People with ADHD are messy and disorganized. That’s just the truth of the matter.
Some of us learn to overcome it or at least manage it, but it takes practice.
A good time to begin learning and practicing organizing skills is when you are a kid. This will be a lifelong skill well worth mastering.
If you have a messy room to begin with, start by cleaning it. You can choose to do this yourself, or if you have the patience, have your child help.
1. Once you have all of the dirty clothes and trash out of the room, you can begin to sort what’s left. Sort things into piles of like things. All shoes, for instance, or all books, all blocks, whatever.
If you have a young child, or even an older one, this is a good learning experience.
2. Containerize things. Find or buy suitable containers to keep like things together. A shoebox for crayons and markers. A bookcase for books. A basket for shoes.
3. Make things easier to put away than to take out. For instance, finding the pink crayon in the shoebox might take a little time, but picking up all of the crayons and dumping them into it is easy.
4. Find a home for each container – preferably near where it will be used – and be sure to label it. That makes finding the right thing easier.
5. Consider putting some things away into “deep storage” – perhaps the basement or other out of the way place. Not everything needs to be in the room. Also consider getting rid of some things if your child has a lot of stuff. And finally, be sure to go back through every month or so in order to keep things neat.
Be sure to also check out this article from Real Simple about kids and organization.
