ADHD, Clutter, and the Pressure to Be a Minimalist

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In this episode, I’m sharing what it’s really been like preparing for one of the biggest transitions of my life—selling our home, letting go of most of our belongings, and getting ready for a full-on summer adventure with my family.

But here's the thing... I’m not trying to become a minimalist.
 I like my stuff. I love color, creativity, and having spaces that feel like me.
And for so many of us with ADHD, minimalism can feel more like diet culture for your house—shame-filled, all-or-nothing, and totally unrealistic.

I talk about what it means to declutter intentionally without trying to erase yourself in the process. You’ll hear about how my relationship with "stuff" has evolved, how I’ve learned to trust myself in what I keep (and what I don’t), and how I’ve stopped buying things hoping they’ll one day “fit in” somewhere.

Instead, I'm focusing on buying and keeping things that have a purpose—things that support the version of me I’m becoming.

Whether you’re drowning in decisions or just starting to think about making a change, I hope this episode helps you feel seen, supported, and less alone.

And if you’re craving a place to untangle all of this alongside others who truly get it—I’d love for you to join my ADHD-friendly community. We’re all about progress over perfection, small wins, and creating homes that feel like peace.

03:26 Understanding Minimalism

04:28 Personal Preferences and Challenges

05:35 All or Nothing Mindset

07:43 Intentional Living

10:04 Practical Tips and Personal Stories

17:25 Encouragement and Community

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Transcript

0:42

Hey, welcome back to another episode of organizing an A DHD Brain. It is springtime and I am so excited about our adventure that my family and I are about to embark on this summer. So if you're new here, we are about to sell our house and we're selling everything we own most everything. And if you're watching on YouTube,'cause I'll be posting this on YouTube this week. I don't know that my scene will look the same next week. I'm looking at the artwork on the walls and the couch that's behind me and these two really cool cabinets that we bought last year to complete my office. And I don't know that this is gonna be the same next week, and it feels a little weird and it's exciting and it's scary and it's sad. It's bittersweet, but it's fun. And it's adventurous. As we look at letting go, I got inspired for this episode today to talk about why I don't aspire to be a minimalist, which seems counterproductive to what I'm actually doing in my home. So I've been letting go for so long, but part of it was because I had so much, Before we dive in, something that has been coming up for me this week is just how I've noticed my nervous system reaction to a lot of just the stuff that's happening in our lives. Not only letting go, but I'm still building this business and. Understanding what I can handle and taking on enough, but not too much so that I'm not overdoing it. Like how do I have boundaries when it doesn't feel like anything's gonna slow down anytime soon? Because it feels like our future is so unknown. It's scary and it's exciting, right? Like it's all these things. So we sold this table in our front hallway the other day, and I remember my husband and I really being so purposeful about what we were gonna put in that front hallway. And part of it was because we had gotten something before, but it was really big and bulky. And we found this table that was perfect. It was thin enough. It met our decor needs, all of these things. And then just last week we sold it. And even my husband was like, oh, this feels so real now. This feels like it's really happening, and it doesn't feel like there's a lot of normal happening in our life right now. And in fact, it's gonna get less and less normal as we let more and more go as we get closer to leaving and traveling across the country. It's been interesting because as I approach my clutter now as I approach my stuff, I'm looking at it from a different perspective, but also some of the same perspectives that I had when I first started decluttering years and years ago about, wow, how do I let something go and let it feel? Okay, I'm letting go of everything, but I don't want to be a minimalist. I wanna be. An intentionalist. I remember watching the documentary The Minimalists a really long time ago. It was two guys and then they wrote a book on it too. It was great. It was so awesome. And that was originally what I wanted to do was to become a minimalist. I just knew I had so much stuff and I saw what they had and I was like, Ooh, what an incredible thing to aspire to be. As I started to take action and as I started to create clarity and understanding in my own life, I started to see more and more that's not actually what I wanted after all. And I wanna tell you a little bit more about that. So first up, I just wanna look up minimalism. Let's see what minimalism actually means. Minimalism in essence, is about intentionally living with fewer possessions, focusing on what truly matters. And eliminating unnecessary distractions. It's a philosophy that encourages a simpler, more mindful way of life, focusing on experiences, meaningful relationships, and personal growth over material accumulation. So it's focus on intentionality. It's about making mindful choices about what you bring into your life, both physically and mentally. Prioritizing meaning and value. It's about identifying what brings you joy and purpose in surrounding yourself with those things. Reducing distractions to clutter, so create a more peaceful and uncluttered environment, both physically and emotionally. It's about living with less and order to have freedom, time and energy to pursue what truly matters, and then eliminating unnecessary possessions and commitments. Minimalists often find more time and energy to focus on their passions and goals. I like my stuff. I really like color. And I really like books and I like pillows, and I like artwork that hangs on the wall. In fact, I really wanna hang a violin on my wall someday. I just think it'd be incredible. And I like plants everywhere as a form of decor. I even created mossy pictures in my bedroom with gold outlines to it. I think when we think of minimalism, we think of this in an all or nothing mindset. Whereas, okay, I've got a lot of stuff. This is where I'm at now. In order to get where I'm going, I need to do it all. And that's why sometimes when we look at our clutter, we go into fight mode and we're like, that's it. I'm getting rid of everything in this moment right now, and no one has a say in it. I'm just throwing a bunch of stuff away because I can't handle it anymore. But when it comes to A DHD, we don't necessarily go about attacking our clutter in a way that really helps us, which is why so many of us avoid starting in the first place. But coming back to that all or nothing mindset, that all or nothing mindset comes from perfectionism. We're seeking this perfect environment. Where everything has a place, everything has a label, everything has this perfect container. We know exactly what wallpaper is there and we wanna retile our floors and make sure that everything is perfect. And at that point can we finally rest and relax and say, I did it. I made it. I don't aspire to be a minimalist because I see so many similarities of minimalism with this all or nothing mindset that I've had with so many other things in my life. Case in point. Eating. I've talked about having an eating disorder before and it's so common in women with ADHD that we have all or nothing. And it's okay, if I know I'm not supposed to have sugar, then I'm not gonna have any sugar because even having just one I know I'm gonna try to have all. And that can sometimes happen when we start with the clutter and say, oh my gosh, I'm not gonna buy anything off of Amazon anymore. But then what do we do? We're like, oh my gosh, i'm going into fight or flight mode, and the only thing that's gonna help me get out of this is going and impulse buying something because I know it's gonna make me feel better, even though when the box gets here, I might let it sit somewhere for literally ever, until I finally open up and realize that this was just an impulse buy that made me feel better in the moment, I don't even remember getting it. But when I think of minimalism, it's almost like I can't trust myself, right? I can't trust myself to keep anything, and I'm not gonna succeed unless I have the littlest amount of things that I could possibly need in order to be able to succeed. But the problem here is it's like diet culture for your home. So now you're starting from a place where you've never been able to keep something decluttered or organized before, and now you're trying to get to this place. Of perfection, so to speak, it's starting from never being on a diet before. Maybe this is a brand new diet, and now you want to be a hundred pounds less in 30 days, but we all know that's not realistic. That's not a life that we can truly sustain. This is a journey. And when you start to take action, no matter where you start, because anywhere is the perfect place to start. And when you start taking action, you start to bring clarity into your life so that you truly understand what kind of life you wanna live. And I think that's the main point that I really, truly wanna make here is that. It is not about striving for this like complete overhaul and change and difference that you need to make in your life. It's about making small strategic changes that you can actually sustain. When my mom used to ask me to clean my room when I was a kid, it would be such a mess by the time she asked me to do it.'Cause I never did it on my own. I would never just like proactively say. Wow, what a messy room. Let me go ahead and tidy up. That was never on my mind. Literally never. So when she would ask me to clean my room, that was the time for me to do an overhaul. My bed has been in every single place in the room. I'm picturing it right now. I grew up in this old. Farmhouse that was built in the 18 hundreds. part of the ceiling is coming in, so my bed could only fit strategically in certain places, but if it could fit in a place, I found the place that it could fit in because I figured out every single possible configuration I could have that bed in. In addition to that, I moved the furniture around and then all of this little stuff, the little things, all the things that needed to be put away, they got shoved somewhere. In a drawer under the bed anywhere I could think of. I was probably intentional with some things, but I didn't know how to organize. I didn't know how to put things away, in a way that I could find them again. So I just overhauled the entire room so that I could feel like it was something I could be proud of, but the truth is I was never able to keep up with it I thrive on different, I love adventure. That's probably why we're moving across the country again. But it was this all or nothing mentality. I'm like, okay well, if I'm really gonna make a change well, this is exciting, right? There's that dopamine hit for you. I get to do a project. This is my interior design project in my room. But the truth is that in order for me to truly be in control of my stuff. I needed to understand how to let go. I needed to let go of some of the things that truly weren't filling up my cup in those moments so that I could understand how to live a life that mattered. I saw a video of another professional organizer the other day, and I so wish I had her name because I would totally shout her out. But she said that. When you buy something, you give that thing a job. You're giving that thing a job to do in your home. And if that thing is no longer doing the job in your home, then you need to figure out if you need to let it go or not. You need to figure out if it's adding to your life or not. And I think that's a really simple way of looking at things okay, I like, let's take paper clips for example. I'm gonna buy paper clips to clip papers together. But the truth is, in my reality, I actually don't ever need a paperclip. And so if I come across one, it goes in the trash because I don't buy them. I don't need them. It's not something that helps me in my life, because if I ever get to the point where I need to clip papers together I'll use my stapler, or. I likely will find something else in my caboodles of oodles of things somewhere because I still have a lot of stuff. Another reason why I don't necessarily aspire to be a minimalist in the traditional sense where you type in minimalism on a Google search, and you'll see a lot of beige walls and don't come at me. My walls in the back are agreeable gray, but I also have a mountain behind me, you can see, and I've got quotes up on the wall in gold lettering, and I can see two plants. And I've got bookends of Harry Potter running through the books and coming out. Platform nine and three quarters on the other end. And I've got my diploma and I like everything that I have in this room is strategically placed. I love my stuff and I love color. And I did a podcast episode with Ellie who is an artist out of. Copenhagen. And we were talking about color and how color helps us live a better life. It helps us get the dopamine that we're looking for on a regular basis. And let me tell you, some of the people that I work with, my, clients, their homes. Are really cool, like the design features are incredible and like lights and wallpaper and the furniture that was chosen and the colors on the walls, like it's top notch. But here's the thing, just because you do those things like a complete overhaul of your home, doesn't mean that you're now going to be all of a sudden organized and inspired to put everything back where it goes. Nope, we still have a DHD after all. And that's why I always say it's not the bin that's gonna make you organized. It's the strategies, it's the systems that work for you. It's working with the brain you already have, not with the brain you wish you had. Because the truth is this A DHD isn't going away. I still have time blindness, I still have executive function issues. I still struggle on a daily basis with so many of the ways that our brain work. But I also embrace it now a little bit more. Okay, so coming back to this, all or nothing thinking. I do think that intentional living is a really cool place to get to, but when you're starting, or even when you're halfway along the journey, you truly start to realize how long this process could take you. Because it does take a good amount of time. It's not something that you can do overnight or in a week or in a weekend or in a month. You just can't, unless you're at this like weird place where you just need to declutter one room and that's it. Cool. Like Monica's closet and friends, I think about that all the time. We should all have a closet where we can just throw anything, right? That's not gonna be in our way. Anyway. I don't know if this is great advice, but if you have a closet, I think that's amazing part of this is being on a journey, right? We're all on a journey. We've all been on a journey our whole lives, and sometimes we forget with our working memory, how far we have truly come and the foundation we are building off of. Because we've come so far, we have done so much, and we are not starting from scratch. No matter where you are in your home, you're not starting from scratch. You have gotten rid of something. You have let go of something. You have actually gone to a donation place before but this intentional living thing is a really cool thing. When I first became a professional organizer, I would not have been able to tell you these same things. These came from a learned experience, and gosh, I cannot wait to see where I'm at in a year to be able to tell you what else I've learned and how I've grown. But in this moment, what I will tell you, what I couldn't have told you a year ago is that intentional living is incredible. Last year around January after Christmas, I tried to cancel Amazon. Because I was like, this is it. I don't need it anymore. I'm just going to be way more intentional with the way that I spend. But I couldn't do it. There were still so many things and part of my coping mechanisms, part of the way that I dealt with my own stress and the way that I handle life was going to Amazon shopping, getting that instant gratification, and then I went and reinstated Amazon in order to get to where I am now. There's this frame hanging on my wall right now. It looks like a window. It's cool because it's it's tall, it's got panes in it. But when I finally got it home, I bought it'cause I was like, I like this. I'm gonna buy it. I'm gonna put it in my house. But I had no actual place for it to go. And it got hung up. It was more just, I'm gonna fill this in. I'm just gonna put things in places because I have it and I'm not gonna go out and spend more money'cause I already spent this money, so why would I spend more money on this? I was looking at it the other day and I'm like, that's so interesting how I now buy things.'cause I don't buy things just to buy things anymore. I buy them with intentionality. I talked about this a little bit at Christmas time too. When it comes to my kids' things like, especially when it comes to my kids' things, I need to know where it's gonna go because now I'm not only managing my own stuff, but I have to manage their stuff too. And they have a DHD, so trying to figure out how to help them clean up and put things away. So that's a whole other adventure. But this year we went to Ikea at the end of March, and I found these really amazing bins. It was white and it had a bamboo cover on it, which is, so my aesthetic right now, I'm just like, Ooh, I really like that. And it would fit in really nicely with something. But I couldn't quite put my finger on what I could use it for. And I was like, oh my gosh, Megan, you can't buy this if you're just gonna buy it to buy it because you are not about that life anymore. You're not gonna have it on hand. You're not gonna use it as a backup thing. And I left the store without it. Oh my gosh. I left the store without it, but I never stopped thinking about it hilariously.'cause it's just a bin. This last Mother's day, I got markers, I got brand new markers for my beautiful coloring book that I color all my plants in and my flowers, because that's my preference, that I didn't have a place for my markers. They came in a container that wasn't easy to use and I need things to be easy And I was like, oh my gosh. I can buy the bin because I don't have anything here. I did try. I went and looked at I think I had a zipper case that I was trying to use for the markers, and I was like, this doesn't work. And secretly inside I was like, yes, I can go and buy this darn bin that I have been putting off buying because I finally have a purpose for it. But interestingly enough, that's never been the way that I've purchased things before. I was so dysregulated and overwhelmed by my clutter. I was looking for any way to escape and any way to make myself feel better in those moments. If you're in those moments right now and I'm like, I'm getting a little teary eyed about it, just crazy, but like seriously, if you're in those moments right now, I just want you to know that you're not alone. And that it does, it feels overwhelming. It's super overwhelming to start to attack your clutter from a place where you feel like you're in control because you're not gonna be in control right away. Your clutter's gonna be there for a little bit. You're not gonna make you truly noticeable differences unless you break your back on a Sunday, emptying an entire closet to put it back together again to not make any true progress because someone's gonna mess it up down the line. You're not alone because you don't have to be a minimalist. You don't have to redecorate your room. You just have to start. If you're surrounded by stuff and you're frozen right now, makes sense. It's your nervous system reacting to your environment. So at this point, you're like I literally cannot do it. You're not lazy. You're overwhelmed, because guess what? The clutter is not the only thing that you are dealing with. We are literally never meant to be this busy. And now it feels like everything out there, all of these tools, all of these things out there are just meant to make you more busy. They're like, oh, you can't fit that all in. Let me show you how you can fit everything in. It's no, I need to be able to do less. We all need a do not do list so that we can reference it when things continue to come up and we continue to get excited about them. Because if you're surrounded by clutter, my friend, you are not lazy. Some of you are on this journey and you're doing it one step at a time. Some of you have been on this journey for a long time and you're like, I can't make any progress. What the heck is wrong with me? And some of you are just beginning. No matter where you are. I just want you to know that you're not behind. You're exactly where you need to be. You had to go through all these things in life in order for you to get to where you are in this moment, and you are exactly where you need to be. I know what I need to know. I know what I wanna do, and I know where I have been. And today I only am today. I don't have yesterday. I don't have tomorrow. So i'm gonna do with today the best thing I know how to do. You could listen to every single episode of this podcast. You could listen to every single episode of any podcast that has to do with decluttering or minimalism or organizing, and you could try to do everything that they say to a t to perfection. You could read every self-help book out there and take incredible notes and try to execute that to perfection. But what's cool about all of this stuff, about my podcast, about the self-help books, everything that you hear is going to be interpreted. Through your own lens, which means that you get to take it and make it your own. You get to take it and create this life that you get to be proud of. Like you could create a podcast of letting go because I've inspired you or Dana K White has inspired you. Or the clutter bug has inspired you. Any of these people out there. You could do that. You could decide to embrace your A DHD in a way that you're now gonna find some way to help people embrace theirs too, because there's so much to know about our brains that help you succeed. On the other side, minimalism is not the answer. It's got some really cool stuff to it, right? And if you really want white, blank walls and, if that's really what you want. That's awesome, but just know that it's gonna take a really long time to get there. But that's a good thing because with each and every step that you take, you get to build this new version of yourself. Once you start to take action in your home, you start to realize that you are capable of this. And then you start to look for other ways that you can be capable and you do the dishes every night and you're like, wow, never done the dishes. Every night. You even try not to do the dishes one night and you're like, oh my gosh, I physically can't now not do the dishes. Obviously not the same person anymore, but you start to build into this version of you you never thought possible. I remember I was listening to a podcast. It was Jenna Kutcher and the financial feminist. I've only listened to a couple episodes, but this one really spoke to me and they were talking about how can you imagine if we had this amount of success overnight? And they were like, Oh my gosh, that would've been awful. And I think about that sometimes I aspire to have, more and more people come into my circle and more and more people reach out to me for all of these things. But the truth is that I love where I'm at right now. I love meeting you. I love the community that I've developed that's intimate and I really get to know you. And I really get to understand who you are and what you need so that I can grow too. Because it reminds me of where I've been and it reminds me of where I'm at now, but it helps me help you develop the mindset that you want and need to get to where you want to be. Because this isn't just about getting organized. It's about believing in yourself in a completely different way and believing that you can actually succeed because if you don't, there's your biggest roadblock right there. And changing your beliefs is a whole nother podcast. Okay, so in the end, thank you so much for listening. Maybe I do aspire to be a minimalist, but I also just really like stuff and I love color and I love being intentional with my space now because I see how much that truly fills me up. And I'm also freaked out about letting everything go. Holy smokes. This is a lot. It is a whole play on my nervous system. And I'm like, what the hell am I doing? And I'm also having to help my girls understand that this is okay. And then my husband's just along for the ride. He is like, this is cool. It's fine. So like this is a journey. And it's so interesting to be on this journey'cause I never ever saw myself this way, but because I was able to let go and uncover and be on this journey, I was able to see this truth. That I could do this, that this is a reality that I can make happen, and I'm in control of that, despite all the clutter. If this conversation hit home and you're sitting in a space full of clutter, or maybe you've made some progress, but you need a little bit of extra support. Maybe you're full of stuff, full of shame or full of dreams and you don't know where to start. You are not alone. And I have the organizing and a DHD brain community that I have just recently moved over to Circle And it's incredible. So I've got a ton of tools. We have two virtual decluttering, body doubling sessions each month we have two body doubling sessions that are just quiet body doubling. So do whatever you need to do. I. and then we also have group coaching every single month. This month I'm going to teach you how to sell on Facebook marketplace. It actually seems super easy, but I'm gonna give you some of the things that I've known, like even how to speak to people, how to negotiate with people, so it makes it super easy to sell. this is something I've been doing for years now. Which is funny, I'm not on Facebook anymore, but I now commandeered my husband's Facebook because I realized we had so much to sell still, it allows me to not be on Facebook socially. It just allows me to be on Facebook to sell, so I can't wait for that to happen in the community. We're gonna be doing a webinar each and every month too. So I'm gonna link the join link down below. When you join, you get entered into a drawing to win a free decluttering session with me, and you get a 30 minute one-on-one coaching session with me just for completing the onboarding, which is super easy, really short. It's$37 a month, and this month until June 1st, which is my birthday, you can join and get$10 off, the code is welcome. 10. You can actually join monthly, quarterly, or yearly. But the code will only work through June 1st As far as coaching goes, I am doing very limited coaching this summer because we are traveling. I do have an almost full load of coaching clients right now. If you are interested, the call link in the show notes below does now work because apparently for weeks it wasn't working Thank you guys so much for tuning in. Hey, if you do have time, I would love if you could leave a review for the podcast, how it supported you. If there was something that you took away from this episode even, or in episodes previously, it would mean the world to me if you would drop a comment or even send me a text message to let me know if this has impacted you at all. I'm so excited to keep you on this journey with us moving across the country and figuring out what we do next. We sold our car last Friday and like it's happening, all of these things are happening, and I'm still coming in hot with more podcast episodes. I'll see you next week.