The Lair in Progress
Every hero needs a home base of operations. Superman has his Fortress of Solitude, Batman has his Batcave. I have a home.
Since I moved into my new place on January 2nd, I’ve been busy. The move itself was exhausting and took me awhile to recover from the sheer exhaustion. For the last few weeks, I’ve been unpacking and slowly setting up systems.
It’s very important to me to have a neat, tidy and organized home now. As someone with ADHD, I often struggle with keeping places neat and tidy. I want to change that. I still have a long way to go, but I can finally see the beginning of the end.
The Work No One Sees
As I live alone, I only have myself to rely on to get things done. With my crazy schedule, I decided to turn my to-do list to a “what I feel like doing today” list. The first thing I wanted to establish was a quick daily tidy. This includes putting dirty dishes in the dishwasher (running it when full and emptying it when clean), clearing counters and living room surfaces of pop cans or garbage, and taking out the recycling when needed. For the most part, I have kept this routine, with a few meh-days mixed in when my energy was low.
One thing about me is I’m a deadline-oriented person. I can’t pre-plan things, per se, as once I do that, suddenly my mind says “that’s too much work!” and it never gets done. Remembering there will be an inspection from the landlords 3 months in, I’m realizing that that is a due date.
Last week, I wrote down all I had left to do in the living room and kitchen, and began spacing them out to certain days. As I work Sunday nights to Friday mornings, and sleep at roughly noon to 8 p.m., finding time to work is a little difficult. I save more heavier tasks for the Friday and Saturday, with some overflow to Sunday morning, and on work days, I try to add one to two tasks to accomplish in the mornings around 9:30 a.m. So far, this system seems to be working.
Living Room
The biggest thing to do with the living room was to finish unpacking, and figure out what goes on the storage racks in the big closet. I knew I wanted to have 2-3 shelves for kitchen overflow items that aren’t used regularly and I don’t have space for in the kitchen cupboards or drawers. I also have a lot of books.
I found Dr. Anxiety lurking around in the shadows telling me this task is impossible and I should just give up. The Procrastinator also made many appearances here and there, distracting me with all sorts of things. The Taskmaster was also trying to tell me all of the tasks that have to be done, and was ordering me to get certain things done by such and such a date. Unsurprisingly, I found it overwhelming.
I enlisted the help of The Navigator and The Groundskeeper to help me sort out how to accomplish these tasks. Once I wrote down the list of things left to do, and divided them into days, I decided to give myself a deadline last weekend to have the living room and kitchen completed by the end of this upcoming weekend (which also happens to be a long weekend).
I got through the books by first unpacking them and putting them randomly on shelves. Then I figured out I would need 4 of the shelves in the rack to accommodate them. I began sorting them into categories, realized stacking them like a library wouldn’t work with the spacing in the racks, and had to stack them vertically instead. After that, I organized the board games on the bottom rack on the other side, which left space for 3 kitchen shelves.
Kitchen
I had 4 boxes left to unpack that I wasn’t sure where to put things that hung around for a while. After I was done sorting through the living room shelves, it became much easier to tackle one box per day as my goal. Yesterday I went through two small boxes and one large box as I had the momentum to keep going. Today I finished unpacking the boxes.
Finishing Touches
All that’s left is finding homes for the remaining random objects, ensure items like knick-knacks and figures are positioned to where they will live, and clean the place. I’m still gearing towards finishing this living room and kitchen by Saturday. I want to take a break on Sunday as it’s a day off of work and I am planning on just relaxing.
Why This Matters More Than It Looks
This might sound like a boring thing to post about, but it is so satisfying completing a project like this. I made it my resolution this year to keep a clean, tidy, and organized home. I’m working towards that goal, one small step at a time. Keeping daily cleaning and tidying rituals is also very helpful. I find it doesn’t take very long if I do it at least once a day.
Because I have a naturally disorganized streak, the messier things get, the more overwhelmed I feel. Then I just put it off and it never gets done. When I finally do get off my butt and do something about it, it always surprises me how fast it takes to get it done. I don’t want to keep doing this.
There’s also this side of me that puts off doing other things I want to accomplish because I have to clean or organize my home first. It is so exhausting to keep putting things I want to do off.
This is part of what I call Emotional Cartography—learning how my environment affects my emotions and adjusting accordingly.
What’s Still Unfinished (And That’s Okay)
I have given myself the deadline of early March to try to have the place in order, or at least mostly in order. After I finish the kitchen/living room area this weekend (and take a day off), I will tackle the rest of my bedroom next week, and finish with sorting the second bedroom—which is a lot—for the remainder of the month.
The good news is there is an end in sight. My bedroom shouldn’t take too long to do, but I’ll tackle it like I did the living room and kitchen. I will make a list of what needs to be done and figure out when, then add it to my What I Feel Like Doing Today list for the week.
As the name of the list implies, I can change the order as I see fit if I feel like tackling something else. Or if I want to push something more difficult to a weekend night to work on. And I space it out just in case I have a meh-day somewhere in the middle of this.
A hero isn’t just born a hero. It’s a journey of thousands of small steps. As with RPG-types of video games, heroes need to level up. I finally feel like I’m about to reach a new level.
Diana’s Wisdom
Diana has two modes:
- Notice the human is doing something and try to help by batting her toys around.
- Go into the second bedroom window and sleep.
I’m sure she would appreciate a nice and tidy home as well. Just so long as she can still locate her favourite toys.
Final Thought: The Lair Is Live
I’m looking forward to establishing my home base as a place of comfort and relaxation. I certainly hope this renewed energy continues to show up. But if there is a meh-day in-between, I’ll simply rename it a “me-day”.
How do you keep things neat and tidy? I’d love to hear your tips or tricks, especially if you also have ADHD.