Decluttering During the Holidays with ADHD

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In this episode, host Megs addresses the challenges of decluttering and organizing an ADHD brain during the holiday season. Through personal anecdotes and practical advice, she emphasizes the importance of small, incremental changes and the mental load associated with clutter. Megs provides strategies for effectively managing holiday preparations, communicating with family members, and tackling high-priority areas of the home. She encourages listeners to set 15-minute timers, focus on progress over perfection, and ensure self-care throughout the process. Listeners are invited to share their experiences and stay motivated in making their spaces more organized.


02:12 The Mental Load of Clutter

05:24 Communicating and Asking for Help

06:59 Practical Decluttering Tips

16:41 Emotional Aspects of Decluttering

19:35 Maintaining Progress and Final Thoughts

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Transcript

0:42

Welcome back to organizing an ADHD brain. I'm your host Megs, and I'm thrilled to have you back. Today. I want to talk a little bit about decluttering through the holidays and what it actually means to declutter through the holidays. I remember I was asked on a podcast interview over the summer. If there was a specific time of the year, that would be better for decluttering versus not better. And they asked. Tell me a little bit about the holidays. Is that a time that people would typically avoid organizing or avoid decluttering? And it's interesting that it was asked because before I started this journey as a professional organizer, I would have thought. Yeah. I mean, the holidays are no time to organize. We don't have anything else to put on our plate at this point. I thought about it because no one had asked me that before. And I said, you know, it really just going to depend on the person it's going to depend on what you have going on. It's going to depend on what you're already trying to learn and what you're already trying to change or incorporate into your life to make it better. And is this another thing that you can do? When you're thinking about decluttering for the holidays, we've got Christmas coming up, Hanukkah, new year's, there's all kinds of stuff going on. I've been talking about it in the last couple podcasts episodes about. Preparing yourself for events, preparing yourself for gift buying and all of these other things. While also taking care of yourself, which is just another thing you have to do. Now, of course, I wouldn't be a decluttering and organizing podcast for people with ADHD. If I didn't also talk about decluttering. I don't want to go about insisting that this is the way that your life is supposed to be now. That you need to drop everything else to be organized because that's not the way that it's going to work. You can't drop your life for a weekend. You can't drop your life for a week or even a month. It's through. A series of concentrated effort. And small, incremental changes over time that's going to pay off and get you to the bigger result of being and stying organized. So why would you put it off when you could start right now? Clutter itself is not only a physical load, but it's a mental load when I first started decluttering, I started to notice a very significant difference. In the way my home would look when I felt discombobulated and full of chaos and really dysregulated. And when that would happen, I would look around my home and I would see. The state of my home in disarray. And I thought it was fascinating how. My mental picture, whatever was going on in my brain was mirroring my clutter. As I continued to notice that the clutter was impacting my brain and my brain was impacting my clutter. I started to understand that I could take control. Of my mind chatter by taking control of my physical environment. That helped me so much as I started to understand what organizing for me would be like with ADHD. And letting go. And understanding the correlation between the mental and the physical load. Oh, when you look around your home and all this stuff, that's in it. Everything is a decision that's waiting to be made. And what I mean by that is if you open up your junk drawer and you're trying to find a pair of scissors, But there's 20 other things in the way. You're having to make a decision on 20 other things. No, that's not it. No, that's not it. No, that's not. It. You're not consciously doing it, but that's what's happening in your subconscious. Is you're having to look through all of this stuff to try to find the thing that you're looking for. And then of course, you know, us. We often don't find the thing that we're looking for because these things don't often have homes. So when everything is a decision to be made, you've got a lot of decisions to make before you actually start to put away the stuff so that you can make room. For how you want to live your life over the holiday season. Now keeping in mind that you've got 16 days until Christmas nine working days. And four weekend days. That's not a lot of days before the holidays hit us. and likely less. If you have company coming over before then, It's important to get started now. Because you, your spouse, your kids, you don't have time to do it last minute. And there's going to be things that you forget. I would encourage you if you're listening to this podcast while you're driving relisten to it, when you get home. And start to make a list of the things that you'd like to have done. Before company comes over and if companies not coming over until next week, Then incredible. Cause you've got to get a hard start on what's going on. So why is it important to attack this now? We are classic procrastinators. So you could procrastinate this until after the holidays, but since we know that there's a direct correlation between you having less, less clutter everywhere. So when it comes to everything going on, What is your vision? What do you want to happen? For each of these things you're getting prepared for. What do you want Christmas morning to look like and to feel like, what do you want your home to look and feel like before company comes over? Today is a perfect day to understand what you're aiming for today is also a perfect day to communicate that with your family, not only your spouse, but your kids help them understand. What your vision for that perfect event is going to be. Communicate, that's so important. And then ask for help. Ask for help on what you think that they could do. And you can let go of control with. It's so interesting how we often. Joke about our spouse or our kids messing up our efforts when it comes to organizing or changing things, when it comes to. Putting things away where they need to go, things like that. But when you take a step back and ask yourself, have you actually communicated what you need from them? Say nine times out of 10, we haven't. And if you have communicated, have you communicated in a non angry way? In a way that people actually want to help. Or is it in a way where you're trying to force people to earn their keep in the house? I do not like to be yelled at. I do not like to be told what to do. And I respect that my kids probably don't enjoy that as well. And while I do tell them what to do, and let's be honest, I also support them in their autonomy to help me and to make mistakes. And my five-year-old loves doing the dishes. I don't know what it is, but. I've created an angel. Okay. So if you're going to be decluttering, how do you do that? Especially if your entire home needs to be done. I want you to understand that that can't happen in 16 days. You got too many other things going on. I don't even know you. And I know this why, because that's the world that we live in. If you live in a different country and this is not your life. Tell me where you are. I might need to come visit. But right now, you don't have time to do your entire house. And that's okay. So if your whole entire home needs to get done. Think about the. High ticket items, because if everything is important, then nothing is important. So, what are the spaces in your home that are the most important when it comes to decluttering? And organizing. Think about. When people first enter your home, your greeting area where they're going to take their shoes off. How about your kitchen? Is that a place where people often spend a lot of time? Your living room. I want you to identify these places that are the biggest places that need to be decluttered and organized specifically. Because our brains are so complicated that we love to try to do everything. And you cannot. And this comes back to the communication thing when you're asking for help and your husband who might be ADHD as well. Decides to go and mow the lawn instead. Although we're in winter. You can come back and say, Hey, these are the spaces I need help in. Can you support me here? What can you do to help me? How can you help me? Is there something that you can do over the next couple of days? So we're not trying to do this at the last minute. And break it up into the smallest tasks imaginable to get things done. Have another child help with shoes. Go around the house, pick up all the shoes and let's put them where the shoes go. During this time, it's important to start to make some full decisions. On the items that are in your home. Think about it this way. What is the one space in your home? That would make the biggest difference if it were decluttered today. And then start there. And then don't move on to another space. Until you've de cluttered that one space. Now it's going to help. If you're working with more people. It's going to help if you set timers and not try to do it all at once. And then if you're at the point where decluttering is very overwhelming then what is good enough? When will it be good enough for you to be able to move on? And congratulate yourself for building a foundation. Where you are decluttering and you're working with your ADHD brain to have a little bit less. No matter what it's so important to think small. Focus on just one space. And if it's not in a drawer or. In a specific space. Assign a space to it, give it a rule and say, okay, I'm going to focus on this one area of the countertops right here. And that's it. Think about it as done and not perfect. What does done look like? And then you can continue to evolve from there. As I continuously talk about setting up 15 minute increments in your life is going to be so helpful. I do it before I go to bed at night. I do it sometimes when I'm folding laundry. 15 minute increments. You can do anything in 15 minutes, listen to a podcast. As you're doing it, listen to music, make it more enjoyable so that you can get some of these things done. Without putting it off. What's important is that you're not sacrificing you caring for yourself in order to get more decluttering and organizing done. The decluttering and the organizing means nothing. Unless you're taking care of yourself. put some noise canceling headphones on when you're doing it. Maybe that is your self care. If you can truly adopt it as that. Talk to yourself and figure out what you need, but it is important that you don't sacrifice yourself to get the decluttering done. That's not what this podcast is about. It's not about being happy once. It's all done, because guess what? What does done even mean? Aren't we always bringing new stuff into our house and always letting things go. Isn't it an evolution. This is a new lifestyle you're adopting. There's nothing wrong with that. When it comes to the stuff that your decorating your home with. This is one of my favorites. I remember decorating my house with my mom when I was a kid. And we had stuff. From my grandparents Christmas. So like these cool glass bulbs, some of them have writing on them. There was all kinds of ornaments from when I was a child, there were probably two fake trees. Ridiculous amounts of decor that was never used. It was just shoved in boxes. And guess what? In order to get to the stuff that we did use, we had to go through all of the boxes because everything was shoved in different boxes. Whenever we went to put things away. So when it comes to. Your decor. It's okay to let go of the stuff you didn't use this year. Why didn't you use it? Is it because you didn't have room? Is it because you didn't want there to be as much clutter on the counters, is it because, you truly want to see what kind of space you have once your stuff is decluttered. That's okay. Give yourself a reason why you're keeping it. If you do decide to keep it. But also give yourself a reason to let it go. If you are going to let it go. I feel pretty good about this year because I let go of my Gnome collection. I ended up selling it on Facebook marketplace and it just made sense. I didn't have any space for it to go anymore. While gnomes bring me an immense joy. I hang them on my tree. I've got a couple of ornaments, maybe just two. But I love them and I don't need to put them on every single surface of my home. That is the place I'm at right now when it comes to gnomes in my life. Another thing to consider is as you're bringing stuff into the home, What are you doing with that stuff? For example gifts. If you're bringing something into the home, that the kids are going to unwrap under the tree on Christmas morning. Where's it gonna go? And that's another place that you can consider decluttering. Before the holidays, because that way on Christmas morning, after you're done picking up all of the wrapping paper and throwing it out. Those things can eventually be put away. But it's okay to let go of some of the older toys. In fact, give your kids the autonomy to do that. Ask them, Hey. If you want this for Christmas, where could it live in your room? Does anything else have to leave because we're making room for this new item. And ask them, Hey, if you're not willing to get rid of anything. It's just going to make it harder for you to clean up now. Because there's just more clutter and things don't necessarily have homes. So designate spots for the things that are coming into your home. There's always that one in one out rule, right? If you're bringing something into the home, What's leaving. Because if your home is already cluttered, It's so important to start establishing those rules so that you can get things out of the house. We're so good at shopping, but we don't necessarily have a process for getting things out. So develop one for yourself. When it comes to letting go of things, do you have a donation box that's hanging out in your garage or wherever it's convenient to put donations in? You could even make this a fun activity that everyone participates in. Before you decide to donate a bunch of stuff. So maybe you set a timer for 15 minutes. You tell everyone to go in their rooms. And find 10 items to donate before the holidays come. You put it all in a box, you stick it in the back of your car and set a reminder. Look at your calendar. Set a reminder. And say, this is what I'm going to take this into the donations and look at that you've already made progress toward your de-cluttering goals for the holidays. But come back to the rooms that you're focusing on and come back to that 15 minute rule on a regular basis, because that's going to continue to keep you. In the right momentum to get things done before you have people over. And before that special day where you don't want your clutter to overwhelm you because you want to have some peace. Just the fact that you're listening to this podcast means that you're building a foundation for your future. So even if you get rid of nothing, Even if you've done no decluttering and nothing has a home. You're listening. You're here. I know sometimes with ADHD, I have to think about things for like 90 days before I actually start taking action on it. The sooner you start taking action. The sooner you start building that foundation for you to live a better future. One thing I find fascinating and I still have trouble with this myself as the emotional aspect of decluttering. It's so interesting because we don't think about these things a lot of the times until we're holding them in our hands. And if it disappeared without you knowing about it, you probably wouldn't think about it again until that one day that you were looking for it, you finally needed it. But on the other hand, if you're holding something and you're trying to figure out if you should let it go or not. You're going to be thinking about, could I use this in the future? And the answer is almost always yes. Because you don't know what the future holds and you want to be prepared. You want to be the hero. You want to have the thing on hand because you want to be able to do it right then and there. We have two speeds. Right, right now or later. Just want you to know that you don't have to be the hero in every story. And when it comes to the emotional aspect of our things, If it's gone tomorrow. And you didn't think about it for another couple years. And you are going to look for it. And it wasn't there. Would you be okay? When it comes to the more sentimental items, this doesn't work as well. So this is going to be for our less sentimental items. And then we start to think about, you know, why are you holding onto this? This is why I'm always recommending that my clients always have a therapist that they're working with this stuff on as well, since sometimes the past can be brought up and sometimes we're holding onto things because. We're afraid to let go. But what's really neat about the holidays is that we get to choose what traditions we carry on. And really the traditions that we have are us taking the past that we've enjoyed. and bringing it into the future with us. So something I shared. A little while ago on social media is the Bing Crosby Christmas CD where you things white Christmas. And I play that record every year, while we're decorating the tree. I love the movie white Christmas, which is actually not the movie that the song white Christmas was written for White Christmas was actually written for a movie called holiday Inn, which came out in like 1942 or something like that. Regardless. I get to choose what I'm bringing forward into the future with me. So that my kids can continue to enjoy what their families. And it's okay. That not everything comes with me. It's okay. That some things are forgotten. That comes, not only with the stuff that we have, but that's also with our memories. It's also with the ideas that we have. It's okay to also keep the memory and not the item. When it comes to the rooms that you're working through and the vision that you have. Think about what your big goals are. And a lot of the times it's going to be the stuff that's visibly out in the open. That's going to stress you out the most. And so when you open up a junk drawer to put something away, And you see that the junk drawer also needs to be organized. It's okay to say no. In fact, it's important to say no and set boundaries and say this isn't part of the visual clutter. No one coming over to your house is going to open up a junk drawer and say, wow. This is really organized. People are not going to be looking in your drawers. And so what is the visual clutter that is outside that you can deal with? And start to do it in little increments. It's not going to be an all day project. This is the type of thing that we want to do while we're cleaning the kitchen. Or even just picking up the living room at night, set a 15 minute timer, see what you can get done, ask for help and communicate what your needs are for the holidays. And take care of yourself. It's so important that you're starting small, that you're working in those short bursts. And you focus on those areas that you've designated. If you start to go into those other areas, which your brain could take you on a train ride into that's okay. And then remind yourself, remind yourself that. Oh, people aren't going to be coming into my bedroom. People aren't going to be coming into my laundry room. How can I just focus on the areas that get the most traffic. And are the most important when I'm celebrating with my family. My challenge for you this week is to set a 15 minute timer. And I want you to tell me what you did. Go ahead and send me a message on Instagram. Or go ahead and send me an email Meg, stop from the heart@gmail.com. You can always find me on MindfulMegs.com, which is my website. Remember decluttering doesn't have to be perfect progress over perfection. That's how we roll with ADHD. And then having that vision in mind for what your future holds. Is going to be so helpful as you start to take and continue to take those tiny steps in the right direction. If you love this episode, share it with a friend who needs a little calm this holiday season. And don't forget to hit subscribe. So you never miss a tip to keep your ADHD brain organized.