ADHD Intensity, Organization, and Hobby Supplies

I had the good fortune to stumble on a podcast this week called The ADHD Creative by Mark & and Patti Clifford. The episodes are often short, fifteen minutes or less, but they have been a treat for my ears.

While Mark relates his story of an overwhelming moving experience when it comes to ADHD intensity, I found myself relating to it when it comes to the hobby side of things.

I have been neglecting my workbench this month and it has become the dump zone. Mail, small trinkets, and miscellaneous hobbies stacked up on it like a good old-fashioned rats’ nest. It is not a pretty sight. It stressed me out.

It is an intense feeling of guilt that I let it become such a mess. So, I decided to clean it. I am sorting through the mail I need to keep and toss, not important. Then I got to tools when I started to be overwhelmed because I remembered that I was originally trying to reorganize my tools before this whole mess began. So now I have the tools in a pile with no specific spot to go to.

It sounds silly but organization is such a struggle for me. I need things in specific locations or else my noggin forgets where I put things and it either ends up with me buying the same thing over again or tearing up my hobby space to find it.

I stop what I am doing to find a spot for them and then find a handful of other things that I need to get done. For example, I go to put brushes away but then I realize that my paints are a mess and need to be straightened up. I set down the brushed and go to fix the paints. Then I see that I have parts that need to be stripped. So I stop fixing the paints to strip the parts. The next thing I know it has been three hours and I have accomplished nothing but giving myself a headache.

So like Mark said, it is never 1+1=2, it is 1+1=3 (or more).

I know I am not alone in being an ADHD hobbyist, but I am still struggling with organization. Some methods work but I need something that will work better in the long term to help keep the stress and intensity down.

Clear containers and labels are nice, but it feels like I am missing something else that can help streamline my organization so my workbench will not get this bad again.

I decided that I had gotten enough done for the time being and to continue working on it later today after I finished the blog post.

To my fellow hobbyists, who are more organizationally inclined, what worked for you?

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