Organized Vs. Unorganized

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It seems to me that most people on the autistic spectrum are on one of these extremes or the other.. Sometimes even a mixture of either extreme depending on the situation. With the organized ones, the extreme organization is an extension of their need for repetition and structure.. Everything in their house needs to be in a certain order and in the right place, and they like to plan things carefully.. Very much like stereotypical OCD. Then for the unorganized ones, while they still like repetition and structure, their issues with executive functioning make it difficult to keep most things in their life in any kind of order. To other people everything in their house looks like a mess and they are barely able to make any plans about how they are going to do something. I think that most are primarily one side or the other... This might be the ones who seem a lot like stereotypical ADHD. But it also seems like even the really organized ones will often have some areas of their life where they are on the extremely unorganized side, and the unorgnized ones will have some areas where they are extremely organized. For example, i'd consider myself on the unorganized extreme with most things that really matter(i'm voting unorganized). I function better with structure, yet i'm not usually very capable of actually creating that structure. My room is a mess, and i don't think i was ever able to keep any of my schoolwork organized through school. Completely scatterbrained. However, when i was little and had a pokemon card collection, reorganizing it was one of my favorite things to do. I also like to arrange things into symmetrical patterns.. And there are certain events that i will make a lot of plans for so that i know what's going on. So, i obviously like structure and repetition, i just usually can't apply it to my life in a functional way. So, yeah.. Just vote for which extreme you think you fit most, even if you have some features of the other also.

I'm not sure if I'm one extreme or the other. It really depends on the circumstances involved. My room is far messier than other girls' my age, but at the same time, I'm one of those people who make lists of things to do for the day. So yes, it does depend on circumstance.

Excellent question. This poll could not have come at a more apt time for me, since I've been trying to organize my apartment for my boyfriend's upcoming visit, and making very slow progress. I managed to clean for thirty minutes this morning, before I couldn't take it any more. This evening I cleaned for another twenty minutes before I couldn't take it any more. that's actually quite an accomplishment, for me to clean as much as I did today. I don't know how anyone manages to clean for hours at a time. Organization is something I have major problems with, especially when it comes to the organization of my physical space. I'm actually quite organized when it comes to keeping to a schedule, arriving places on time, and meeting deadlines. It seriously throws me off kilter when anything interferes with my schedule. However, when it comes to organizing anything physical, such as my apartment, I fail spectacularly.
I also have ADHD inattentive type, and I tend to not even notice where I'm dropping things, because I'm usually thinking about something completely unrelated to what I'm doing when I'm going about the mundane business of life. Additionally, I most likely also have NLD, so anything involving nonverbal skills tends to be a massive struggle for me. I also have severe problems with executive function. I like to think of it as a lack of any sort of mental filing system. I have all these skills and bits of information in my brain, but they're not filed in any sort of orderly fashion. They're basically all in one big pile of clutter with no rhyme or reason, not entirely unlike the state of my apartment. Thus, I often can't access or "find" all the information I need to complete a given task, even if all the information is there. That makes it nearly impossible for me to access all the necessary skills and information necessary for organizing my apartment.
My boyfriend S has a number of aspie traits himself, but unlike me, he's very neat and organized, to the point that he's psychologically uncomfortable when thing aren't neat and organized. When he was here in New York with me, I did make more of an effort to clean, or at least, hide the mess where he couldn't see it. Trouble is, he's been in school on the other side of the country for the past few months, so I've had nobody to clean for, and things got seriously ugly in my apartment. Now, he's coming to visit in a few days, and he'll be staying with me. I have made some headway in cleaning it. Now, my apartment looks less like some major disaster has taken place, and more like I'm just a major slob. I still have a lot more work to do, but I'm trying. I should work on improving my organizational skills, as I'd like to stay with S for the long haul. It's not going to be easy, though.

I voted unorganized but now I think I'm organized with some parts of my life that are unorganized. I think this is pretty normal for anyone though. My room is always clean. I can't function with a mess. However, I voted unorganized because there are still some things that bug me. For instance, I have these two drawers that are full of stuff that isn't organized just because I don't know where to put the stuff. It drives me crazy and I wish I had more drawers. I love structure. My favorite thing about rpg video games is all the menus and statistics you can organize and mess with. I would spend hours just in a game menu and when it was organized enough, I would color code stuff (if that was an option). Like, Final Fantasy VII had Materia that was all different colors, and I would have to equip them in color coordination. You would know what I'm talking about if you played the game, which I'm sure a lot of you have. Even the clutter I have around my house is organized clutter. (the coat on the chair is always on the chair. The shoes on the floor are always in the same place. The video game on the floor is there because I haven't beaten it yet. ect) So I officially change my vote to organized.

I'm very organized now, because I write everything down. Plus, I'm obsessed with cleanliness, so my room is very orderly. It's hard to be clean when everything is a mess.
As a child, I was the opposite. I procrastinated, lost everything constantly, forgot to fulfill commitments, and had the messiest and the most disguisting room ever. I've worked on this real hard, because it was obviously ruining my life.

I vote unorganized. My house is organized because I got tired of a cramped stinky messy house and now it's kind of like a game to keep it clean, (like one of those online games where you work in a restaurant or something and have to keep everything running smooth and put different things in different places, stack things up, pick up trash, etc..) but I'm sooo not organized with everything else. I don't have that need to, like, control my environment I guess. So I don't. Which is kind of a disaster sometimes, but it's sooo much easier. >__>;;;;

For years I felt so much shame around being an organizer, and in more recent years felt that all my organizing stuff was OCD........now through my Dx, I am able to see how my very effective organizing ways have been invaluable in me being able to be of service to others and function well in the world.

My head is like a superhighway, so my organizing is creating a hard shoulder / a space to pull over and 'simply be' (as donna williams wd say)

I like being in other peoples clutter, it's cozy, but my place is like a zen monastory..........

horribly disorganized...despite unobtainable notions in my mind of how things should be organized..I am just constantly too overwhelmed

Piles upon piles of books and magazines everywhere.....The only floorspace left is the path from
the coffee table that this computer is sitting on and the bathroom...