Relocating: My experience with personal organizers

Post Reply New Topic

I am relocating, but I had to deal with something I normally struggle: Organizing my house. I think my time with the personal organizers exposed some of the problems I have with organization. I want to go over a few experiences.

I had trouble persisting when given repeated piles of stuff to sort through and choose whether to keep or discard each item. I would get fatigued and frustrated. At times, I would get distracted by what I was looking at or I would have a mental block preventing me from even making a decision.

I had to take frequent breaks from the tasks while the organizers worked. I felt best when taking the trash out.

When choosing what clothes to keep or throw out, I struggled. I have difficulty even wrapping my mind around or comprehending the clothes I'm looking at. The organizers, however, did one thing that made it much easier: They laid out clothes by category, first the t-shirts, then the sweatshirts, then the pants, on so on. The decision-making process was much simpler and less like trying to find your way through the dark. With just a single type of clothing laid out each time, I made my decisions and was satisfied with the process.

Has anyone else had to use a personal organizer?

How would I get one and is it expensive?

Search "personal organizer (your city's name)," adding ADHD if you have that. They can be kinda pricey, but not too bad.

I wonder if my poor organizational abilities are related to my processing speed, on which my scores tend to be low compared to other measures of my intelligence.

I also notice that at times I would get distracted by another task that needed to be done and had to be redirected by the organizers.

Isn't that (that = trouble organizing, persisting,etc) a classic executive function issue?

I do have this problem... But I'm having a hard time determining if that's so. Like if things are perfectly organized, I'd like to say that I can follow it, however, I usually mess things up. I'm good with organization in like...the short-term? And I'm always going over things to make sure it's properly organized? I hold on to things and store things, but have a hard time maintaining things even if I created some sort of system of organization... So maybe I have this problem? Heck, I can't even effectively organize my time. I like when things are organized, but things rarely are.

I hope that made sense. If not, I will try to clarify.

Yes! It's frustrating that most adult mental health professionals like to put stuff like that up to "depression." To my psychologist I had to explain that I've had these issues for basically all my life; I never learned how to organize this stuff on my own. As a kid, my dad would keep getting on me over and over again about not keeping my room clean. My IEP paperwork mentioned how I was very disorganized, often losing stuff and even tending to "spread" over time my stuff around the classroom. As I grew into adulthood, the same problems persisted. Now, this stuff has tended to hurt my self-esteem, I said, but the organizational issues came first. After that, he admitted it might be something like ADHD (which I was originally diagnosed with at age 5).

There were times when presented with objects to keep or discard, I made the wrong decision. I can think of 2:

1.) I had my flash drive in the pocket of a hoodie, because I had taken it to the library. When I was presented with clothes to keep or discard, I elected to discard that hoodie, not realizing the flash drive was inside it. That hoodie is now gone, along with the flash drive.

2.) I had gotten a CD of my records from my long-term disability company (and I had ordered another CD once before, which I lost). I kept the second CD I got in the living room on the floor (good place, I know), while I assumed the first CD I got, which was older, was probably in my bedroom. As I sat in my bedroom sorting things, I came across a CD from my long-term disability company. Since I was in my bedroom, and not the living room, I assumed that it was the first CD I got, which I thought I could safely discard, so I did. Turns out it was actually the second CD I got--the organizer had moved it from the living room to the bedroom, which confused me. Now I gotta ask for another one.

Of course, the issue with getting people to take my functional impairments seriously is difficult to overcome. In superficial interactions and in interactions with my mental health professionals, I have decent social skills now and can usually establish rapport well. Because of that, they tend to assume I don't have any functional impairments beyond those that would be caused by an anxiety or mood disorder.