Ep 95: Organize Anything with Ease

Send us a voice message at speakpipe.com/learntothrivewithadhd

In this transformative episode of our ADHD Summer School series, I break down why your ADHD brain struggles with organization and share the exact systems my clients use to go from chaos to calm—without overwhelming yourself or waiting for the "perfect" moment to get your life together.

📌 Key Topics:

• Why disorganization costs you time, money, brain power, and self-esteem
• The "brain rooms" concept: understanding where your thoughts live
• How to organize your mind using thought downloads and the CTFAR model
• Workspace and car organization systems that actually stick
• The "pinballing" effect and how to avoid getting distracted while organizing
• Home organization strategies that work with ADHD brains
• Storage solutions that prevent clutter from taking over again

🗣️ Featured Quote: "Your mind reflects your environment and vice versa. So if we have a disorganized environment, we're gonna have a disorganized mind."

💡 Strategy Breakdown:

• Use vertical filing systems for active papers (organizing experts swear by this!)
• Apply the "everything needs a home" rule to prevent lost items
• Practice the 10-minute rule to overcome organization overwhelm
• Master the three-basket system: trash, giveaway, and "goes somewhere else"
• Implement the "inner kindergarten teacher" mindset for daily cleanup
• Use Round Robin technique to systematically organize any space

🎯 Four-Part Organization System:

1. Organizing Your Mind: Thought downloads, brain rooms, and mental decluttering
2. Workspace & Car: Creating systems for your most-used daily spaces
3. Getting Your Home Organized: Room-by-room strategies that stick
4. Dealing with Storage: Tackling the big, overwhelming spaces without burnout

🔑 Key Takeaway: Your disorganization isn't a character flaw—your ADHD brain just needs different systems. With the right tools to manage physical and mental clutter, you can feel overwhelmed less often and accomplished more consistently. Start with one small space, build momentum, and celebrate every organizational win.

Connect with Mande: 

Free Organization Workbook: http://www.learntothrivewithadhd.com/workbook2025 

Learn more about private coaching with Mande: https://learntothrivewithadhd.com/services/ 

Free Resources: https://learntothrivewithadhd.com/freeresources/ 

Website: https://www.learntothrivewithadhd.com/ 

LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/learntothrivewithadhd 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/learntothrivewithadhd/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/learntothrivewithadhd/

#adhdorganization #adhdclutter #homeorganization #adhdworkspace #adhd #executivefunction #adhdsupport #adhdstrategies #adhdcommunity #organizationhacks #adhdworkbook #decluttering #adhdmindset

Click here for full show notes.

CLICK HERE for more resources. We're on this journey together!

Transcript

Welcome. We are starting a new special series. This is the ADHD Summer School.This is the kind that helps you build real life skills to make life with ADHD easier and more productive. These courses that will be released over the next month or so, were originally in my Learn to Thrive with ADHD group coaching program, but now I'm making it available to everyone right here on YouTube and the podcast.

So why now? Because summer is a great time to slow down, reset, and work on habits and systems that actually make a difference. These tools have helped my clients create lasting change, and now they're here for you. But don't just watch or listen. I want you to take action. You can download the free companion workbook at www dot.

Learn to thrive with adhd.com. Slash Workbook 2025. It's totally free and designed to help you apply what you learn here. Ready? Let's dive in.

Hello everyone. Welcome to Organize Anything with Ease. Go from chaos to order the easy way. So here's our agenda, part one, organizing your Mind. Part two, your workspace in your car. Part three, getting your home. Organized and part four, dealing with storage.

Organizing your mind, part one. What does disorganization cost us? It can cost us time, money, our brain power, because we're thinking about things that we don't wanna be thinking about, Our energy. Have you ever walked by something in your home that is just really disorganized, that irritates you and you just feel drained?

Your happiness, and it can affect our self-esteem? Your mind reflects your environment and vice versa. So if we have a disorganized environment, we're gonna have a disorganized mind. We can organize our mind just like we do anything else. You remove everything from its space. You examine the items, you decide what will stay and what will go, and you put back only what you want.

So in your workbook, or you can just do paper, we're gonna do a thought download. So you're gonna take five to 10 minutes to write down all your thoughts. And this is just anything that comes up. Don't edit yourself. Any thoughts that come up, everything's okay.

And then ask yourself the following questions after you've done this exercise about these thoughts. Do I want this? Does it serve me? Is it out of date? Is this like an old thing that you started thinking once upon a time and now it really no longer applies? Would I buy or believe it again in this case?

from my coach, heard this concept of brain rooms and I thought it was really interesting and I thought it would be interesting to, to bring this to you. We have rooms in our house. We have a kitchen, a living room, a bedroom, right? We have a memory room, a subconscious room, a judgment room, a negative self-talk room.

A lot of us spend a lot of time there. A positive self-talk room. We really like it when we hang out in that one. A plans room. We love that one as well, right? That's a well used room and an appreciation room. So here what I'm presenting to you is the model and to dive deep with the model. We're gonna talk about it here, but to dive deep with it, there's a course.

In here called Become a brain Boss. And that really goes deep into metacognition, which is you're thinking about your thinking and I really teach you a lot about the model. But when I talk about the model with my one-on-one clients or when I have somebody that's interested in being a client, I'll tell them about the model.

When I explain the process of how I coach them. What I say is, we have our circumstance, thought, feeling, action and results. And the reason it looks this way is because if you had this as a piece of paper in front of you with these words on it, you would start filling this in and you could start anywhere you wanna start.

So it might be, how am I feeling right now? Maybe you're feeling anxious. Okay, what am I thinking that's causing me to feel anxious? Okay, so what? What is the thought? What is the circumstance that's causing that thought, that's making you feel anxious? And then from that place of what you're thinking and what you're feeling, what actions are you taking or not taking, and that is getting you your result.

Okay? And this is true for everything in life. So let's explain that just a little bit more circumstance. It's just the facts. Everyone would agree? There is a light behind me. Everyone would agree that's the case, right?

The thought is what we're thinking about the circumstance. The feeling is how I explained before, how that thought makes us feel. The actions from that thought and feeling, what actions am I taking or not taking? And then the result is what happens due to that. Okay, so that is something that you can learn more about and that really helps us clean out.

We're talking about organization here. Organization of the Mind. Going through that process will help us really clean out thoughts and beliefs that are no longer working for us and put in. Ones that are better. Another tool to do that is the four Ns. And so the four Ns, notice, normalize, neutralize, and next best thought.

And so notice what you're thinking. It's pretty normal for people to feel nervous when they're doing recordings.

And this is the first one of the series that I'm doing neutralize. I'm doing okay and it's probably going to resonate with people listening to this recording that I'm not perfect and that I get nervous too. Next best thought. I'm gonna do fine. It's gonna be okay. It's not gonna be great. It's not gonna be perfect, but it's gonna be, it's gonna be fine.

So that's my next best thought about that situation. Perfect example, right in this scenario. Okay. What are your thoughts about organization? Are they, I can't do it. It's hard, it will take forever. I'm not an organized person. I dunno how to keep it that way. Or you might have very positive thoughts.

The reason I gave these examples is because these are gonna get in the way of organization, right? Questions to ask yourself, just like we talked about before, do I want this? Does it serve me? Is it outta date? Would I buy it again? We're gonna keep covering that. We're gonna cover that in other parts as well.

So I want you to go on a disorganization hunt, take note of disorganization in your home and your work environments. How does it make you feel? What are three simple things that you can do, and what are your thoughts about it? And in your workbook, it will help you go through this.

Your workspace and your car. I was noticing with my clients that these were problematic areas and so I wanted to have a whole section dedicated to this. And when we actually did this with group coaching I think about a year ago, maybe a little bit more, I put together a coaching group.

You're here in the membership. This is the 2.0 version of that. But I put together a coaching group and together. I even did it with them. We went through this process to organize our workspace in our car, and it was just a lot of fun and really valuable. So ask the following questions. Does this item have a home?

And we're referring right at the moment to our workspace. So maybe there's something on your desk that, for example, I have a pen right now on my desk that could go in the cup holder for the pens, right? What decision needs to be made?

We're not sure where it should go. We're leaving it out because there's some decision that we are avoiding making. Why does this particular mess keep happening? Is there a way we can prevent it? What is really going on? Sometimes disorganization can be due to. Feelings that we're having.

we're gonna go through this messy workspace solutions. Let's talk about that first vertical space for your active papers. I have had people with very messy desks disagree with me that this is a thing, but organizing experts.

For people with ADHD say vertical space is best. And I have tried it out and it really works. So just give it a shot. All right, trash, recycle bin shredder. Make sure you have those things. Less filing categories is your filing. Reason I bring this up is you're filing too complicated so it doesn't happen.

Can you make it more simple so that it's easier for you to do everything should have a home like my pens, the example I gave earlier. Have a home, my post-its have a home. Things need to have a place where they always go.

You get to just decide where that is and see if it works for you. Learn to trust yourself. All right, we're gonna talk more about that, make decisions. Sometimes disorganization is just a lack of decision making and it's a digital world. So I think you understand where I'm going with this, where we can avoid some of the disorganization that we have maybe in our workspace especially by having less papers and organizing that way.

So transitioning, we must become our inner kindergarten teachers. We need to pick up between tasks and leave our space clean. So what happens in kindergarten? I mentioned earlier that I full-time substitute, taught for a while and I was in kindergarten for a good part of a year. And at the end, in kindergarten, what do we do?

We pick up our toys and we put them away. Sometimes it's harder to get some of them to do it, but. Same in our work environment. Right now I'm at my desk. At the end of these recordings, I'm going to clean up my desk and leave my space clean. This is something, if you struggle to do it, it's okay. It's normal that it's hard, but it's something I want you to keep practicing doing.

This is a skill that you build, which is stopping what you're doing, and sometimes you might wanna set a timer to, stop. Five minutes before you have to do something else in order to clean up your space. once you start doing this, it's quick in developing good habits with mail. Mail can be a big part of our disorganization, right?

So sometimes it can go straight in the trash can. And what I like to do with mail is it always goes in one place. There's one place it goes. There's one place. That all my bills are and my mail is with my bills. And then in your digital environment, developing good habits, unsubscribe from things that are cluttering up your email put together organization systems that will help you.

Do I have a special place to put what needs to be dealt with? That's where I mentioned like I put my bills in one place and I know I can always find them there. Do I have a non-negotiable time? I will deal with things. Okay. Is there a certain time that you'll pay the bills, that you will look at those papers, that you'll go through the mail, decide ahead what should be kept and what can be trash.

All right, now we're talking about the vehicle, right? Again, ask the following questions. What's the problem? What's the problem causing disorganization in your car? Does it belong here? I love that question for the car because a lot of times we end up with some stuff in the car that doesn't need to be there.

Does it have a home in my vehicle? Is there someplace that can be put away? For example, this actually looks a lot like my car. There is a crate in the back of my car. That I have some things in. There is a console that I have some things in. And, maybe there's very little, there's a few things in my glove box that's the contents of my car.

There's some DVDs, which is aging me maybe, but in the back of my seat. So that's really all that's in the car. When is my pickup time? My pickup time now, excuse me, for my car is when I get outta the car. It is. Every time I get outta the car, I look around. What is there? Has it always been that way?

No. I. It used to be that maybe like once a month I would get to cleaning out my car or then it got better and it was once a week, and now because I value having a clean car so much now, it is every time I will look around, I will see if there's anything that needs to go with me. When I exit the vehicle and I grab it right then, that is something that you can work towards and.

You're not gonna be that way tomorrow. All right. It's taken some time and some practice to do that. And then how do I feel when things are clean and tidy? I really enjoy getting in my car and looking around and seeing just the car to the car, my hand sanitizer, my charger. That's it. Everything else is the way the car came, brand new, and that's just fun.

Is there an easy solution? One thing I didn't mention is right on the floor behind my seats. 'cause that's the only place it will fit. I put a trash can that was a game changer to have a trash can in my car.

I just grabbed this off Amazon,a trash can for your car. Keep empty bags to carry items. I love that. In, this pocket right here, I have bags stuck in this pocket so that if you have a lot of items, you can just grab one of those bags, put everything in there, deal with it when you get in the house or wherever you're going, right?

Not eating in the car. Is that a rule that you need to make? It's not for everyone, but is that a rule that you. Need to make where you don't eat in the car. A lot of the stuff causing a problem in their vehicle is cups and bags and then

Sometimes food gets left in those bags and that becomes a problem. So is that a rule that you need to make for yourself? A file for papers. For my husband, he works out of his vehicle quite a bit, if you work out of your vehicle a lot, are you collecting all your papers somewhere that actually have to stay with you?

Because in my husband's example, he has. Calendars and information and stuff that he has to refer to. To keep all of those in one place would really help with the organization of your vehicle. And then using an organizer they have organizers for the back of your seat. They have organizers for your console.

Using that to put the things that you feel you need to have in your vehicle in a tidy way. So what are your rules? I always do it now, and so that's one of my rules for my vehicle. I'm getting outta the vehicle. I look right, then I get the things out.

It's not something I'll take care of later. Not to say that never happens. It does. Sometimes I come in from out of town. I'm tired. Deal with it the next time I get in the car. But my rule is do it now.

is the rule that I don't eat in the car like I said before, that might be a useful rule for you. That's not a rule that I have. My kids are allowed to eat in the car. We eat in the car, it's fine. But we just take care of the mess, right? I don't allow others to leave a mess.

Is that a rule that you need to have? Is it your kids leaving the mess? I have to really work with my kids on taking their stuff with them. I remove items when I get outta the car. That's back to my rule of I always do it now, so how can I make myself do it? Cleaning out the car is what I'm talking about here.

If your car has gotten maybe out of hand and you need to clean it up, but it just seems like an overwhelming task that you're dreading. The 10 minute rule is something that you're gonna learn about in lots of context in other courses that you're taking here. But decide on a minimum amount of time that you can go and clean out the car and you don't feel dread about it.

Maybe it's five minutes. I'm gonna set a timer on my phone for five minutes and I'm just gonna go take five minutes to get some things outta the car that shouldn't be there. And then another fun thing you can do is set a timer and race the clock. And maybe for that five minutes, you just go as fast as you can.

And then at the end of the five minutes, I want you to just check in with yourself. How do you feel? Are you motivated to keep going? Are you tired? Do you not wanna do it anymore? That's okay. You did it for five minutes and then there's a question. Can you keep going? Do you wanna keep going? You don't have to.

You've done five minutes and that's something to be proud of and you can do five minutes again when you reinvigorated yourself, right? Trust me with this tool, five minutes. A few times a week is going to be more than what you would do if you just stayed in the place of dreading doing it. So what are my thoughts and feelings about keeping my vehicle clean?

And then that goes back to the model work, right? You can do that thought download, what are your thoughts and feelings about that? And you can plug 'em into the model. If this is something you don't understand how to do yet, that's okay. Like I said, there's a whole course on it.

Or just examine the thoughts that you're having about the car. Is the thought, I just don't have an organized car. I can't keep my car clean. If those are the thoughts, then you might want to take a look at those thoughts and start working on shifting them. And when we're talking about shifting thoughts, I wanna go ahead and talk about this a little bit here.

We're, it's not positive thinking. It's shifting to a thought that you still believe I. Like maybe it could be, I'm learning to keep my car clean. That might be something that you can believe. 'cause you're doing that right now. So here I wanna talk about the intentional model. And I'm gonna go ahead and just go through this before I start talking.

What's the circumstance? With an intentional model, you can go into a different order. What's the circumstance? In this case, we're talking about keeping our vehicle clean. So it might be there's trash in my car. What is the result you want?

Maybe the result you want is a tidy car. What actions do you need to take or stop doing? In order to have that tidy car maybe in this example it's, I need to stop leaving trash in the car. Maybe the action is I need to get a trash bag and clean out the car. And then how would you feel when you've got that all cleaned out and you're proud of the job that you've done and you get in your vehicle and there's just a sigh of relief that it's clean and there's nothing that's irritating your brain about it.

And what would you need to think to feel that way? Maybe in this example is I can clean my car for 10 minutes. Maybe that's all you would need to think in this example. Okay? Make your own rules. So this is the take action part.

So make rules about your workspace and your car, and then start working to follow those rules. Create your tidy system for your workspace and your car. Develop the habit of using your system. Okay.

We're gonna go on to part three, getting your home organized again. Does it have a home? I use keys for an example because for years I would lose my keys and I would say it's been a good 15 years. I've figured this out. But I would just bring my keys in. I would set them down somewhere and not have any idea where I left those keys

I think it was a friend actually that was like don't you just, don't you have a key hook? And no, I did not have a key hook. But there should be one place you keep your keys. And at this point in my life, if my keys didn't make it on the key hook, they're in the bag that.

I use, and I described this, I actually have a friend that was in my group for adults with ADHD and I described in this course that I have one purse, I actually have two now. I have one very small purse, and now I have one, like kind of medium sized purse.

So the reason for that is because with my brain, I know if I have several purses. I have to look through those several purses for things I'm looking for. And now that I know if my keys are not hanging up, they're in that purse. There better be just one purse. It makes it so much easier. So maybe that's helpful to some of you out there.

Okay. So there needs to be a home for your keys. There needs to be a home for your wallet. There needs to be a home for your phone. If you're purposely, leaving your phone somewhere, there should be one place that you leave it that would really help.

What are your hot spots? So is it, I have an example here of a toddler making a mess in the living room. This looks like it's somebody's creative space. Is it your closet that you have a hard time with? Is it a kid's bedroom? Is it the bathroom? Is it your workspace? How to organize. So we talked about this before, right?

Remove everything from its space. And so we have here like a blank cabinet. So remove everything, clean it out, and then take a look at those items, decide what needs to stay and what can go. And then put back only what you want.

Don't put back things because you spent money on them. Are you gonna use them and do you actually want them? And then ask yourself, does it make sense to keep this item, do it daily? So some of our thoughts that get in the way is, I'll do it later, right? Small progress daily. You can just do a little bit every day.

It doesn't need to be a big deal. And then just do it. So when I was really working on, I had a really hard time for a long time. With keeping my home organized and or keeping my space even clean. And I remember one day walking over like a piece of paper that was on the floor that shouldn't have been there, and I was just gonna step over it and walk away.

And in my brain I was like, just do it. Just pick it up. And I did and I picked it up and that has been something that stayed with me. And so I hope that might be helpful to some of you out there is when we have that tendency, you see the thing and maybe we have that thought. I'll do it later.

That was probably my thought with the paper. I'll do it later, or maybe somebody else will do it. Or maybe it doesn't really matter, maybe that was the thought. I don't remember the exact thought at the time, but I was definitely gonna step over it and that, just do it. It's two seconds to bend down, pick up the paper and throw it away.

And then don't let big projects take you down. Here we talked about small progress daily. Don't let that spare bedroom that's full of all those things, or the garage or whatever it might be. Don't let it take you down, that it's big. You can break it into small pieces. You're gonna learn that throughout the courses here, and you can bring these things to coaching.

If you're really struggling, bring it to our weekly coaching and let's talk about it. Don't be too sentimental. I had. These Afghans from my grandma that I kept for such a long time and I never used an Afghan. They actually, a Afghans to me are very uncomfortable 'cause they've got holes in them and so it's not quite like a blanket to me.

I just always felt that way. And although it was so sweet that she took the time to make these Afghans, I. I got rid of them. But sentimentality could have had me keeping those for years and years. And I actually do have something I have a quilt that I made with my grandma, which is really comfortable actually.

It's made outta like seventies polyester on the top. But the comfortable part is she would always have a sew a sheet. On the bottom and it's worn. I made it when I was 12, I think, with her. And it's really worn and like thinner than it used to be. And it's really comfortable. I love it. So there's the difference, right?

It, I still have the sentimentality of we made that quilt together and that was so much fun and we spent that time together. Then I don't have the sentimentality of keeping a thing that she made that's uncomfortable. So yeah, I just want you to watch in your life, like what are you keeping out of sentiment that you maybe don't really use or want?

So what is the cost of being disorganized? What is it costing you? Is it stressing you out? Is it costing you money? Are you losing things? Are you losing bills that you need to pay and having to pay fees? What's it costing you? And then say goodbye. Say goodbye to things you don't need. How can you get rid of them?

Can you give them away? Can you donate them? Let those things go off to somebody else that can enjoy them. You don't need to hang on to them, and you definitely don't need to shame yourself. And hang on to them because you spent money on them or whatever your feeling might be. Okay. So setting limits.

Let's talk about that. So when we purchase something new, if it replaces something, we should probably put things into giveaway or we can have a yard sale or we can sell them. So break it down. Start with similar items. So we have the two examples with the kids here. What we would probably do I see on the bottom picture, first thing I would do is just start working with all the fabric.

Is it clothes? Is it blankets? Is it dress up? Work with all that. 'cause that's what I see a lot of. And then get that all sorted out and then maybe go for the toys next or whatever you wanna do, and then find a home for these things. Right now with the toddler, what's gonna happen?

But do these toys all have a home when he is done? He or she, I guess we don't really know. And then do it daily at the end of. Maybe at nap time or the end of the day, let's pick this up. Let's help this child, keep this room put together daily. Let's do it daily with our home. I've got an organization system now where I go through in 30 minutes and I'm able, and I never want this to sound like I have it all figured out.

I don't have everything figured out, but there are some things that I have figured out and this is one of them. And I went from feeling. Overwhelmed and upset. And just I remember so many times sitting down with my husband saying, just tell me how to do it. Tell me how to keep this house clean.

And he would try. And his advice just never really resonated with me. I'm sure he was right and what he was saying, but it just didn't work for my brain. But now I have an organization system where yeah, I can go through in 30 minutes and take care of it, but it's because I do it most days. Do I do it every day?

No, but I do it like five days a week. And then don't punish yourself. It's not a big deal that it became disorganized. It is what it is. That's where we're at. And that's okay. And now from a place of positivity, you're gonna get a lot more done than from. Beating yourself up. I just actually recorded a podcast with a former client and she talked about how she tried shame and it didn't work.

And so yeah, don't punish yourself. So what are my thoughts and feelings about keeping my home clean and organized? We're back to that thought download you'll see in your workbook, right? And then back to the model again and again. If you. Understand it, great. Use it. If you don't understand it yet, you can just skip over that and just examine the thoughts, see if, and just the easy question to ask yourself is, are these thoughts useful?

Are they helping me? All right, so let's talk about some tools that you can use. I think I heard this from Fly Lady, 20 years ago when I was trying to figure out how to keep my house clean. I tried all the systems and Fly Lady was one that was pretty good. I'm sure it's still around, but one thing that I learned in there was this thing called Round Robin.

They talked about some presidential. Historical home and somebody asked them, how do you keep this clean? And they said, we start from the door and we work our way around.

And so yeah, start in one spot and work your way around. A good example for this is like a kitchen. Start at the refrigerator and work your way around the room and then take care of the middle. Have a trash. And a giveaway and a somewhere else. So what do I mean by that? We're gonna get to that soon.

I'm gonna explain that it's called the three baskets. And then take it easy on yourself. Don't overwork yourself. You don't need to exhaust yourself. It's just gonna make you not wanna do it next time. So get something done, don't overdo it, and then just try again as soon as you are energized again.

So three questions to use. Do I want this? Do I need this? Would I buy this? Again, when you're looking at an item, ask yourself these three questions. If the answer is no to any of those questions, it's time to go. Okay, so here's those three baskets. I say baskets, it could be three trash cans.

This was Fly Lady for sure. What she taught was have, especially when you're going into a really messy space, have these three baskets with you. And usually what it looks like for me is a trash bag instead of another basket. But I will have a basket where everything that's in that space that shouldn't be in that space needs to go somewhere else, goes in the basket.

Because guess what? If you go put it somewhere else right now, you're gonna get lost. All right. I call it pinballing. I talked about this on social media and it really resonated with people. And what I mean by that is sometimes we can be like a pinball and just like with a pinball machine, right?

You pull the little lever back and then you shoot that pinball and it just goes all over the place and you use the levers to make it go more places. And what I'm describing there is if you are trying to organize a space and you found something that goes in the kitchen. You go in the kitchen, you're gonna find something that goes somewhere else and you're gonna end up just bouncing all around your house.

I know you've all experienced this if you're here so what you wanna do when you're, maybe say cleaning a bedroom or cleaning your kitchen, have a basket or something that you can move to put all the things that need to go somewhere else. And then have a giveaway. If you're finding as you're organizing or cleaning, finding things that you just don't want anymore, put them in the giveaway.

'cause if you just go I should get rid of that. It may or may not happen. So have your giveaway, have your move to another place. And then I like to just have a trash bag. 'cause it's hard to drag around three things, three baskets anyway. So again, with the 10 minute roll. We're gonna, we're gonna revisit this a lot.

give it a minimum amount of time that you don't feel dreaded. So your homework, this is your to do. Find a disorganized space in your home. Use one or more of the tools to organize that space and then celebrate what you did.

I really want you to be proud of yourself. And what's so fun with organization is I like to, once I've organized a space. I notice I'll keep looking at it and then I'll look at it again, and then I'll show my husband. He's never as impressed as I want him to be. But that's me celebrating and that's me mentally going, wow, you did good.

And so I really want you to celebrate what you did. What I don't want from you is for you to just concentrate on everything that's not organized still. I want you to be really happy about what you did do.

All right. Part four, we are dealing with storage. So let's talk about that. So what are the types of storage? You might have a storage space that things just end up in. You might have a garage where again, things just get dropped off. It might be your pantry. And it might be okay, not everybody has a barn, but maybe what is your barn?

For me, we do have a barn and for US a lot of stuff that if it doesn't get donated and I'm tired of dealing with it. it would end up in the barn. We just actually went through the barn here recently and got rid of a lot of that stuff. But that's something that kind of perpetually keeps happening.

And I'm learning though. 'cause right now I have some things that need to go to donations. We know how long I have a place to donate to, and so I'm just dealing with them until I can get them gotten rid of. Some people here where I live anyway, I am not sure if this happens everywhere.

Have containers that they put things in anywhere that you're just dropping things off and not really organizing them. These areas can get outta hand, right? Okay, so what's the problem? Why does this space get disorganized? Do I need or want the items in this space? Do I need help? Is the job just so big, like with the example of the garage, for example?

Is the job so big that you need to enlist your family or enlist friends? How can I solve this again with help? Do you need somebody to get on board with not dropping things off? We can't really control other people, so we don't wanna get too much into that, but, yeah. Do you need help in that area?

How can I solve this problem? Is there something emotional going on? So are you avoiding organizing the space because there's sentimental items in there, maybe that you don't know what to do with. There could be a lot of things with emotions going on. Just check in with yourself.

So again, what's the cost? What's the mental cost? The emotional cost, the financial cost, the loss of physical space. Is there a room that you can't use because there's so much stuff in it? Are you feeling tied down or stuck? So there's only one way to eat an elephant, and that's a bite at a time.

But basically we understand the concept of how to eat an elephant, right? Just really chipping away at whatever project is seeming too big or too hard, so making decisions don't stay stuck in confusion.

All right. A lot of times we can stay stuck in confusion in order to not do things or what I've learned with a lot working with clients is and seeing it in myself as well, is we will stay confused about something if we're just asking ourself a question and not answering the question. So in the example of what we're talking about, maybe it's gosh, how am I gonna get the garage organized?

And maybe we just stay stuck in that and we don't ever really take the time to answer the question. How to make a decision. How do you make a decision? You just make one. If you're stuck between several decisions, you just get to pick one and go forward with it.

Should I use these bins or these bins to organize my garage? Just pick one and go for it. And then what do we really fear if we make the decision is what we're asking here. So your tools that we've talked about, 10 minute rule using the basket system, round robin, body doubling, which is interesting that I have that here.

'cause we haven't really talked about it, so let's talk about that. Maybe that's where I was talking about getting help. Body doubling, used Focusmate, which is a service. You can go to focusmate.com. I have no affiliation with them whatsoever. I find them really useful and my clients do as well.

But I took my laptop, out to my barn and I had an appointment with someone and it was for, I think 50 minutes, it was our appointment time. I clicked on our session and asked her what she was doing. She was gonna be painting dolls and I told her I would be cleaning out my barn.

And so I sat my laptop. Right there where she could see the bar in space. And it's just really like an accountability. And then you feel like somebody's there with you. Another other ways you can body double is to call somebody on the phone. You can invite a friend over. You can do this with a family member.

Just having somebody else there while you're doing something hard makes the task so much easier and it makes you accountable to working on the task. You're embarrassed to walk away, right? That really works with me. With focus make, I couldn't just, when I was getting hot or tired with the barn, just say, oh, close the laptop.

I'm done 'cause I made this appointment with this person. And at the end we're gonna check in and see how things went. And what was amazing is I got that barn done in that time, that's never happened before. So the three questions that we talked about and then managing your mind. Whenever you're doing those thought downloads and you're going through the model, you're working on your mind management, so time limits, box of items you aren't sure you need or want, and put a date on the box mark, whether that box will be trashed or donated at that time.

Okay? So if you don't open that box or need those things in that box, in that amount of time. Wouldn't that be fun if you could just know that you made a decision maybe one year ago that if this box was not opened? It just goes right in the trash. You don't even need to worry that it's something important because you.

You didn't need it. The ADHD brain, out of sight, out of mind. Using clear containers when possible is helpful so you can see what's in there. Only group like things together. This helps my brain so much and I know in my family, not everybody agrees with this and so it's something I work on organizing a lot, but if I group like things together, I know better where to find things and I know better where things go.

So Mark and use a key. And so I think what I was talking about there is in our other business that I have in our gym, there are these cabinets in the back and there's parts for treadmills and there's all kinds of things in these cabinets. And the person that owned the gym before us made a key for us.

And so what she did is she. Took the boxes that are in there or the bags or whatever they might be, and she put a number on them and put the number on the key that's taped to the door of that particular cabinet. There's a bunch of cabinets and we can open up that door, look at the key and see that, okay, this is a pedal for a recumbent bike number three, and then we can go to number three and get that thing.

Isn't that genius? And I haven't really implemented that very much in my home. There hasn't been really a need for that, but it's been super helpful in that scenario. And so maybe a key for your garage, numbering the boxes that makes me think of my holiday. Things that are put away. That would be really helpful to know exactly just by a number, what's in there?

So gratitude and abundance. What I'm talking about here is I want to really look at the fact that you have a lot of stuff and that's what that's causing the organization problem. But we have the means to have a lot of stuff. That's something to be grateful for.

I think about that every time I can clean out my house once a year go through the kids' bedrooms with them, go through my own things, go through the kitchen go through the pantry, and I end up with my entryway, which is good sized full. Stuff. And I look at that and for a moment my brain wants to go, such a waste.

You didn't, you don't even want these things like you, you bought that a year ago. My brain just goes all kinds of places like that and then I go, wow. We live in a country where I go through every year. Clean out all these things that I don't want or need that can go to somebody else. I'm so grateful that I have the means to have bought these things and that I don't need 'em anymore.

So that's one thing to look for. Grateful for the time that we had it, it served its purpose, is what we're looking at there. Like I went that example where I said, I just bought this a year ago. It was good for a year. That's all we needed from it. We can always buy a new one. If there's things that you're just not using and you don't know that you're gonna use it, just let it go.

You can probably get a new one. That's true. In most cases. If we need it again, we can trust ourselves to figure it out. I think of that a lot with like tools. Maybe there's more than one way to, take care of that thing. Not less tools and more like kitchen items.

Like I, there was one year that I really went through my kitchen and I was like, why do I have so many gadgets that actually I could just take a knife and do the same thing this gadget does? So think about it from that perspective. Okay. Thoughts about stuff that are helpful? It's time with me is complete.

I got what I needed from this item. Someone else may enjoy or use it. I can't make a wrong decision. I'm making room. So you're making a new space, right? I can let this go now. Those might be some helpful thoughts for you to borrow. So your action this time is storage war. What area do you have?

Disorganized storage. Use two or more tools to work on that space. Who you celebrate with when you make progress. All right, decide who that's gonna be. And maybe it's just yourself. That's okay. Okay, so you just completed organize anything with ease.

Congratulations. And this is one way I want you to celebrate, like really take it in you. Stuck with me for almost an hour, went through this. Now what I want you to do is implementsomething.Don't get overwhelmed. Just take a look. What did you learn that you can implement today or tomorrow and really start practicing using, and any of these things you learn, any of these tools.

I hear a lot from my clients like that works, but it doesn't work anymore. Yes, that's why we build. A toolbox of tools. That's why I explain with a lot of clients a bag of tools. That's why we have more than one tool. But I want you to run with one, take action and you did it.

Good job. Thanks for being with me.