Why People with ADHD Can Clean the Whole House But Not the Garage

 When I was asked, in another writing class, to "write anything that's on your mind for three minutes... starting now," all the highly caffeinated gerbils in my brain slammed on the brakes.

People often think that when someone with ADHD sits down to write and nothing comes out, it's because they have nothing to say. Nothing could be farther from the truth. My brain doesn't go empty. It becomes a traffic jam.

Give me a prompt like, "Write whatever's on your mind," and my mind suddenly goes blank. Or ten ideas arrive at once, all demanding my attention. I can't decide which one to chase. If there isn't enough structure, I freeze. I worry about whether I'm doing it the "right" way. I can spend the first minute trying to decide what to write instead of writing anything at all. ADHD makes it hard to get started, pull information forward on demand, and shift attention from one thing to another. It's like opening a closet crammed with hundreds of boxes. I know what I'm looking for is in there somewhere, but finding the right box at the right moment can feel impossible.

Like a deer caught in the headlights, I picked up my pen and wrote about the one thing I was hyperfocused on.

My garage is trashed.

That is what I wrote about.

During my last camping trip, I pulled all of my camping gear out of its neatly labeled bins. Then, like a crazed toddler high on Skittles, I dumped everything onto the garage floor. Once I'd loaded what I needed into the back of my car, I turned around and found absolute destruction. Chaos. Mayhem. Camping gear stretched from one end of the garage to the other.

The real question wasn't why the garage was a disaster.

The question was why I put the empty bins back on the shelves instead of putting the camping gear back into them first.

Maybe because I decided the whole storage system needed to be reorganized.

But before I could reorganize it, I needed the tire gauge from the tool chest.

Simple enough.

Except when I opened the tool chest, I noticed it could use a little tidying. Forty-five minutes later, I'd completely reorganized the drawers, found the tire gauge, and even discovered the pliers I'd misplaced the week before.

With tire gauge in hand, I checked all four tires.

On my way back to put it away, I suddenly couldn't stand the way my shirt felt. It was touching my skin in all the wrong places and felt too tight.

So I actually put the tire gauge back where it belonged, walked inside the house to change my shirt, and immediately noticed the overflowing basket of dirty laundry.

One load later, I remembered I was supposed to be cleaning up the camping gear.

I walked into the garage, looked at the mountain of clutter on the floor, felt completely overwhelmed, and decided I'd lie down on the couch for just a minute.

Somehow that led to unloading the dishwasher.

Ironically, the laundry got washed, dried, folded, hung up, and put away because I was avoiding the garage.

Now it's several days later.

The laundry is done.

The kitchen is spotless.

The floors are swept and mopped.

Everything has been dusted.

The tool chest is beautifully organized.

My tires have the proper air pressure.

And my garage still looks like a camping supply store exploded.

The garage is officially off-limits to visitors.

When will I finally put the camping gear away?

Probably when I need to avoid something else.

The funny thing is, I am getting better. Lists have helped me finish more things than I used to. They don't fix my ADHD, but they do give all those caffeinated gerbils a little bit of direction.

But that's another story.