Disorganisation

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I have spent hours of my life looking for keys. I have cancelled what seems like thousands of debit cards. I am never on time for lectures. Since becoming a student my lack of organisation has become painfully apparent. I have spawned a cunning plan for keeping keys; I wear them on a ribbon around my neck. So I am, (just about), guaranteed re-entry into my student house!!

I like to be organised but I find it very difficult.
So I say about 50% either way.

Yus, I'm very disorganised. Mainly due to being forgetful. I have a thought, decide to do something, get up to do it, and then forget what I'm standing up for. I'm always losing hairbrushes because I start daydreaming while I'm brushing my hair and forget where I've put it. I never seem to have any socks. Or forks. Or pens. My meds end up in random places around the house. Piles of paperwork everywhere. The garden is the most organised part of my house.

I am very messy, but there is a strange order in the disorder. I know where things are in the mess and it usually doesnt take me long to find things. Occasionally I tear the place apart looking for my car keys or the gate opener (the top 2 things I lose) but not often as it is usually all in my bag.

All my computer stuff is perfectly neatly organized. Everything else... well, who cares?

I lose things because I'm not aware of what I'm doing when I put something down. I'm up in the clouds somewhere.

Looking? I just buy new things.

*edit* presuming of course that the lost things are inexpensive items like pens. Otherwise I spend a lot of time looking or just figure out how to do without them.

It amazes me when "normal people" exclaim "I can't believe I lost my key! That was so stupid of me! I don't understand how I could have done that!"

I like the rest of you lose things ALL THE TIME. It is the default for me lose my glasses every single time I set them down. I'm surprised when I find them with no trouble.

Also I read a story once that had a line that offended me. It said something like "She left money lying carelessly around the way only the well-off do."

I am doing everything I can just to make a dollar here and there and save up and I still leave money, checks, etc. lying around. It has nothing to do with well-off-ness and everything to do with disorganization.

I'm a bit of both - if I decide where something belongs and make the effort to always put it in the right place, things go swell. But I don't always manage to keep up with it and end up going nuts looking for things that were usually right under my nose all along

I've lost a pen or car key and found them in my left hand, unaware that they were there for minutes at a time. Must be a problem with the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing. Or something there related to hemispherical communication in the brain. I've never lost anything in my right hand, though.

Or wait, maybe I just have half a brain.

I'm really disorganised, but I'm like this because of my need to categorise. I'll explain: if I have a pile of papers that needs sorting into different files, I'll do that but be left with some which don't fit into any categories. This pile will just lie there and get added to. It will never go anywhere, until there are enough papers that fit into that category for me to decide that a new file is required. Why don't I have a misc. file? Who knows, I don't know. My house is a bit like that too.

Last edited by Mummy_of_Peanut on 20 May 2011, 4:50 am, edited 1 time in total.

Exactly. If I'm with what I'm doing, I'm okay, but my mind has a horrible tendency to wander unless I'm constantly watching it

I'm terrible at my volunteer job. I'm often getting told off for not tidying up after myself before going home. It's just that I start doing something, then someone calls me to tell me to do something else, so I go and do it, then forget all about what I was doing first, and I start on something else and don't seem to see the unfinished job I was doing first.

But I don't think it's necessarily an Aspie trait. I know a lot of NTs who are unorganised. My aunt is very unorganised, and she's the most typical NT I know. If she says she'd be at my house at 10, it would be 12 by the time she arrives, because she faths about and loses for forgets things. But I think people with AS are especially prone to disorganisation.

Although I'm not organised, I'm always punctual. I was going to a Zumba party with my friend and her sister on Wednesday (both NTs without a doubt). When I went to my friend's house at the time we'd agreed on, to walk with her, her sister still hadn't arrived. My friend said that her sister was on her way, but would be ironing her clothes when she arrived. I started to panic, internally, but pretended not to mind. We got to the party just before the dancing started, much to my relief. I could never have left everything to the last minute like that.

Executive dysfunction - which can cause disorganization - is a common trait in autistic people. It is also extremely common in ADHD. Yes, a lot of people who have neither are also disorganized. This is because various forms of executive dysfunction exist in multiple conditions, and perhaps some people just don't want to put the time and energy into organization.

It is one thing to say that a trait exists outside autism. It is entirely a different thing to say that since it exists outside autism, it can't be an autistic trait when it does occur in autistic people.

I understand the point you are trying to make, Joe90, but sometimes it really is the autism, even if in a different context it's not an autistic thing. Both can be true.

BTW, your aunt actually sounds like someone who might have ADHD, which isn't NT. She might not have it and might have something else, but she may have something.

She hasn't got anything like that. I know my own aunt more than you do. Some people on the spectrum seem to be hypochondriacs, because whenever an NT shows a little tiny trait of anything, then they get labelled as having a disability, when neurology doesn't work like that. My mother forgot to take her purse with her when she went out this morning, but I didn't start thinking she has Dementia, just because she forgot something she never forgets.

NTs aren't these wonderfully perfect people - they are all entitled to forget or be a bit scatty at times. If NTs had NO faults, bad habits, quirks or anything like that at all, they will be very boring people, and would all be the same. Besides, you meet one NT, you've met one NT. You meet one Autistic person, you've met one Autistic person.