ADHD Wars Episode IV: A New Symptom

Disorganization and Forgetfulness:

• poor organizational skills (home, office, desk, or car is extremely messy and cluttered)
• tendency to procrastinate
• trouble starting and finishing projects
• chronic lateness
• frequently forgetting appointments, commitments, and deadlines
• constantly losing or misplacing things (keys, wallet, phone, documents, bills)
• underestimating the time it will take you to complete tasks

So here it is! A near complete list of my failures as a mother! Sweet. It is always good to document stuff like this. I cannot even begin to list the number of times I've gotten halfway to work and realized I left my laptop at home. Or driven almost to the Merritt before one of the kids spoke up and said "Aren't you dropping us at school?"

So I've developed system after system to try and get organized. Sadly, when it comes to the home life stuff, none of my solutions seem to work very well. For one thing, I love spreadsheets, precision folding, calendars, and brightly colored paper with squares that I fill in when I complete a task. But those things don't always work in organizing a house.

Balancing work, kids, and personal requires so many separate coping mechanisms. Spreadsheets are great for things like selecting fun patches for 14 eight year old Girl Scouts. And check boxes are good for work emails and projects. But the system required for the mounds of paper that comes home from school - I don't even know what that system looks like. The required signatures, a dollar here, marking that information on the calendar, buying the white-tshirt for tie dye, looking 2 months ahead to get an afternoon off to attend some cottage meeting that ultimately doesn't impact my parenting abilities....all of those things are monstrously challenging. And can't be fixed with a spreadsheet.

Luckily, there's a flip side to all of this- and I'm pretty ready to write about the Gift of ADHD side. That side ends up evening it all out. I'm not a bad mother - I'm just not one who remembers every detail very easily. But I do okay. ;)