I don’t eat, which means my CFS gets worse, which means I don’t have the energy to put the dishes away, and so on so forth until I have a meltdown, cry to ETD (who also likely has ADHD but has never had it confirmed) about how I can’t cope with life, and then we fix it for a while, but inevitably end up back at square one within about a week.
Pinsky’s solution to this was “remove an obstacle between you and your goal, if that means taking all the doors off your kitchen cabinets to make things easier, so be it.”
And lemme tell you, fucking revolutionary.
Laundry never ends up in the hamper??? why???? is it a closed hamper??? Remove the lid. Throw it out the window. Clothes are now miraculously finding their way into the hamper??? Rejoice????
Mail ends up spread out over every available flat surface? Put a sorting station right where your mail arrives. Put a shredder or “junk” basket under it. Shred or dump the junk immediately. Realize you only actually have two real letters that need attention, feel less overwhelmed, pay your bills on time.
Like I’m not saying this book is miraculous, but it did help me realize that I was effectively torturing myself by trying to conform to certain ideals of “perfect house keeping”, and presenting a certain image rather than just allowing myself to live in my space as effectively as possible. And why? Why was I doing that? Cause people with different lives and capabilities are perceived as the norm? Fuck that. If this was a physical problem I wouldn’t be forcing myself to conform to an ableist standard, so why am I doing it with this?
My lived space will never look a certain way, and that’s okay. It will never look show home perfect, and that’s okay. It will likely always be cluttered and eclectic where nothing matches, and that’s okay. Sometimes I will have odd socks on because sorting them out required too much mental energy, and that’s okay. Actually fuck sorting socks, just buy all your socks in the same color. Problem solved. Boring sure, but also one less thing to do, which means more time to hyper fixate on fun things. Which really, what else is my life for if not to write screeds and screeds of vampire shit posts, I ask you.
How do you balance this with your partners compulsive need for everything to be exactly so?
No matter how much either of us does we’re both still so frustrated…
I also have compulsive tendencies, so I can somewhat relate to this. And the answer probably lies in getting them to address their unhealthy perfectionism and why they feel the need to be in control and have everything be “exactly so” all the time.
Unhealthy perfectionism, while not exclusive to this, can also go hand in hand with ADHD because we’re always having to struggle so much more to get things Right to appease others, so it can become an unhealthy coping mechanism to shield us from criticism which can feel especially bad if you are a person with ADHD who also has rejection dysphoria disorder. Which I do. And a neat freak of a mother who used to scream if you didn’t do something “exactly so”. Perfectionism was my only way to protect myself for a long, long time, and it has destroyed a lot of my self worth and my ability to just live my life and get shit done. And it made me hugely angry at others for not doing things “exactly so” cause I couldn’t understand why they just didn’t care enough to do something “right”. Now I know.
Therapy has helped a lot. And a good book for me has been “Better Than Perfect” by Dr Elizabeth Lombardo. The test near the front of the book really hammered home just how incapacitated I was by my need to have things be “perfect” as a coping mechanism for other stressors.
Also cause people were asking, here’s the ADHD organization book:
When I first got officially diagnosed last month…month before…I went out and read a million and one self help books, and this by far was the most helpful for actually getting me to unfuck my living habitat and thus get into a better mental head space. Most of them just talked a big game about uncluttering your life and going minimalist, and while Pinsky also talks about culling your possessions to get them down to a manageable level, she is by no means promoting an aesthetic lifestyle. One of her opening chapters is, to paraphrase it “sure this looks ugly, but if it helps you to shower without obstacles, who cares”.
You know how study tips are always like “set a timer!”, well… knowing I only have a certain amount of time freaks out Professor Jiggly, the cat who drives my brain. So I have never been able to do that
But keeping track of time is useful
So here’s my solution: instead of setting a timer to count down, set a stopwatch to count up. You can have an approximate target amount to work before taking a break, but the timer won’t interrupt you if you’re focused and you won’t be distracted by the thought that you only have 20 mins or whatever
You just look at the clock when you feel like taking a break and it will maybe say “that was five minutes” at which point you can go argh! I will force myself to keep working! Or it will maybe say “that was 25 minutes” and you can be like “I am a powerhouse”
Also if you have the stopwatch on your phone, it discourages using your phone
I have NEVER BEEN ABLE TO USE TIMERS but I discovered this trick recently and it helps …… a lot
Hello, today I’m going to show you how to skin/ disassemble a furbling! Lots of people have written on the classic furbies we all know and love, but not as much has been documented for their younger cousins. I personally think Furblings present interesting options for crafters and are a great choice for those who want a smaller and more durable fuzzy friend! So, with that, let’s begin!
First you’ll need your furbling, a larger Phillips head screwdriver, a smaller Phillips head screwdriver, some tweezers, a sharp flat object like a knife or exacto, and a lighter. The exact sizes have worn off my screw drivers, but these are the same sizes you use for big furbies.
First, open the battery compartment, remove the batteries if you had any, and then unscrew the two smaller screws holding the base of the furby onto the body. Put the screws somewhere safe!
Lift the furbling’s base up. The fur will be held in place on some plastic spikes and have an elastic strap hooking it in place under the tail. Using your small screwdriver or other precision tool, unhook this strap.
You will not be able to take the base completely off yet as it is attached by some wires to the motherboard in the fubling’s carapace. Be careful and don’t yank them! Once the fur is unhooked, you should be able to peel it up and over the body until you can see the one small screw under each ear. Unscrew these, place them somewhere safe, and pull the back of the carapace out. You can now pull the furbling’s electronic bits out and set them aside somewhere safe.
At this point you can remove the feet from the base by sliding them off their pegs and pull out the ears from the skin. The final step is to remove the face from the front carapace and free the fur! So that I can post enough photos to illustrate the steps, see part two linked below to finish denuding your furbling!
This is a big, giant list of Youtube tutorials that will teach you all the basic life skills you need to know in order to be a functional adult. There are a lot of important skills that aren’t included in this list, but this should be enough of a basic guide to get you started and prevent you from making a total mess of yourself. Happy adulting!
this formatting is making me uncomfortable but I have to tell you something / ask you something that is vital to my career as a student.
I re-read and edited that sentence for an hour, but you’ll probably just glance over it for half a second.
thanks!
– [name]
k
-professor
I have a stock format and structure I use.
Dear Person I am Writing To:
This is an optional sentence introducing who I am and work for, included if the addressee has never corresponded with me before. The second optional sentence reminds the person where we met, if relevant. This sentence states the purpose of the email.
This optional paragraph describes in more detail what’s needed. This sentence discusses relevant information like how soon an answer is needed, what kind of an answer is needed, and any information that the other person might find useful. If there’s a lot of information, it’s a good idea to separate this paragraph into two or three paragraphs to avoid having a Wall of Text.
If a description paragraph was used, close with a restatement of the initial request, in case the addressee ignored the opening paragraph.
This sentence is just a platitude (usually thanking them for their time) because people think I’m standoffish, unreasonably demanding, or cold if it’s not included.
Closing salutation,
Signature.
People always ask me how I can fire off work emails so quickly. Nobody has figured out yet that it’s the same email with the details changed as needed.
SMALL TALK TIP FOR PEOPLE WHO HATE SMALL TALK: Ask people if they have any pets. This is light and impersonal enough to offend no one. People who have pets are usually pretty excited to talk about them and show off pictures, so there’s a good chance that you will be looking at kitties and doggos. People who don’t have pets will usually talk about the pets they wish they had, or have had in the past. People who neither have nor want pets are pretty rare.
It’s a neutral topic to talk about but be prepared for the weirdest shit. I once spent an hour listening to a financial manager who kept tropical velvet earthworms
Hace unos dias vi una serie de gifs de Marie Kondo explicando que a la hora de ordenar nuestra ropa debemos elegir la que nos produce felicidad, y para no sentirnos mal por la ropa que queremos botar, agradecer el tiempo que estuvo esa prenda estuvo con nosotros y dejarla ir..
Esto me llamo la atención y luego en Netflix descubri que habia una serie de ella, donde va a casas de personas y las ayuda a organizar. Me gusto su método y quise compartir algunos de sus consejos con ustedes. Quien sabe. Siempre se aprende algo 😉
ifesbob 