Imagine you are trying to organize your closet, but your head is full of bees. Very angry bees. That make you have mood swings. And make you angry. And make you forget why you are in the closet so you leave the closet and go do what you were originally doing when you remember you're supposed to be organizing the closet. SO you go to the closet and you start looking around and then you remember that you have to do laundry, so you do a load of laundry and go back to what you were doing when you remember you were going to organize the closet. Repeat process several times before finally taking a sweater off the hanger and putting it in a bag to take to Goodwill. Only, you don't take the bag to Goodwill, and everyone else in the house thinks its trash so it's soon full of trash and you wonder why there's a bag in the middle of the living room full of trash so you yell at the kids for leaving trash all over the house and then you throw it away, grumbling the whole time.
Then you remember you were going to clean out the closet but can't remember what you did with that sweater.....
This is why "WE" - the collective ADHD we - cannot organize like normal people. Because it's not just a once in awhile thing, it's an every-minute-of-every-day thing and it grates on us more than we let on. We think that some day we'll figure it out, that it will come to us and our minds will be clear, but that day doesn't come. Even medicated, we have to have strategies for dealing with the bees. They quiet down with medication, but they don't go away. The fog doesn't lift.
I get quite irritated when I see these ADHD friendly apps advertised. Obviously a person with ADD did NOT design these monstrosities. I'm going to have to spend a stupid amount of time swiping in information and thinking about details and then I have to use the timer. IF I ever manage to fill in all the information, it still doesn't address the real problem. The problem isn't DOING things. I can DO things all day. The problem is remembering the important things to do. REMEMBERING. I will forget to turn on the ringer and the phone will not remind me that I'm supposed to be cleaning. Or I will not remember I was supposed to set a 15 minute timer and it will be 5 hours later and I'm still cleaning tile grout with a toothbrush.
I've tried writing on the mirror - after about 2 days I don't even see it anymore. Same with post-it notes.
I've tried hanging lists in obvious places in the house. I don't remember to look at the list until something isn't done and I want to know who was supposed to do it and it was supposed to be me.
At one point, I did try an app. I entered ALL the information about my family, almost all of the information about my cars, barely any information about my house and then my mind freed itself from the captivity of attention and I only remember waking up the next day wondering if there were any good apps out there to help people get organized.
It's the constant maintenance. The routine is what annoys me the most. The mundane details of housekeeping and making appointments and having to remember that report cards have to be signed and the oh-crap moments when you find out your kids don't have school tomorrow and you don't have a sitter. HATE!! Having to add something to my list o' things to maintain doesn't sound appealing. Motivation happens when enthusiasm is around. I am not enthusiastic about filling out detailed information so I can remember to scrub my toilet.
In fact, I'm not enthusiastic about details at all. Unless they're interesting details. And toilet scrubbing is NOT interesting. Ask anyone.
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