My ADHD Brain: 3 Systems for Finding Stuff

In this video, I'll share a couple of systems that I use to find things in my house!

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**** A truncated transcript follows. A full transcript can be found at https://www.marblejar.net/blog/2017/8/3/my-adhd-brain-3-systems-for-finding-stuff. ****
Hi, everyone! This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll share a couple of systems that I use to find things in my house! This is part of a series on my ADHD brain and all of the systems I use to compensate for a lack of internal structure and organization.

In almost every household, there is one "finder." Something is lost? Call in the Finder. From my extremely informal polling, I've found that the Finder tends to be the woman of the house, but that is not true in mine! My husband is definitely the Finder. He is frequently tasked with finding shoes, tennis racquets, mobile devices, stuff in the fridge and in one embarrassing incident, the keys that I was searching high and low for -- sneakily located in my right hand.

When I started staying at home with the kids over a decade ago, I found myself calling him multiple times a day to ask where things were. I quickly found that to be an unsustainable situation -- after all he was busy at work and I was the stay at home parent. Surely I could manage to remember where things were in my own domain!

Okay -- but the problem is that my ADHD brain is not hospitable to information such as this. Apparently this information is stored in the same place as say, the landmarks at intersections or the names of people I've only met once which I can NEVER bring to mind, but some people have access to instantly.

Rather than beating myself up over my natural deficit in this area, I came up with three tools to assist me: an inventory spreadsheet, a where the hell is note, and a one thing, one place system. Let's go through them.

Inventory spreadsheet
We have a lot of stuff in storage bins and in drawers, cabinets, and containers throughout our house. This whole situation has gotten a bit better after I partially magically tidied our house Mari Kondo style, but we still have a ridiculous amount of stuff. I decided that what I needed was a searchable database of the stuff in our house. Believe me, I can go a little nuts on creating complicated technical solutions to problems, but my database skills are beginner level at best, so instead, I created a Google Sheets spreadsheet. I decided that anything that was out in the open or in frequent use didn't need to be inventoried. So that included tools hanging in plain view in the garage and most of the drawers in my kitchen that I access all the time. I'm forgetful, but there are SOME things I can remember without help!

I wanted this to be easily searchable, so I opted for one big sheet with column designations. The first column was floor of the house (basement, ground, upstairs, attic, or garage). The second was room (kitchen, master bedroom, etc.). The third column was sublocation. For example, in the master bedroom my sub-locations include bedside table, vanity bottom basket, vanity top basket, medicine cabinet, etc. For the storage room of the basement, the sub-location listed the name of the bin which was labeled in masking tape on the visible side. So here are some examples: Archived Paperwork, Camping, Kitchen 1-4, Halloween. Then I listed each object in each sub-location in the Items column separated by commas. People I've shared this with think it's pure bonkers. It might be, but I figure, if something is worth keeping -- then it's worth taking the second of time to write it down so I can find it later. I spent a couple of weeks during my kids' naps inventorying all of the stuff in my house (and of course, got rid of a ton of stuff in the process). So now, when I'm trying to find something, the first thing I do is consult my inventory spreadsheet. For example, what if I'm trying to find a fondue pot. I go to Find and Replace, type in fondue and determine that it is in the basement, storage area in the bin labeled Kitchen 3. There is a little maintenance that needs to happen when I move things or add them to bins, but it's easy with a portable device like an iPad. . .

**** Read a full transcript at www.marblejar.net. ****

Видео My ADHD Brain: 3 Systems for Finding Stuff канала Marble Jar Channel