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a minor ADHD cleaning tip:

Often I find the problem is that I can’t get started putting away a mess because it contains things that are hard to categorize or don’t have a dedicated place to be put away in.

it may seem obvious, but you can solve this problem by getting a box and deciding it’s the “miscellaneous stuff” box. everything that you can’t put away in their correct place? put it in that box.

Then it becomes a lot easier to clean the remaining stuff, because it’s not mixed in with a pile of Weird Junk. And afterwards you can sort out that box.

this box is also where you put stuff that has a home, but it’s not one that you can get to right now.

like, this cable goes in that box on the shelf, but right now there’s four other boxes on top of it? INTO THE MISC BOX IT GOES FOR NOW

You also have to let yourself admit that sometimes the best place something weird and hard to categorize belongs is “in a box of weird and hard to categorize stuff”. Not everything has a place where it can live, and putting off cleaning until you have a place for everything will just leave you with a pile of stuff you can’t put away.

It’s better to have that in a Known Spot For Weird Junk and not all over the place, getting in the way, surely?

Another thing that can be useful when you’re feeling vaguely hoardery: invert your logic on keeping things.

Don’t think “could this be useful in the future?”, instead think “if it is useful, will I be able to find it? if not, how hard will it be to replace it?”

It’s real easy to keep something because you might need it later, but when you do need it later, you can’t find it, and end up buying a new one for 10$ anyway. If you can’t find a way to put it away so that you’ll be able to find it in the future when you need it, maybe you should just toss it and expect to buy a new one one then?

(It depends on the thing, of course)