31 Day Challenge, Day 6
One of the hallmarks of ADHD is our tendency to be easily distracted. Even people who do not have ADHD know that about us. It’s been the subject of many jokes, but for those of us with ADHD, it is no laughing matter.
When you are easily distracted, you tend to leave a lot of things undone, or rather, incomplete.
The correct way to do a load of laundry, for instance, is to wash, dry, and then fold or put it away. We can usually do the wash, even the dry most times, but that’s when things break down. We choose our clean towels from the laundry basket rather than the closet; the same goes for our clothes.
Do you see this laundry basket of clothes? They belong to my son. He left them in the basement and I finally got tired of working around them and brought them upstairs.
They are in the living room. In fact, they’ve been there, in front of the coffee table for at least two weeks.
No one knows if they are clean or dirty.
What to do with them? Wash them? Put them away?
I think that when you’re not sure if they are clean or dirty, you err on the safe side and wash them again.
But guess what happens after that?
They get washed. They get dried. At some point someone will take them out of the dryer and put them in a laundry basket.
And the cycle repeats.
I mention this for a few reasons:
This is ADHD in real life. We get distracted, we forget, and we end up with a basket of questionable clothing in our living rooms for days and weeks.
This is part of why our homes are so cluttered. We leave things out so that we remember them. But we never really follow through on putting them where they belong, so they stay where they are. And truthfully, after a while we really don’t notice them anymore.
I actually had some friends over for some Sunday afternoon crafts a week or so ago and didn’t realize that the laundry basket was there. It’s right out in the open, but still, it blends in after a while.
I also want to call attention to something I said in that point
But we never really follow through on putting them where they belong…
Putting them where they belong.
That’s another reason that our homes are so cluttered, so disorderly.
We don’t have a place for our belongings.
Now I’m not saying that is true all of the time. After all my son does have a place for clean clothing. But in general, that can be a problem for us. If something does not have a designated place in our home, where do we put it?
Order requires completion.
You must come full circle to maintain an orderly home.
And when you have ADHD, one of the ways that you do that is to teach yourself to live in the moment. Stop anticipating what your next step is going to be. Quit living in the future and live in the present.
Learn to recognize when your mind has wandered off. Stop. Take a look around you.
Where are you?
What are you doing?
What do you see or hear or smell?
That’s living in the moment. And maybe in that moment you might notice a laundry basket that has taken up residence in your living room, and actually come full circle and complete the task.