It's DER! but well meaning: "Just use Post-Its"

[Anonymous]

I’m finally getting a handle on the clutter in my latest home. I think with age and experience is coming more basic skills. That, and I haven’t up-and-moved like I have done on the average of every 2 yrs for the past 15 years. That can take a toll on organizing your stuff.

Now, I don’t like clutter. I’m not exactly sure most ADDers *like* clutter. But we are very prone to it. And I’m not a hoarder. I just don’t notice the mounting problem until more problems get piled on top of it. I try to knock out the basics: dishes, laundry and bathroom. But the rest? “Fuh-gedda-boud-it!”

Then in my good-intentions, I begin to pile things. “My piles” I used to call them. Then every few months, I’d get struck by the whirlwind to finally take action. And action I would take! Pacing… or moving.

But pacing. Pacing, pacing, pacing–trying to figure out what to do first, next or how this should even go. The pacing was to keep me on the task of organizing. My anxiety levels rose as I noticed more and more problems around the house and lapsed into remembering old conversations with people, situations in the past–often talking out-loud. Pacing, thinking about everything that’s ever happened in my life up until that moment.

The pacing was distracting me.

Then after a few hours of pacing–or the occasional pause to stand on a chair to survey the task from a new perspective–I would quit in emotional exhaustion.

Side note: As you can see, non-ADDers, this is not the sign of a lazy person.

So every now and then, I used to mention my big problem with organizing to a friend or co-worker.

“Oh! Oh, oh! Use… Post-its!” As in, Ta-daaaa! And then they recounted the ways in which they are very organized–the same brag-session you and I’ve both heard a hundred times from a hundred different people over the years. I would lapse out during the latest tipster’s Ideas of Organization for Already Organized People! into thinking…

Ah, yes. I seem to remember noticing a few post-its on my wall last month; but I think they blended back into the decor. Maybe I’ll see them again when I next pace the house… or move.

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