Are you frustrated by the never-ending piles of laundry/clothing clutter that yr ADHD brain seems to conjure out of thin air??

Ugh. 

Yeah.

I know that annoyance well!

How this one ADHD symptom foils the best-laid laundry plans. 

So you know how one of the universal ADHD symptoms is that we struggle to “finish tasks?”  Meaning that our lives are shot through with stacks of half-read books, piles of unfinished projects, and a draft email folder that is bursting at the seams? Well, for me, perhaps one of the life areas that has caused the most difficulty has been in the realm of my clothes.

For the first 15 years after moving out of my parents place, the process of doing my laundry would always vex me. I mean, I’d always start with the best of intentions. 

• With gusto I’d take my bag of dirty clothes & bedding down to the laundromat/laundry room 
• Then, while using the machines, I would either wait around until all items were dry or set an alarm to alert me
• When done, I would haul my bag of clean laundry back to my bedroom 
• And, with my energy/good intentions nearly 100% zapped, I would start putting the items away…

Can You Relate to These Wardrobe Malfunction Examples From My Own Life?

I bet you know how the above scenario usually ended eh?

 Yup. 

That’s right.

My #doallthelaundry best intentions would completely fizzle out after putting away like 5 clean socks. 

Which would result in the following: 

• I’d spend at least one night (if not more) sleeping on top of or next to my clothes
• If I had also washed my bedsheets that week, that pile of clothes I’d be sleeping next to would also be on the bare mattress.
• By day 2 or 3 after laundry day, most of that pile of clean clothes would inevitably have fallen off my bed. 
• And with the clean & dirty clothes now mingling together on my floor, I would spend the rest of the week having to do the “smell test” on every shirt, sock, & bra.

Until, you know, the next laundry day. 

When the cycle would start all over again.

This extremely frustrating cycle ultimately resulted in me wearing the same 5-7 outfits for literally months at a time. Which would have been fine had those been my absolute favourite outfits. But they weren’t.  They were simply the clothes that passed the smell test. 

The importance of working with your unique brain wiring.

This hopelessness-inducing pattern finally changed sometime in 2019.  That’s when I had an insight. 

Maybe the reason I kept failing at managing my laundry all these years was because I was approaching it from a non-ADHD perspective?

I was trying to jam my square neurodiverse brain into the round hole of neurotypicality, so to speak. 

Immediately upon having that realization I set to work completely overhauling every.single.detail about, not just my laundry routine, but also about the organization of my clothes more broadly….

… which can essentially be broken down into 3 broad steps. 

Step 1 – Realize that the adage “Out of sight, out of mind” is a very real thing

The first two things I did to reduce the overwhelm of my laundry/clothing situation was:

1. I tossed my dresser to the curb. Ok actually I gave it to a thrift store. But same idea.
2. I removed the doors to my closet <—I know I know the metaphor isn’t lost on this big ole queerdo one bit lol  

I then decided to repurpose my square bookshelves so that they could act as shelves for both my books *AND* my clothes. 

Because, you know, two-birds-one-stone & all. 

Although truthfully I combined them mostly because my partner Gem & I are city dwellers who have to cram all their junk into a 750 square foot apartment lol

Anyway it looks like this:

Screw Mari Kondo! These messy piles of clean clothes spark incredible amounts of joy for my ADHD brain 🧠

Step 2 – Label All The Things!!!

As you can see in the photo, I’ve also created labels to remind myself of what lives where. 

Both in terms of items of clothing (ie: short sleeve shirts, long sleeve shirts, etc) and book genre (ie: business/creativity books, general psychology books, etc). 

That way, when I’m putting things away, I don’t have to strain my already Swiss cheese-like ADHD working memory to remember where things go.

Trust me. 

I think my label maker has become one of my favourite productivity tools. 

Personally I use Letratag’s Dymo brand but any label maker will work. You can even go extra fancy with different label colours, stickers, or anything else that helps make your clothing organizational system feel more fun and/or interesting.

Step 3 –  Laundry gamification for the win!

Speaking of fun, one of the things that has made the task of “finishing” my laundry routine every week so fun and easy is that I see it as a bit of a game. Basically I toss my clean clothes from my hamper to their proper places on my bookshelf, as if I was shooting baskets. 

And besides the entertainment factor, gamifying my laundry habit in this way makes it so I don’t have to worry about folding my clothes, opening & closing my dresser drawers, and other neurotypical laundry tasks.

Key Takeaways

Seriously tho.

Those three steps—i) ditching my dresser for a bookcase, ii) labelling what goes where, & iii) Gamifying my routine—have been absolutely life-changing.

I’m curious to hear how implementing these steps is working for you.

Shoot me an email  (gaydhd@thepermageek.com) or let me know in the comments how do you deal with your laundry/clothing clutter?