The One with the Strategies

Being diagnosed with ADHD this far into my life has been interesting. Some of it is like, oh, that's why I've always struggled with this. And some of it is like, how did I cope for this long without anyone knowing, even myself?

I started doing more research into ADHD and found some YouTube videos, including ADHD hacks for your house. Of course, I watched them because anything that could make things go more smoothly at home would help.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that I'm already doing many of these hacks. Maybe this is why I made it this far without being diagnosed?

An example is creating a station. I have a coffee station and I've done this since I started drinking coffee. My coffee maker is near a water source--either my sink or my refrigerator or both. In the cabinet over the coffee maker, I have everything I need to make coffee like paper filters and the coffee itself. I also have everything to make my cup of coffee, for instance sugar-free coffee syrup. Everything I need for every facet of coffee making either brewing or drinking, is in this area.

I've created stations in my bathroom using little caddies and baskets. My crafts go in craft totes, each craft in its own one. My knitting projects go into a bag with all the yarn for the project. If it's something I'm actually knitting, it's a tote bag. If it's a project I want to knit, but haven't started, it goes in a giant plastic bag with a zip top. Everything goes in there. The yarn I'm going to use and the pattern. That way, when I'm ready to start the project, I can just grab the plastic bag.

How do I get into trouble? When I don't put the pattern in the bag. I was knitting a project that I quit when I was over the halfway mark. I want to pick it up again but can't find the pattern. It's not in the project bag. Where did I put it? Who knows? Can I print another copy of the pattern? Sure, but the copy I was using had each row I'd knitted marked off. If I print another, I'm going to have to walk through it line by line, row by row until I figure out where I left off.

Another idea in the videos I watched was a Go-Bag for traveling. Every toiletry you need for your trip is in that bag and you never take anything out of it. I've been doing this since probably the 1990s. I kept my toiletry bag in my suitcase, and when I was planning to travel, all I needed to pack was clothes. Everything else was ready to go.

There were other ideas that I know won't work for me, like keeping track of things digitally. I've tried that and I would just delete the notification and forget all about the thing I was supposed to do. This is why I moved to a paper planner. Daily, not weekly.

Weekly planners have never worked for me because I see items listed across the week and it feels like if I got them done whenever during the week, it was okay. And because doing them on a particular day didn't matter, I never did them at all. A daily planner keeps me accountable. Yes, it's more of a to-do list than anything else, but I need it in the planner or it's too easy to blow it off.

If it's written on Tuesday, October 2nd, though, I'll actually do it on Tuesday, October 2nd because it bothers me not to check off everything on my list for the day.

The problem I'm trying to solve now, and where I've been falling down, is trying to remember to do things that don't have specific due dates. I've already mentioned the separate to-do list is too easy for me to ignore, and that digital doesn't work for me at all. So?

I think I figured out a way to keep up with a home declutter project. I created a cross between a creative journal and a bullet journal where I listed every single thing to go through. Example would be tall dress, drawer one. Tall dresser, drawer 2. And so on. I haven't actually tackled anything yet, but I'm hopeful because there is a space to check off finished items! The pieces are also very small, literally one dresser drawer at a time instead of Organize and Declutter Bedroom. That's overwhelming and will literally never happen.

But what about the random tasks? That's where I'm stymied. Another notebook? I'm still mulling.

Anyway, I just thought it was really interesting that even though I didn't know I had ADHD, I came up with strategies to function that are actually recommended. I just need a few more strategies.

Helene Comes to Town

As I'm writing this, it has been raining for the past twenty-four hours. There's been a few breaks in the rain, but they've been brief. Yesterday's rain was courtesy of a cold front, I guess? That's what I heard anyway. The rain I'm listening to now is from the hurricane.

Hurricane Helene is barreling toward Florida as a Category 4 storm. I live near Atlanta, but Helene will still be a tropical storm when it passes over us.

I have water standing in my backyard, but I'm not too worried about flooding because my house sits on higher ground. The standing water is on its way to the retention pond.

I'm a little worried about the wind. They've said gusts up to 70 MPH. We've had other hurricanes come through here after coming ashore, but this might be the strongest of the lot. At least it's the strongest I remember. I'm going to trust that everything comes through the wind okay.

My chief concern is the power going out. I have every electronic device in my possession charging. I even charged the charging bank I have for my phone. There's really not much more I can do, although I should probably find the lanterns I bought and get those ready and I will after I finish this post.

Of course, the worst of the storm will be rolling in overnight. In the dark. When you can't see what's coming. According to the weather reports I've seen, it will be cleared out by 9am tomorrow. There's still wind forecasted but not storms. We'll see if they're right.

After all this angst, I know I'm lucky to be far enough north not to take the brunt of it. I'm hoping everyone in Florida who needed to evacuate did, and that we can get through Helene without anyone being hurt.

ETA: When I wrote this, the storm hadn't destroyed towns yet. My heart goes out to the people who bore the brunt of Helene and to the families who lost loved ones. I'm saddened by the destruction left in the wake.

Can't Find This

If you've been following my blog, you know I was recently diagnosed with ADHD. This explains so much of my life and my challenges that I've struggled with since I was in grade school. Today, I'm going to talk about my biggest challenge.

I can't find anything.

One example is I wanted to learn to hand letter with the Tombow brush pens I bought. I found a video on YouTube sponsored by Tombow and they had a free, printable handout. Of course, I printed it out and was ready to use it while I watched the video, but the instructor recommended higher quality paper because regular copy paper would wreck the tip of the marker. Or I could put the page underneath tracing paper. Which I also had none of.

I would need to order tracing paper, so I put my printable away until it arrived.

My friends, my tracing paper arrived, and I cannot find my printed pages anywhere. I don't know where else to look. This came a week or two after I spent days (literally days) looking for my marker set (chisel tip, not Tombow). I'd given up and was using my colored pencils because I was not buying new markers when I hardly used the ones that were missing when it dawned on me where they were. And I was right.

If only 1) this revelation had come while I was looking for the markers and 2) I could have a similar epiphany about where my printed pages are. (Yes, I could reprint them, but dang it! I know they're here. Somewhere.)

Most of my house is clutter free. My office is not one of the places. This is where things go to disappear. I need to sort through it, get rid of things, organize myself. It's also something that I just never quite get around to doing.

Then I had a scathingly brilliant idea.

What if I created an organizing journal? One section for each room in the house. I'd break each room down in the extra small chunks. Like list everything one drawer, one shelf at a time. And check it off as I completed it. I love checking things off my to-do list.

And I had extra 8"x8" journals that I didn't use for my book journal. The one I picked had one of those historic sailing ships on it, so I decided on a pirate theme. For the electronic files that need to be cleaned up and organized, I went with space pirates.

This is still a Work In Progress and I'm waiting on items to use to put it together. I'm hopeful? Sort of. I'm a little worried that I'll burn out my enthusiasm for this idea putting the journal together. On the other hand, without a journal I've had zero interest in doing it, so maybe this will help.

More to come with pictures.

Reading Journal: Stamping is Hard

I think I might have to make a special Reading Journal image instead of repeatedly using "steampunk," but that's a project for another day.

After listening to two of my nonfiction books in audio format, I was ready to start filling in my reading journal. I printed the book covers on sticker paper, used my paper slicer to cut the length, and then used scissors to cut the vertical. I should have used the slicer on all of the cuts because straight lines are beyond my skill level, but that's a lesson learned.

I was debating whether to go with 3 inch covers or 2.5 inch. I opted for the larger height. I think that looks good. My book review silicone stamp set arrived and I was ready to go!

I pasted down the first two book covers, inked my stamp, and pressed down.

Stamping was not a success as you can tell from the picture above this paragraph. Too much ink on some parts of the stamp, not enough on the top. I also managed to get ink all over the acrylic block and all over my fingers. There was also some ink on my table.

Not cool.

I tried practicing on scrap paper, but I didn't get any better at it. I watched a few YouTube videos on how to stamp and tried again. Um. I might have an issue here. I still couldn't do it well and there was ink everywhere! No lie. It was especially bad on the acrylic block.

It got me wondering if maybe the block that came with my stamp set was too big. So I bought a smaller block, one that just fits the width of my stamp.

The picture shows the block I was using with the new, smaller block on top of it. The edges of the new acrylic block are wavy.

I haven't tried stamping yet with the new block. Part of me is worried that this didn't fix the problem because I don't know what to try next. Maybe I buy stickers, but that will make my journal swell in size. I just need to pick it up and give it a try. I can't do worse than I was doing previously.

Reading Journal: Continued

When I concluded Tuesday's post, I divulged my disappointment with some of my mistakes. I tend toward perfectionism, so I wasn't excited about making errors, but since there was nothing I could do about it, I forged onward.

I decided I wanted an index in my journal in case I wanted to reference one of the books I read. I used the same lettering as I used for the book title and for the Steampunk graphic in this post. I wanted to lay it down in the middle of the page, but I didn't get it far enough into the crease and I fear it's going to continue to wear until it breaks down the center. Again, there's nothing I can do about it.

I'll come back to this page later. There was more work to do here, but I moved on for this evening because I didn't have all my supplies yet.

I also added four pages of what is known in the book journaling community as a "book shelfie." I bought this at an Etsy shop, too, and printed it out. I fudged around with the sizing on it to get it to fit my notebook. Each page of book shelfie holds 100 books. I estimated over 300 books in my nonfiction To Be Read (TBR) pile, and so I made four pages. I know I'm missing some paper books when I made my list, so I expect to grow to close to 400 before I'm finished.

Another disappointment is that the steampunk stickers I added on either side of the book shelfies are crooked, but again, I was forced to ignore it.

When my supplies arrived a couple days later, I returned to the index. I used pencil to rough in where I wanted to layout the index and then went over it with a pen. 

I used a Tombow marker to highlight every other line. As you can see, I had a little problem drawing a straight line. That's very disappointing, but as with the stickers, there was nothing I could do about it.

I wanted to keep track of page number, book title, and author. I decided the rating wasn't something I needed in the index.

The white space on either side of index cried out for some kind of image, and I had just received some steampunk stickers. I found two small ones and used them on either side.

From here, I'll go straight into my book review pages. I haven't started those yet, although I did rough in where I want my book covers to go. Now, I need to find the time to copy all the book covers I need to fill a full page of sticker papers. I'll probably cut them by hand rather than use my sticker maker machine.

I'm also waiting for a stamp set I ordered. It's got a stamp for book reviews and a star rating stamp. I'm sure I'll make more mistakes, but there will be nothing I can do about those either.

Still, despite all the mistakes I made, I had fun doing this and I'm ridiculously proud of what I made.