#adhd life hack

[fuckyeahsnackables]

CLEANING THE KITCHEN WITH ADHD

* A TUTORIAL *

Have ADHD.

Wake with a sense of purpose and realize you have a carnival ticket to clean your kitchen, redeemable this morning and this morning only. (Thank you creator of the spoons vs carnival tickets analogy. I wish tumblr's tagging system worked so I could link to your post).

Scan the kitchen and see the baby golden potatoes that will go bad if not used this weekend.

Decide to roast the potatoes! (This will be quick and easy: preheat oven, rub with melted butter, salt, pepper, rosemary. Do something else for an hour and theyll be done!)

Decide to prep my mise en place.

Hmm. Want large flake kosher salt, but the shaker has replaced by regular table salt.

Choose not to investigate this crime and focus on the mission: getting potatoes out of the way so kitchen can be clean!

Hmm. Obviously I can't throw out even the small amount of salt left in the container, because what if my great-grandmother who survived the Dust Bowl and Great Depression is watching? (She is. Which reminds me, I need to scrape the butter paper that's on the counter before I can throw it away. Love you, Mam-Mom.)

Ahah! I'll refill the tiny glass salt shaker we never use, thus freeing up the large shaker for Correct Salt.

Hmm. Small glass shaker is a bit too small. But I've have an antique green glass medicine bottle labeled NOT TO BE TAKEN for a decade, and the salt shaker top fits it!

The oven is now preheated.

Decide it would be funny to relabel new salt shaker to look like a relabeled vial of poison.

Spend 20 minutes crafting it just so.

The kitchen is starting to get warm and the potatoes aren't even sliced.

Go to slice the potatoes and realize all my knives are dull.

Look for ancient family sharpening stone. Cannot find.

Remember that ex left an electric sharpener.

Toss kitchen until I find the sharpener.

I do not know how to use an electric sharpener, especially a fancy one with 4 slots.

Watch a YouTube video until I feel confident I won't fuck up my knives.

Sharpen all the knives even though I need only one.

Slice the potatoes.

Before salting, decide to take pictures of the new "poison" salt shaker.

Congratulate myself for not stopping to edit the photos until the potatoes are in the oven. Oh yeah, I'm killing it today. Executives are functioning!

Now I have the salt. Time for pepper.

Hmm. Do I still have that jar of pink peppercorns?

Pull out every spice to find the pink peppercorns! Yes!

Remember my ex broke my pestle and never replaced it.

Hmm. Need to crush the peppercorns. Jury-rig a mortar and pestle using a Mason jar and its lid. Good enough!

Reach for dried rosemary. Remember that there's still a small rosemary bush in the backyard.

Take a knife out to gather rosemary sprigs, muttering thanks and a promise to keep it watered during the worst of the upcoming Texas summer.

Roughly chop the rosemary and toss it with the salt and pepper.

Arrange the potatoes on the parchment paper on the baking sheet.

Pop them in the oven and set the timer.

Realize my back hurts and I'm sleepy. Time to take a break!

Look around the kitchen with satisfaction.

The potatoes are no longer on the counter.

Instead there is a butter wrapper waiting to be scraped, detritus from my makeshift mortar and pestle, every spice jar I own, two glass bowls, an electric knife sharpener, knives (both clean and dirty), and a half-empty box of blueberries I'd been snacking on.

Make this tumblr post instead of cleaning up after myself bc now the kitchen is overwhelming.

This counts as a productive morning with ADHD.

Oh well. At least I have potatoes. And a new salt shaker.

[silly-little-diary]

Okay, so I know that this probably sounds really silly but like, my mind is actually blown rn. So, instead of having a giant pile of clothes that are too clean to wash and too dirty to be put away sitting on my desk chair, rendering it useless 90% of the time, I can get a second laundry basket. 1 basket for dirty clothes, another for clothes that can be worn again. WHY DID NOBODY TELL ME THAT I CAN DO THIS????

[geestdrift]

putting on the 9 hour long youtube video of kim kitsuragi dialogue when i'm working so i feel gently encouraged to stay productive

[thefroglab]

the power of the watch + notebook + pen combination cannot be overstated

[circusinfo]

Random circus fun fact time!

As a sport for children, circus school is excellent for neurodivergent kids! I know the most about how it can help with adhd because, well, hi, adhd-er speaking 👋; but it's also a good environment in general for other varieties of neurodivergent, like low masking or almost nonverbal autism, especially when you consider things like functional jugglery and the likes. (But that's a topico for another day)

So, I'm going to start singing the praises of circus school for a growing adhd kid.

Firstly, a kid with both inattentive and hyperactive type adhd Will obviously have problems both staying focussed on a single task and staying still for long periods of time. Being patient is as hard as getting frustrated Is easy and doing the exact same routine every training session? Gets Very boring Very fast. I tried about half a dozen Different sports before settling on circus, and do you want to know why i think this One actually stuck around? It's varied.

There being four main categories already gives four Different options to cycle through, but each main branch opens up into so Many Different subsections, each One different enough from the others to feel new and unique, and every One with its own learning curve and tricks. And That doesn't even touches on the possibility to overlap two different things. Juggling on stilts, acting out a short story during a mano-a-mano number, doing a two Person Number on the aerial ring. Suffice to say, it's hard to get bored when every training session feels like a slightly different sport.

And for the hyperactivity side of things? You get to cartwheel, tumble, roll around, run and climb until your hands are shaking and your legs feel like jelly and every muscle Is aching and you feel so alive. You can sprawl on the ground After a somersault, or hang upsite down from the trapeze, or do cartwheels on repeat until you're dizzy. You can Just let loose in almost every weird way you can think. There Is so much more variety than the "Just run and pushups and stretching until you can do the thing" most other sports have. (I'm looking at dance volleyball and karate rn. Not that they're bad, but kid me couldn't stand much more than a year of each)

Okay, so far we've covered how circus school is both a huge web to capture attention and a perfect way for a kid to go nuts. Now, onto some less known potential issues related to ADHD that benefit from this sport.

Coordination and balance. Did you know that people with adhd generally have bad hand-eye coordination and struggle with maintaining balance? Cuz i didn't until a few years ago but It makes somuch sense in hindsight.

And do you know what half the circus branches drill into your brain again and again until It becomes second nature? Balance and coordination.

Most issues stemming from adhd are usually relatet to the fact that to do a specific task well, you need to focus on it, but that focus is finnicky and comes and goes as It pleases. The best way to work around It? No, it's not post-it notes or alarms or the likes; tho they DO help a lot for remembering things and staying on top of your tasks, those can't help you with actually doing the thing without straining yourself.

What does help, however, is having practiced it so much you don't need to think about It to do it. Having to focus on every little detail constantly all the time Is a terrible strain (example: for me, learning to drive was literally painful because there are so Many things to keep track of and until you can do It without thinking, you Need to actively Remember to check the mirrors check the lights check for people check for Cars switch the Gear no wait you Need to do It at the same time as you step on the friction or It won't work-. The first few months i got a killer headache Just from 20min of driving and then I had to lay down with my eyes closed Just to make It bearable. It was torture.)

But making certain acts automatic, having repeated them so many times they can Just run passively in the background without taking from your Very limited supply of active attention? That's how you survive adhd without slowly killing yourself by running on fumes.

That counts for driving Just as much as It does for balance and body awareness. I can now drive without problems, all the Many little tasks finally Being an ingrained instinct running in the background rather than airhorns constantly blaring in my ears for me to pay Attention to them.

As a kid, i Remember finding so Many bruises i got from slamming into corners or misjuging distances; half the time I didn't even know exactly how i got them. They were Just there.

But as I grew up, i started to get them less and less. By the time I was a teen they barely ever happened anymore.

Wanna know What changed from clumsy 8yo to average 13yo? Five years of coordination and balance training, that's what.

Being able to fully Dodge a corner becomes surprisingly easy after you got used to dodging people and unidentified Flying juggling tools.

And Being aware of where exactly Is your hand in relation to the wall you're about to hit Is Much easier than being aware of the relative position of every free limb to avoid getting tangled on the silks.

Juggling and hand-eye coordination are self explanatory. And juggling balls are quite soft and light enough to learn without really getting hurt.

Also, using the right amount of strength every time you throw a club Is a surprisingly effective way to learn self control. Just as and example.

In conclusion, not only Is circus school a varied and active enough sport to actually easily capture and keep the attention of a distracted and hyperactive kid, but It also helps manage some other side effects through sheer grinding and repetition. Practicing It, especially during the early developement years, can be a huge help in managing life as an adhd-er.

Yes, i am head over heels for this sport, but these are also real facts! I think I Remember there being a few studies about circus school specifically, but even ignoring that, repetition and practice are the best ways to work around adhd.

Hope this was helpful!

[transthatmasc]

ADHD life hack is sitting down and doing something while using a floss pick to clean your teeth. If you let the teeth cleaning become the secondary activity you will spend twenty minutes less bored and end up with way cleaner teeth

[omezaproletariat]

Idk which is sillier: the fact that I just spent an hour searching for stuff in my room by pretending it was a psychological thriller mystery where I was a hardened detective desperately trying to think like my past self in order to foil the internationally wanted thief known as “i forgor 💀”

Or the fact that it Worked and genuinely helped me do a bit of cleaning in my room

[ironmandeficiency]

here’s a tip for my girlies, gays, and geese that suffer from executive dysfunction:

if your executive dysfunction manifests like mine does, chances are, there’s one specific chore that makes a cannonball into a wood chipper sound like a vacation. for me, that chore is washing dishes.

this has been my least favorite chore to do ever since i was taught how to do it. the gross water and soggy food bits floating around were a sensory ick even with gloves, the smell was horrendous if the dishes had been sitting without being rinsed beforehand, and standing in front of the sink for a prolonged period was the eighth circle of hell for my adhd addled brain.

i’ve been slowly emerging from yet another depressive funk and my dirty dishes have been taunting me for two entire weeks. my issue is that i built up a big ball of dread about doing the dishes and have found every single excuse in the world to not get it over with, resulting in most of my bowls, plates, cups, and cutlery still being dirty.

what is my solution, you may ask? it’s simple: take the gunky dishes outside and spray off the stuck-on food with a water hose, then bring them inside to wash them with soap. that way, i don’t have to endure sensory hell and won’t have to worry abt my sink taking forever to drain afterwards. as of typing this, it’s half past midnight and i’m abt to hose off my dishes in my front yard