Unhinged ADHD Tips & Tricks #10
I keep forgetting I started this, and I love seeing things that remind me of how I make my space accessible.
Something that gets us ADHDers is ⚡️The Tax⚡️. For those of you who aren't aware, what is The ADHD Tax? Allow me to rant for a moment.
Imagine you bought fresh veggies with the absolute best intentions. Today you're flipping a new leaf and eating healthier! You put them in the crisper section of your fridge. Y'know, the drawer. *poof* Those veggies no longer exist. The drawer is where good intentions go to rot. Next month, you're turning a new leaf! You buy veggies with the very best of intentions! You're gonna eat healthier starting today! You open the crisper to find "Oh dear Odin wtf is that?!?!"
Yes, the vaguely green goo oozing brown all on the bottom of your drawer is not only the corpse of the dreams of health, it is The ADHD Tax.
It is the wasted money from things you buy that get immediately forgotten when you get home. It can be veggies, it can be the 50th charging cord you just brought home, it can be a skein of yarn that you swore you didn't have but actually do.
My big example was veggies because that's the problem I fixed with this particular tip
Put dry erase film on your fridge
Was it weird to get used to? A bit. Did I have to explain why it was up almost every time I had guests? Only until all of my usuals had seen it. Did it help? Fuck yes!
The idea is you write the entire contents of the fridge on this section of your fridge. I'm a little off kilter, so I would also write expiration dates next to condiments/jars of stuff, the date I made the leftovers, and the date when I bought the fresh stuff.
It took some getting used to because I wasn't used to writing everything I bought on my grocery trip down, but let me tell you! The amount of food waste I experienced dropped dramatically. Once I started using this system to manage that part of my ADHD, the amount of tax I no longer had to pay was astounding. I stopped having to ask "what leftover is that?" Followed by "welp, doesn't matter cause it's growing." I didn't accidentally buy repeat groceries because I knew it was in the fridge without having to look for it. Fewer fresh ingredients went bad and I didn't have to buy as many fresh herbs because I could see that I still had cilantro.
I haven't been able to put this back up since moving in with my mom, but I have a lead on a house. I've already bought the film. And guess what.
It's going up everywhere. Pantry, fridge, spice cupboard. Everywhere I put food, it's getting put up. Because it helps, and it saves money.