Get Your Sh*t Together: A No-Nonsense Guide to Organization with ADHD

Main Points, No Filter:

✅ Why Organization Matters: Being organized reduces stress, increases efficiency, and makes spaces more aesthetically pleasing.

✅ Key Components: Effective organization requires everything to have a designated place that’s easily identifiable, accessible, and neat.

✅ Set Up a System: Create specific zones for different activities within a space and establish clear "inbox" and "outbox" areas for managing incoming and outgoing items.

✅ Break Tasks Down: Divide organizing tasks into smaller, manageable parts, and schedule sessions to tackle them gradually.

✅ Stay on Track: Avoid distractions disguised as organizing and use reinforcers or the body double technique to maintain progress.

This might be my favorite part of the CBT for ADHD course. I love organizing—though like everyone, I’m a work in progress. Sometimes, systems break down, and that’s okay. What matters is regrouping and trying again.

Two components needed for good organization:

1️⃣ A place for everything. 

Everything belongs somewhere. It has a home.

2️⃣ Everything in it’s place. 

Return things to their homes when you are done using them. Just like the robot vacuum needs to go back to home base to get a re-charge. Your items need to go back where they belong so they can be ready for you.

This blog will talk about the first component of organization. A place for everything. The next blog is about making sure everything is in it’s place.

Why be organized?

1. You will find things more easily, if there is only one option for where something might be, we know exactly where that something is when we need it.

2. You will spend less time looking for things and be more productive.

3. Because you are more efficient, you will be less stressed

4. ⭐️ Bonus points ⭐️ things look more aesthetically pleasing when they aren’t piled up, threatening to teeter over with the slightest breeze.

Gretchen Rubin has a great book called Outer Order, Inner Calm that lays out this theory quite nicely.

Setting Up Your System for Organization

Now that we are on board with why we need to be organized, how do we do that in a way that makes sense? There are so many professional organizers and influencers that have the BEST way to organize, how do we decide which method to follow?

Let’s tackle this topic using the system we have implemented from the beginning. We are going to break down this vague “get organized” idea into smaller more manageable steps.  

First, let’s set up an organizational system. Here’s how to break it down:

Here are three basic criteria that any system worth your time should include. Everything must have a place that is:

1️⃣ Easily identifiable

2️⃣ Easily accessible

3️⃣ Neat in appearance

When you are deciding on a home for your belongings, consider the following:

1️⃣ Immediate view = immediate attention/use

The items in the immediate view should be those that are related to the task at hand or things that are in need of IMMEDIATE attention.

The more often you use it, the more readily it should be at hand. Ex: if you use salt and pepper to season your meals, you probably keep them near where you eat. (If you are a Marylander, the Old Bay is there too, IYKYK). The other seasonings like pumpkin pie spice and cream of tartar are in a more out of the way spot. You don’t use them frequently, so you don’t want them to take up valuable space on your kitchen table.

2️⃣ When you are organizing a space think about the activity that you do in the space.

Does your office double as a craft room or gym? Within your space create zones. All of the things you need for each of the activities belongs in that zone.

Creating a Filing System

In addition to making your spaces serve you. CBT for ADHD helps you set up a system for filing and organizing the incoming stuff and figuring out a system for the outgoing stuff to get out. The initial course was specific to hard copies of documents but in this digital age where folks rarely get mail in the mailbox, I have adapted the same system for digital files as well.

Let’s dive into setting up a filing system for your computer/cloud and for your home.

🤔 Think about the type of documentation that comes into your home. Divide those things into personal interest and personal business. If you are self employed and/or work from home, add another category for professional business.

Next, separate the incoming stuff into categories.

What sort of categories of incoming stuff do you have? Owner’s manuals for appliances, receipts, legal documents like tax forms?  What do you get in the mail? Junk, quarterly assessments, bills from companies that refuse to go digital. The little door hangers from the exterminator that stops by.

Don’t forget the emails from all of the places you have ever ordered anything from ever in your life. 

If you have children, you know that the elementary school era is flooded with papers. Whether or not you find this stuff interesting,  you need to find a system to sort it and all the other stuff that comes in the house digitally or via hard copy.   Otherwise, your inbox has reached the tens of thousands and your dining room table is buried under mounds of colorful paper and glitter art projects.

Create an inbox and an outbox.

The Inbox

As the stuff comes in, decide if it needs to be addressed, put that in your inbox. Plan to go through the inbox at least once a week. Things that go in the inbox are:  

✅ RSVPs to events

✅ forms that need to be returned to school

✅ the new credit card that needs to be activated

If it needs to be put away, you have a designated home for it based on the rules we outlined in the previous sections.

Digital Version:

Create rules for your incoming email. You can automatically have emails sorted into separate folders within your inbox. If it’s emails that you no longer wish to receive, you can hit the unsubscribe button on your email handler.

If the email needs an action or a response, you can create an entry on your digital task list. You may be able to drag and drop the email into the task list.

The Outbox

The outbox is for the stuff that needs to get out of the space or your house. This includes:

✅ the RSVP waiting to go to the mailbox.

✅ the packing slip and the item for the Amazon return  

✅ items that need to leave the space at the end of the day (cups, shoes, etc.)

The Fundamentals of Organizing in Action

Let’s use a home office as an example.

1️⃣ Divide the task into parts. The part can be physical parts, like the filing cabinet, the book shelf, the drawer. OR it can be time. How much time are you able to dedicate to this task in one sitting?

2️⃣ Based on how you divided the parts, decide on how many sessions you will need to complete the task. If you think that it will take you 4 hours to reorganize your filing cabinet, but you can only spare 30 minutes a day, then you have 8 sessions.

3️⃣ Schedule these sessions into your planner. For more on finding a planner that works and actually using it, read this blog.

4️⃣ Plan your reinforcer for after you have completed each session.

5️⃣ If you feel tempted to stop, visualize what it will be like when this space is free of clutter.  Read more about visualizing the reinforcer in my last blog.

6️⃣ Decide on a system to sort the items in your space. You can decide if you need to keep the item, if you need to do something with it – like and Amazon return, or if it’s just trash. If you are having a hard time deciding, put it in your action pile and move along.

7️⃣ You may find it helpful to use the body double technique to keep forward progress. Facetime a friend while they are doing their housework or have ‘em come over to keep you company and move the trash bags when they get full.

Be on the lookout for distractions disguised as organizing.

This literally just happened to me. I was shredding a pile of old papers, and I saw tax returns from the early 2000s, I was like “oh neat” what was my financial shit show like then?  Oh yeah, I remember working that job! Damn minimum wage was so low, yadda yadda yadda. Maybe you find some old letters from a friend or some pictures from high school. 

You may be tempted to sit and take a trip down memory, resist the temptation. Better yet, use that trip down memory lane as the reinforcer for spending 30 minutes going through the stack of paperwork.

As you are reading this, you might be thinking, being organized feels rigid. I am a free spirit; I don’t have time to keep things neat like that.

I know that sometimes organization comes along with a kind of rigidity. You don’t want to lose your spontaneity or your personality by having everything so neat and organized and put away.

Here’s the thing. If you are one of those crafty folks that just LOVES to create, isn’t it easier to create something when you don’t have to move your doom piles off the table before you start?

Imagine how much more creative you would be or how much more time you have for being creative if you had a system for all the stupid mundane stuff, like taxes and paying bills.

Enter: CBT for ADHD

In session 7 of CBT for ADHD we lean into defining and establishing an organizational system that works for you. We start on the micro level of paperwork and documents that cross your path and work our way upwards to organizing and making your space functional.  Once we get the blueprint for the process you can use this blueprint over and over gain for each space you tackle, both digital and physical.

CBT for ADHD is offered in group, individual, or hybrid formats, both online and in person.

For the group and hybrid formats you are part of a community that offers a brilliant, solution focused, mind hive in a space that is encouraging and free of judgement. Sometimes, just knowing that we are not alone helps motivate us to keep moving and get the shit done that we want to get done.

The individual format for CBT for ADHD offers customized, one on one interventions for you to get the support that you need with flexible scheduling. This may be helpful if you have some deeper emotional work or if your schedule is not consistent each week due to work or family obligations.

Regardless of the format you choose, each session has a specific topic. You get take home notes and an exercise to work on in between sessions to fine tune the skill. If you get stuck, you have the option of an add on hyperfocus session or we can trouble shoot at the beginning of the next group.

Ready to learn more? Read my earlier blog to get more information about CBT for ADHD or schedule a consult. I’ll give you the Clif’s notes.

Ready to get started?

Schedule a consult today to learn more about how CBT for ADHD can help you get organized and stay that way.