Have you ever bought the perfect birthday present weeks early, felt properly pleased with yourself, and then lost it before the birthday? Filled in the form, folded the flap, put it somewhere safe on the Sunday — and by Wednesday it had gone? Renewed the passports early, put them in the safe place, and then had no idea where the safe place was?

You've been told your problem is that you're disorganised. It isn't. There's a job that piece of paper was doing that nobody ever told you about, and every system you've ever bought only does half of it.

Episode's Jane mentioned:

ADHD Stress and Emotional Regulation: What Your Kids Noticed That You Didn't— the soccer photo envelope episode this one follows on from → https://adhdmums.com.au/adhd-podcast-episodes/why-are-you-always-so-stressed-out-my-eight-year-old-asked-me-that-an-hour-after-i-called-myself-organised/

QUICK RESET: 'I'm Not Lazy — My House Just Doesn't Have a Memory' → https://adhdmums.com.au/podcast_episode/episode-49-quick-reset-im-not-lazy-my-house-just-doesnt-have-a-memory/

Free Resources:

Household Family Meeting Template (free) → https://adhdmums.com.au/product/adhd-household-family-meeting-template/

Send Jane a voice memo — what did you do early that still disappeared? WhatsApp 0403 457 313 → https://wa.me/61403457313

Join the ADHD Mums Facebook group → https://facebook.com/groups/adhdmumspodcast

Mentioned in this episode

Barreau, D. & Nardi, B. (1995). Finding and reminding: File organization from the desktop. ACM SIGCHI Bulletin, 27(3), 39–43.

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ADHD and Losing Things: Why You Get It Ready Early and Still Can't Find It

[00:00:15] Speaker: have you ever bought a birthday present really early for someone, and it was so perfect, and [00:00:20] you were so proud of yourself, but then when it was their birthday, you had lost it?

[00:00:34] Speaker: Or maybe you renewed your passports extra early, ready to go for the trip, but then when you're coming to pack for the [00:00:40] trip, you have no idea where this safe place is.

[00:00:50]

[00:00:51] Speaker: And

[00:01:00] Speaker: She recorded this just after the episode that I did called Stress and Emotional Regulation: What Your Kids Noticed That You Didn't. A lot of people in the Facebook group have been referring to this as the funny [00:01:10] soccer episode. That is also its name.

[00:01:30] Speaker: I looked at that envelope and I thought, "Who is this woman who did an envelope one week early?" Then I even thought to myself, "Wow, am I applying my own podcast to my life? And I [00:01:40] was so excited. Then I put it on the bench. The envelope never made it to soccer.

[00:01:56] Speaker: And at the end of the episode, I said that next time I'd probably still [00:02:00] put the envelope on the bench because I wouldn't know where else to put it. I said it like it was a joke, bit of a laugh at my own expense, moving on kind of vibe.

[00:02:17] Speaker: Meanwhile, Jess was standing on a curb in [00:02:20] Frankston on bin morning,

[00:02:29] Listener q: [00:02:30] Um, cleaning the laundry was not on my list, but what did I do? I cleaned my laundry, and as I cleaned my laundry, I got rid of a lot of [00:02:40] rubbish. And then this morning when I looked in the bin, as I took the bins out to the curb, I went, "Hmm, this is probably where the papers end up." Because I just put them [00:02:50] down, and then in my fit of like, "I'm gonna clean everything, I'm gonna put everything away, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna organize that, I'm gonna make it all amazing," I just don't bother actually [00:03:00] opening up the folded piece of paper to see if it's something important.

[00:03:10] Speaker: Listen to when it happened. That's not a woman falling apart. That was a good day. where she had the energy to be more organized, and she spent it, but it cost her the forms. Those [00:03:20] forms had two jobs. One is the form.

[00:03:32] Speaker: But the second job doesn't have a separate body. It doesn't live anywhere else. So when that paper went in the bin accidentally, the knowledge [00:03:40] went into the bin, the to-do list went into the bin, and there was nothing left anywhere in the world saying the school photos are a thing that is happening, and you need to hand that in.

[00:03:53] Speaker: back in the '90s, two researchers wrote a paper with the best title I've read all year. It is called [00:04:00] Finding and Reminding, and I'll put this into the show notes. Because this is what they worked out, that there's two different jobs and everyone has been treating them like one.

[00:04:27] Speaker: They thought that filers, the ones with [00:04:30] the folders and the labels, would end up with less stuff and use it more. However, their research showed the opposite, that the people that were filers ended up with more [00:04:40] things and used their things less.

[00:04:54] Speaker: Now, there is something else going on underneath this.

[00:05:14] Speaker: Envelope is on the bench so you can't miss it. This strategy works. A lot of ADHD coaches, [00:05:20] psychologists recommend offloading

[00:05:41] Speaker: I talked about the huge amount of rage I have when I couldn't find my keys the next day. And here I am with Jess writing in with one of her examples [00:05:50] amongst many, many others who wrote in with similar stories.

[00:06:08] Speaker: Now, here is [00:06:10] something that makes this even worse. Neurotypical people, of course, are more likely to remember, "Hey, where did that form go? Am I missing something?"

[00:06:38] Speaker: Maybe you do use those [00:06:40] systems and rely on them for that purpose. If you have complex systems or scaffolds that you are leaning on and anything goes wrong within those systems, you are less likely to [00:06:50] remember and correct than anyone else.

[00:06:59] Speaker: You [00:07:00] can see ADHD advertising on so many different products, planners, all of the things. Hooks by the front door, tubs, labeled folders, color-coded, apps, [00:07:10] AirTags, videos, TikToks of all the different systems you can do to help and support your ADHD brain. However, most of those systems that I've seen solves one thing [00:07:20] only.

[00:07:31] Speaker: The next day, I go and leave in a rush to go to netball, and suddenly I can't find my keys, and I don't even think to remember to look in my son's shoes. [00:07:40] For example, folders. This is the advice that really is given the hardest.

[00:08:13] Listener q: as I sit here right now looking at my desk that I work from home, there is about, mm, one, two, three... There's about seven [00:08:20] piles of papers or books. Um, absolutely no idea what's happening there.

[00:08:47] Listener q: Then we're doing this, and then we're doing medical." So yeah, [00:08:50] look, who knows? Absolutely no idea.

[00:09:09] Speaker: As a pile [00:09:10] grows, two things happen. Finding it gets harder, obviously. The pile stops reminding and starts hiding what's actually happening. So the system didn't fail because she's [00:09:20] inconsistent. It worked initially, and then it got full. Let's switch gears for a minute and think about the organized mum at school, the one who does have the folder, the one who files the photo [00:09:30] form under school in February, and then in the middle of March, she's making a coffee, and she thinks, unprompted, out of nowhere, "The photo forms are due.

[00:09:48] Speaker: If that sounds like a fairy [00:09:50] tale dreamland, I get it. It's actually hard for me to say these words. I don't know anyone that operates that way. However, for you, if you put that form into the folder, you lose two things [00:10:00] because for you, the paper is both the file and the reminder. So it's not that she's more disciplined, more organized, or better than you.

[00:10:20] Speaker: When the mood comes over you, it feels easy.

[00:10:37] Speaker: So if I didn't, we would be the world's most [00:10:40] cluttered house. Usually, when I'm cleaning and tidying, considering there's four other people that I live with, I might accidentally throw out something that looks like rubbish, but might [00:10:50] actually be attached to someone's system. If you have other members in your house with ADHD, you might find that they have the exact same problem.

[00:11:09] Speaker: and this is why it [00:11:10] can be so difficult for a lot of us to have a house that's quite tidy. You know how you see in videos online the big white bench with nothing on it, and it's clean and beautiful and everything has a place in [00:11:20] a drawer? If I do that, I can never find anything again, and I always regret it.

[00:11:48] Speaker: Now, if we look at what this [00:11:50] costs us, the obvious cost is the soccer photos or the permission slip or the thing that we forget.

[00:12:01] Speaker: which means you're more likely to be the person running around the house trying to find something at eleven o'clock at night or receiving an email or a phone call to realize that you've missed [00:12:10] something fairly important.

[00:12:41] Speaker: So when someone says you should really ask for more help, a lot of us sit in complete overwhelm or no idea where to begin. Because asking for help with [00:12:50] what? That would mean explaining the pile, which feels impossible.

[00:13:03] Speaker: He is also somebody that has never filed or had any kind of system ever. When I met him, he had a whole dining room [00:13:10] table that was just full of paper, and that was his financial filing business system that he had, and it piles up and piles up until I do something with it. Every week he says to me, "Where's [00:13:20] this?

[00:13:40] Speaker: I feel like I've tidied up a mess, but he feels like I've deleted his whole filing system. Weekly, we have this argument. and I would assume that he would be a pile system person. He has a [00:13:50] system within the pile. He can't tell me what it is, which means I can't help and file anything for him.

[00:14:05] Speaker: The first thing that's wrong is that stuff is getting moved, binned, tidied, [00:14:10] shifted, put away by someone helpful. Number two is that nothing ever comes back and tells you to go look. We need to address both of these. You might need to have one spot per [00:14:20] person in your home, a tray, a shelf,

[00:14:37] Speaker: So he doesn't remember to ever go look in the drawer [00:14:40] And everything in the drawer he thinks has been lost. So it's annoying, but every person that has this problem is gonna need an area that's open and obvious that they walk [00:14:50] past a lot of the time that is exempt from cleaning forever. When the person who's known to be the tidier is walking around feeling good about themselves wanting to create the [00:15:00] system, or maybe someone's coming over and you wanna give the impression that you have a clean and tidy bench, you need to not tidy up the area that is designated to that person, no matter how [00:15:10] bad it looks.

[00:15:28] Speaker: It's tempting to tell my hubby [00:15:30] that he needs to have a reminder to go look into the office, into the one drawer that I gave him But that seems like setting him up for failure. Or if he's in charge of paying the electricity bill, [00:15:40] that seems like if I put that electricity bill that sits on the bench for a long time into that drawer,

[00:16:01] Speaker: This is habit stacking, which a lot of you would know about. Maybe it is that you take the shopping out of the boot at the same time every week, you look in the spot.

[00:16:21] Speaker: For example, soccer. My hubby was coaching.

[00:16:41] Speaker: I think to myself, "Oh, I'll move the soccer bag back out into the front doorstep next week or the week later."

[00:17:04] Speaker: don't move something from the area without replacing a reminder. So we don't necessarily [00:17:10] wanna go black and white on this. You're not choosing between having a tidy house and a messy house. You're choosing between having a tidy house today and a working memory in six [00:17:20] weeks. But the problem is that we don't know that we are choosing that at the time, so we keep picking the one that we can see.

[00:17:42] Speaker: But then six weeks later when the electricity turns off and you realize that you've actually put the electricity bill in the random drawer that no one [00:17:50] checks, you wonder how that happened. And sometimes the clear bench is worth it. Maybe someone is coming over that's really important to you, or maybe for one day you just wanna have one surface in your [00:18:00] life that does look like a magazine for one hour, and that is okay.

[00:18:16] Speaker: Where did you find it? was it in the bin? Was it under the car [00:18:20] seat? do you completely disagree? Do you think doing it early and leaving it on the bench works if no one touches it? Is that what works for you?

[00:18:40] Speaker: I absolutely loved her voice memos. Take care. See you next week. Thanks, legends.