After years of asking myself questions like “Why can’t I just put my clothes away instead of tossing them all over my bedroom?” and “Why can’t I return things I don’t want before the return window ends?” and “Why can’t I just (insert executive functioning task here)?”, I was diagnosed with ADHD. To say my mind was blown is an understatement.
So, naturally, I turned to books and reading. I’ve tried organizational books before and have read far too many blog posts about the perfect way to keep a journal or planner, but they never seem to hit right or sound manageable to me. Now that I know why, I turned to one that’s specifically for people with ADHD.
Keep reading to find out if I found this book helpful.
The Summary
Stop paying the high cost of disorganization.
Late fees on forgotten bills. A home full of clutter and unfinished projects. Eroding respect with your friends, family, and colleagues. Health worries from doctor’s appointments you keep meaning to schedule. Nonstop anxiety as you wait for the other shoe to drop.
You deserve better.
Order from Chaos will teach you how your brain works and how to stop getting in your own way. Mixing stories from the trenches of her own experience as a mom and wife with ADHD with wise, well-researched advice from her years as a blogger at The ADHD Homestead, Jaclyn Paul shows you how to design your own system for restoring order.
Past failures don’t have to define you. Order from Chaos offers a helping hand to get you on the path to a more peaceful and rewarding life.
My Review
This is the first book I picked out to read after finding out I have ADHD, and I’m glad I did. I’ve never understood why some people could have beautiful, organized homes, and mine was strewn with doom piles and clothing I could never find the time to put away. I looked at a few organizational things, but could never make them work for me.
Turns out, there was a reason for that! I never thought it might be ADHD until I met with a therapist to talk just about life and various anxieties. She pointed out that my “quirks” sounded a lot like ADHD, so…here we are.
Anyway, Order from Chaos was a helpful read that provided me with some great strategies for containing my life. I loved that it focused on how I should do what works for me, not what someone else suggests.
As with any book like this, I’ll take some and leave some of the suggestions (like having a physical filing cabinet for certain items). Overall, though, I found so many of the ideas helpful.
For example, Jaclyn talks about all the different ways to contain what comes into her life. Whether that’s physical things or information, anything she needs to keep or act on gets put in some sort of physical or digital inbox for her to deal with as she can. That made a lot of sense to me, since ADHDers tend to forget a lot really easily.
I also really loved a section near the end when she talks about progress. It’s not about completing a project in a day — instead it’s about making progress. Some days you just don’t have as many spoons as other days, but as long as you made even the tiniest bit of progress on your project, you’ve done a great job. This resonated with me a lot, as I tend to avoid doing something because I know I can’t finish it, or make “enough” progress.
Overall I recommend this book for anyone feeling like they’re struggling to maintain an organized life, especially those with ADHD. As an ADHDer herself, Jaclyn really gets it and goes at organizing and keeping up with things from that perspective.
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