An emphatic suggestion right off the bat: Listen to music that you really like (preferably upbeat music and preferably on headphones) while cleaning/organizing. I’m telling you, once you get a lock on the momentum this can give you, it’s basically a hyperfocus-mode in motion. I don’t even try to clean without music now.
Like most of us, I have a frenetic schedule and wildly fluctuating energies. So when time arises that I could use for cleaning or organizing, I won’t do so because I pretty much always feel a desperate need to zone out for a while. But when I was booked for surgery a month ago, I realized I would *never* be able to recover properly in a cluttered house, surrounded by things that need doing!
I ended up booking an extra week off work *before* surgery to get my house in order. That way, the kids would be in school and I could listen to music and get/stay in the zone. I loaded a long string of upbeat songs to my MP3 player to be used for housework only. I decided I would do one room per day, assigned a room to each day and then limited myself to the borders of that room. Whatever was left at the end of the day got packed up in a box, with all content written on the box, so as not to spoil the new open space. Damn, but it worked! It worked, it worked!
Also: I have “ADD-Friendly Ways to Organize Your Life” by Judith Kolberg and Kathleen Nadeau, and it has helped me immensely. There was just something about that book… I keep it handy and still refer to it. It has a *very* ADD-friendly, visually oriented format. It’s written in an empathetic way that never makes you feel scolded or inadequate if you don’t live up to its recommendations. (You actually keep reading because you get the feeling someone “gets” you, but in a good way!)
Then you find yourself trying the first approach that appeals to you, because the solutions presented are so concrete, doable-sounding and bite-sized, and are often rather fun-sounding (e.g., colour-coding your stuff — that proposal attracted me to the task and engaged my creativity. I ended up organizing everything else on the same surface right afterward because I was motivated to admire/display my handiwork).
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