Clearing out clutter is a great step towards family wellness, but some of us find it easier than others. Sometimes your amount of collecting, cluttering and hoarding can indicate bigger wellness issues of ADHD, which is traditionally associated with children, but symptoms can continue into adulthood for 60% of children with ADHD. If you’re worried your child’s wellbeing might be affected by ADHD, look out for the clutter-related symptoms of difficulty following through on instructions, often failing to finish chores or other tasks, problems organizing tasks or activities, the dislike of tasks that require sustained mental effort, and frequently lost needed items. The good news is ADHD can be treated with remedies and support groups.
There is a quiz provided by the non-profit Clutterless Recovery Groups that can help you and your family determine how bad your cluttering has got:
Do you feel overwhelmed when thinking about your clutter?
Have you tried to ‘organize’ yourself repeatedly, with no lasting results?
Are you ashamed to have anyone come to your home?
Do you feel more confused in your home than in the outside world?
Do you find yourself buying more of everything because, ‘you never know when you will run out?’
Do you have multiple copies of books, software, clothing or any other items because you couldn’t find what you already owned when you needed it?
Has your spouse or partner expressed dismay about the way you live?
Do you flit from one task to another, feeling like you never get anything done?
Do you find that you concentrate better in noisy situations?
Do you find yourself getting distracted easily?
Do you feel like, ‘What’s the use, it will just get messed up again,’ when you begin to de-clutter?
Do you hold onto broken items because ‘they might come in handy someday,’ or ‘I’m going to fix them someday’?
Do you hold onto relationships that do not serve you because, ‘This is the best I can do?’
Do you feel like there will never be enough for you and believe that you do not deserve any better than what you have?
Do you feel more ‘lack’ than prosperity in your life?
Do you find it hard to decide what is worth keeping and what is not?
Do you obsess about saving food and have enough canned goods to feed the neighbourhood?
Do you save garbage–fast food boxes and wrappers, obvious trash, things that smell bad, etc?
If you answered to 4 or fewer questions, you’re probably are not a clutterer, but 5 or more ‘yeses’ indicates that you may be chronically disorganized, and could benefit from visiting Clutterless Recovery Groups’ website for more information and support. Questions 8,9 and 10 indicate ADHD tendencies in particular, which is worth visiting the Attention Deficit Disorder Association website for more information, and if you said yes to the last 2 questions, these are symptoms of hoarding, so visit the Compulsive Hoarding Website of the Obsessive Compulsive Foundation for more information.
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