Organizing an ADHD Move: Organizing Chaos with Megs

Asking "where I would go to look for it if I were trying to find it?" from the brilliant Dana K White's Decluttering at the Speed of Life

Megs met the owner of Scanlily at an organizing conference and the owner/inventor & his wife are incredible. Get The QR code APP here

In this episode of 'Organizing an ADHD Brain,' our host shares personal experiences and valuable lessons learned during a cross-country move from Colorado to Massachusetts. Reflecting on what went well and how they remained organized, topics include overcoming all-or-nothing thinking, designated spaces for belongings, using QR codes for better organization, and packing strategically for different legs of the trip. Also, the host highlights the importance of self-trust and embracing discomfort for growth. The episode concludes with a special guest appearance by the host's eight-year-old daughter, Charlotte, who shares her thoughts on the move.

00:55 Traveling with ADHD: Challenges and Insights

02:11 Five Things That Went Well During the Move

04:46 Designating Spaces for Organization

09:25 Using QR Codes for Efficient Packing

10:56 Packing for Specific Legs of the Trip

12:25 Reflecting on the Move and Future Plans

18:32 Conclusion and Future Podcast Plans

20:09 Special Guest: Charlotte's Perspective on the Move

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Transcript

0:42

Hey, beautiful people. Welcome back to another episode of organizing an A DHD Brain. I'm coming in hot from another closet, but this time it's not mine. I'm so thrilled to update you this week. On what went well during the move. Some of the things that I'm really proud of myself for doing, even though a lot of the times in our A DHD brains, I know mine specifically, I can sometimes look back and be like, oh my gosh, why didn't I do this? Why didn't I do that? Except that all of this was a beautiful learning opportunity for me to say, okay, I didn't do it that way, but I wouldn't have known to, I had to experience these certain things in order to get where I am right now. So to fill you in, we have moved. We sold our house in Colorado and we're making our way across the country to land in Massachusetts by the beginning of the school year. So that is in the works right now and we are traveling. Until then, I'm gonna be honest, there's a lot that is going into this and I will talk about traveling with A DHD pretty soon and staying organized while doing it. That has been quite a conundrum, if you will, and certainly an enlightening experience because there's a lot that we're still learning about ourselves as we put ourselves through this truly uncomfortable experience. One thing my husband and I both know. It is that when we are uncomfortable and we put ourselves in this state of being uncomfortable, it's proven that we will grow. We know that the other side of it is an experience that is worth having in order to know what we now know. On the other side, there are certain things that you can hear from a podcast. There's certain things that you can read in a book and. Life is not teaching you lessons until you're taking actions and failing yourself.'cause those failures teach you a ton about what you're doing well, about what you can improve, about what you might wanna do differently next time. And a lot of you are listening because you're like, I just wanna be organized, and I don't know how to do that with my damn brain. So let me talk to you a little bit about the five things that I believe went really well when it came to the move. It doesn't mean that everything went well. But I do wanna give myself credit because there's a lot of things that I've learned about my brain that allowed me to look at things differently as we had to make so many decisions, especially toward the end. The first thing that went well is understanding my all or nothing thinking. Now, just because I talk about this a lot, I know I have an all or nothing thinking. I know that I could look at a bathroom and think I'm not gonna make any changes until I can completely gut this thing and pick out new wallpaper and new tile and do it all on a weekend, which we also know is not realistic when renovating a bathroom. But that comes back to time blindness. So as I started to approach so many of the different projects in my house that needed to get done prior to us selling the house and of course selling all of our stuff, most of it that left the house, it felt so overwhelming and I knew I had to continue to take baby steps in the direction of where we were headed. So every time I started to attack a project, I knew that I was going at it with this all or nothing mentality because just because you have a DHD and then you know that you have this all or nothing thought process that you wanna get everything done all at once. Doesn't necessarily mean that it goes away. It just means that you have to continuously be aware of that. So you can say, okay, I know I can't do all of this at once, so what's one thing I can do and what's one decision I can make? Especially when it came to the stuff like what's leaving? What's staying? What are we bringing with us? What are we not bringing with us? Making a decision one item at a time really allowed me to be purposeful about. What happened next, and that was an anchoring point for me at so many different periods and when I was able to ask myself, what's one thing I can do? And making one decision, one item at a time really allowed me to make progress and reminding myself that these small little efforts that I make add up. And we ultimately started making decisions on our items and listing things on Facebook marketplace starting in the beginning of the year. And then we didn't leave our house until it's a week ago Today I am recording this on Sunday. That's crazy. The second thing that I will give myself credit for doing really well is designating our front room or the office space that you may have seen in previous videos of the podcast. Dedicating that room as a space where all of the stuff we planned on taking with us went. So even if we didn't have it packed, even if we didn't know where it was gonna go yet, as far as storage, as far as what we were gonna store it in, as we took it with us, all of the stuff we knew we wanted to come with us, lived in the front room. And that was really beneficial because as soon as I saw something that I knew we didn't need anymore, say it was a picture on the wall that didn't need to be on the wall anymore because we were taking things down and patching holes up. We were able to put everything in the front room and make sense of it when it came down to it. And this was ultimately in the last week that we were there. But having that designated space in the front room for the things that we're leaving with us, it reminded me about the trust that I have in myself. When you are organizing your home, oftentimes I talk about thinking about where future you would go to look for something. If you were trying to find it, where would you go to look for it if you were trying to find it? That is an excellent question to help you understand where things go, to start to establish homes for things as you're organizing your home, but when you're tearing your home apart and everything is not in the place that you would go to look for it anymore. Designating new spaces and trusting yourself, knowing that you'll be able to get through. This is key. Honestly, organizing and learning to have a belief of self-trust in yourself is one of the key elements that will get you from point A to point B. It comes back to if I think I can, or I think I can, I'm right. The belief that you have in yourself is everything when it comes to making. Small changes in your home, like organizing or huge changes like, I don't know, leaving the corporate world, deciding to get bariatric surgery, quitting drinking, and then deciding to sell your house and all of your belongings and move across the country. Just little things like that. The third thing I wanna give us credit for doing really well is designating our garage area as the place. For everything that was leaving our house. So anything we knew we were going to sell immediately went into the garage after we took pictures of it to post it on Facebook marketplace, or of course, to stage these items as we got them out of the house for our two garage sales that we held. That was really helpful because as soon as we made a decision on something and it left the house, it didn't come back in unless it was our dishes that we decided we could still eat off of if no one was buying them yet. But it was just really great because we knew that anything that was in the garage was to be sold, and it was a really great way for my husband and I to be able to communicate without us specifically saying, Hey, I'm putting this out here. It's for sale. We just knew there were times that there were things that we knew we needed to take inside too. In the garage, there was this chaos element of it where. There were things on the left side that needed to be gone through. And there were things on the right side that we knew we were selling and then there were things in the middle that our kids had gotten out and played with and had no idea where to put them back away at because of course we're moving and we took things off the wall and there's just chaos, right? So that was a huge aspect of our move as well. But once we started to establish these zones and then put things in the zones. It made things easier, even if there was chaos in the in-between. And nobody really talks about the in-between chaos, right? There's the before picture and the after picture, but we need those messy middle pictures. Those messy middle pictures are what life is all about. Those messy middle pictures are freaking everything. That's what it's all about. The transition. The transition of the before, getting to the after is what we really need to see and what we need to understand is it's not very pretty. It's not pretty, it's not aesthetically pleasing and it's probably why we don't see a lot of that on Instagram, but it's exactly what we need to see to understand that when we look at our messy middle. We can say, oh no, this is exactly where I need to be right now. I'm exactly where I need to be right now because this is painting a picture of the transition and the place that I'm headed, even if it still looks like chaos. The fourth thing that I really love that I did during this whole process was I have these little QR codes that are stickers. It's an app called Scan Lilly, and you can order these little stickers on Amazon. I'm gonna put a link in the show notes below. And what these stickers do is you take a picture of them and then you can scan the different things that you want into the box that you're storing them in. So I have two little QR codes on the outside of two boxes that I have, and I can go to my phone in the app and search the different things that I have in there. I have gloves in there and hats and winter jackets and things like that. It has allowed me to see what we have. So that I don't have to go searching through boxes for certain things. Now, I didn't do this with every box. But for these two larger boxes, these are our heaviest items. And I used this a while ago. This was the first thing I used Scan Lily for, was Bluey Valentine's. I went and bought Bluey Valentine's for Cora's class and I was so excited to get them out and I lost them. I couldn't find them anywhere. I had no idea where they went. And then of course, about a week after Valentine's Day, after I had already gone out and bought new ones, I found them. And so I decided to put a little QR code on them and store them above my. Dryer in the laundry room, and I was able to find them so much easier the next time it came around. The fifth thing I will say I did really well on this trip, was having our bags packed for specific legs of our trip. So as we make our way to the East coast, the first night after our initial eight hour drive, we stayed at a pet friendly hotel where we just stayed for the night. So when our first bag was really just the things that were essential, like a fresh pair of pajamas, a fresh pair of clothes to wear for driving the following day, And I packed a couple fun extras for the girls to be surprised, like a stuffed animal and a new book for them to play with in the car The next trip that we stayed, I had another bag packed for the four nights that we were going to be there. Now I did two bags, one for the girls and then one for me and Adam so that we could truly have everything that we needed. And that way any of the additional clothes that. Obviously we're still bringing with us, but didn't need to be packed in. Those initial three suitcases got pushed to the back of the trailer, so as we were towing things, we didn't need to access these additional things. That was so helpful because I didn't feel like we had to lug more suitcases in or less, and it felt. Easy.'cause I was like, what's practical? What's realistic for us? when it comes to stopping for one night and stopping for four, and then eventually getting to where we are now? And then the sixth thing that I will say. I did really well is remembering where we're going. Last year when my husband and I were talking about selling our house, we've talked about it before and didn't necessarily know if we were gonna press, press the button and move forward. But as we continued to talk about what we wanted, we know we want land. And we know we want peace. We know we want a life that feels a little bit simpler as we continue to let go of stuff in our home, declutter and organize and see what a home we continue to create in the home that we decided to sell. We knew that there was so much more that we could create it. It wasn't that we weren't grateful for everything that we had so entirely and ultimately grateful for everything that we had, our neighbors, our yard, our view, the beauty that surrounded us, and we were ready for a change. And When we initially decided to sell our house and move to the East coast, I looked at Adam and I was like, people are gonna wanna know why. And he's like, doesn't matter. It matters that we have our why, and there's not a lot of people that are gonna understand that. And let me tell you, people let us know their opinions about everything that we were doing, And when we were in the thick of it, when we were down to our last couple days in the house. I kept looking around and being like, why the hell are we doing this? This is awful. We are ripping up the comfort of our status quo of everything that we've known that's made sense. We sold our bed and we love our mattress. We sold our couch. We freaking loved that couch. We sold our plates. We sold everything that we had. Meticulously chosen for this life that we lived in Colorado. And I remembered, and this is why it's so important for coaches to have coaches too, because I remembered what I teach so many of my clients is thinking about what is this end result that we're looking for? What are we striving for? We're striving for peace. We're striving for land, we're striving for. A different life for our girls, really, and we're seeking that out by taking this grand adventure. So part of the thing that I thought of as we were going through this tumultuous, ridiculous upending and uprooting of the status quo we had created, I saw myself sitting and sipping coffee. Wrapped up in a really cozy, incredible blanket, looking out onto this beautiful yard that's green surrounded by trees, and it's really peaceful In the meantime, I am at one week from leaving this life we had in Colorado. I can't tell you that I've fully been enlightened yet. But I've, I'm noticing some changes that I wasn't able to fully grasp as I was going through this craziness of letting go. I don't know what that fully is yet, but I'm getting more and more comfortable. With the idea of trusting myself and knowing that my family is my home, being grateful that my dogs and our cats are here with us and, and figuring out what's next. One day at a time, I'm really damn proud of the life that my husband and I have created up until this point. I'm also really proud that my entire family agreed to do a line dancing class with me in Nashville this last week. This whole change has been a reminder of how uncomfortable change is. Now, this could be as ridiculous as selling your house and moving across the country, or it could be as simple as deciding to let go of the clutter that once brought you. Believe it or not, peace. It's not necessarily peace that it's bringing. There's a lot of studies that show how uncomfortable it is to have so much clutter around, but the way that you dealt with it is comfortable. It's comfortable to simply ignore it until it triggers you. So dealing with it in a different way is so uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable to the point that we want to run the other direction and ignore it again or attack it and fight it or do research on it until we have all the information or simply just, I try to do a little bit here and a little bit there until nothing is ever actually done. All of those ways of dealing with our clutter are normal because that's how we've been dealing with our lives, our whole lives with A DHD, and whether you're diagnosed or undiagnosed or just figuring it out to this point, it's helpful to understand how you approach some of these situations And that it is actually okay to be uncomfortable I saw this really great quote the other day. That you can have comfort or growth, but you can't have both. When you have comfort, you sacrifice growth, and when you have growth, you sacrifice comfort because there's a certain element to you that has to change in order to grow. I don't know that I fully love that quote because I really want there to be both. I wanted to fix this together, but I will say that over the last couple weeks I have been so uncomfortable, so freaking uncomfortable and desperate to find some peace. So last night as me and the kiddos and Adam were all in the hot tub, we are sitting at the top of a mountain watching fireflies, and the piece is starting to seep in and the understanding and the, the, the growth in a way that. Just allows me to see things from new perspectives. I would be absolutely honored if you would take the time to go and leave me a review on this podcast today on Spotify or. Wherever you leave reviews. I am not currently taking any new coaching clients right now, and my community is currently closed to new members as I'm nurturing the current members. But if you would like to sign up for the wait list. Go to organizing an ADHD brain.com/community. You can learn a little bit more about the community, and I will also be talking about future coaching opportunities there as well. If you have any questions, you're so welcome to email me at anytime info at organizing an adhd brain.com I've got some really awesome interviews coming up over the rest of the summer, and I'm gonna do a couple of reruns just to remind you of some of the fun things that have happened for over the rest of season two. Here's what I will say. This is gonna be my last solo episode for season two of organizing an A DHD Brain. It feels right, there's been some transitions this year and I'm ready to start something new. I'm ready to do something a little different with this podcast so that we can continue to grow together in our organizing skills, A DHD knowledge and really just understanding yeah, you can do this. It's just not gonna happen like you thought it would, and that's freaking okay. I hope you're having a fantastic summer and I will chat with you soon. I am joined today by a very special guest who's gonna share with you a little bit about how this move has been. So welcome to the show, Charlotte. Tell us a little bit about you. My name is Charlotte and I am eight and I'm about to go in third grade. And I love my sister Cora. Can you tell us a little bit about the move that you've just had? The move, it's, it has been really big and it's really fun because we let our cat named Teddy come out and play with us in the car On the road. In the car in the road. What's been your favorite part so far? I like when Teddy lays on my lap and, lays down and It's the cutest thing in the whole world.