Organizing Physical and Mental Space for Neurodiverse Brains (and ADHD) with Professional Organizer and Coach, Sara Skillen
by Sara Skillen, COC®, CPO®, Guest Writer
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This is advice on how to address your past, present, and future to gain more order in your life, accounting for neurodiverse brains. This post is especially helpful in calming your space in times of chaos. Guest writer, Sara Skillen, is an organization coach & professional organizer.
“This mess is what always happens when I try to get organized.”
“I’ve never stuck to a routine.”
“My mom always tells me I’ll be late to my own funeral (sigh).”
These little shards of self-talk are just the tip of the iceberg. They are the messages many of my clients bring along to our organizing conversations. Maybe not the exact words, but the sentiments for sure. With agility afforded mostly to gymnasts and ballet dancers, they open up a mental backpack full of past experiences, perspectives, assumptions, and messages they’ve received...none of them particularly positive regarding life order.
But somewhere deep under the ice, we know there’s a possibility for something better -- and in that conflict between past, soul-sucking experiences, and future, hopeful potential is the exact, uncomfortable spot where I usually get called in.
Organizing to Live; Not living to Organize
As an organizer coach and professional organizer, I don’t live for organizing -- I support people in organizing to live.
Improved order shouldn’t ultimately be about a pantry that looks like a catalog photo, file-folding your t-shirts, or buying pretty containers (although those things can certainly be in the mix if they help). Instead, quality organization should hum in the background of life, sustaining the important stuff -- like practicing cello, rocking a baby, having a deep conversation, plotting a career shift, or walking in an open field on a cloudy day.
Sara Skillen enjoying time to take a walk in a field on a cloudy yet beautiful day.
So when I work with clients, I’m always looking for what’s behind their challenges and exploring how we can leverage their strengths and curiosity to move forward. If I’m doing my work effectively, I’m helping them create spaces and routines that provide a framework to hang all the good stuff on. We take the raw materials of their internal and external spaces and see what we can build together.
And I call it “life order” because I don’t believe organization functions in a silo separate from the rest of our adventures.
We can’t parse out one tiny segment of living, make a positive change with it, and not see the impact in other ways. Bringing mindful attention to this idea is key. Initially, you might not make any connection between a clean, bright, orderly drawer of food containers and your time management. But say you’re trying to get the kiddos and yourself out the door for school drop-off, then rush to a just-scheduled meeting with your new supervisor.
Knowing exactly where and how to grab the clean bento boxes for lunches (and the confidence that goes along with that knowledge) creates both time space and mental space.
It means you’re not rushing and stressing and running behind.
It means you have room to actually listen to your child’s excitement about library day, then do a bit of internal preparation for your upcoming conversation with the boss.
And then...what magic might occur?
It’s a lot of fun to find out.
I’m routinely impressed with how much difference little things like an organized bedside table or a desk rearrangement can make in someone’s confidence. Or how much impact knowing where your keys are at all times makes.
It all works together.
The Goal: Reducing the Mental Load
So I might be a little different in my approach than what you’ve seen on TV, Instagram, or Pinterest in terms of organization. For example, I rarely post before-and-afters of spaces anymore. It’s fantastic to see progress, but I feel like that progress belongs to the client and their own unique perspective on what “organized” should be for them (also, I coach much more than hands-on organization these days). It may not be so much about labels or color-coding in their situation, and it may even be more of a mindset shift than an external shift. It’s hard to snap a pic of that.
For my wonderful clients with neurodiverse brains, improved order should reduce some of the cognitive load they find themselves carrying.
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It should open up some space in their heads and hearts, and clear out what I call brain clutter.
Again -- it’s not necessarily about what an area looks like, but more how it feels, how it supports, how the energy flows for them.
When I work with people, I coach them to find their unique structures — their own brand of life order.
We might start with a bench in their garage, or we might start with their to-do list app, but we always end up somewhere in their beliefs, values, and dreams. And I believe when people can discover their unique version of life order, it’s a tremendously healing experience.
Starting by Reconciling Your Past
But oh, how the ghosts of organizing past sneak in to sabotage our efforts!
Our past can haunt us in so many ways:
Grief (“How could I possibly get rid of my grandmother’s antique doll collection? She was my favorite person and I miss her.”)
Shame (“I haven’t let anyone in the house since my mother-in-law made fun of the mess. What other people think hurts so much.”)
Fear (“If I try to have a better morning routine, and I oversleep again, I’m afraid it will be just another failure.”)
Overwhelm (“I can’t stop thinking about when I had such high expectations, and took on so many commitments, and dropped all the balls, and ended up so discouraged!”)
I’ve experienced these ghosts myself at different times -- I think we all do to a greater or lesser extent. Grief is an especially terrifying specter because it pops up so unexpectedly. Someone might say to me, “Oh sure, I can go through that box of my brother’s stuff now -- he’s been gone for five years, after all,” and then ten minutes later we’re both deep into the box of tissues.
It’s never just about the stuff. Sometimes we’re ready for the challenge; sometimes, we need to tread carefully.
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All that said, you might be staring at the future with renewed high hopes about getting your spaces edited and restructured. Or you might be setting goals for yourself to manage your tasks and learn about better prioritization.
I wonder what messages you might be hearing inside.
What voice crept up from your high school years to shout you have no business trying to improve?
What energy from your divorce is trying to drag you way from positive change?
And what can you do about it?
Short of being visited by spirits, I have some thoughts.
Noticing What Works for You in the Present
“Asking questions is a good way of finding things out.” - Big Bird
My process starts with where someone is in the present moment. It’s not like we ignore the past (it’s always going to be with us anyway), but we look at where we are now and start asking ourselves what’s possible. The darker parts of the past don’t need quite so much energy in this scenario.
To bring this down to a more granular level, let’s see how it could play out with the ever-popular organizing bane of existence — the junk drawer.
Note: I prefer to call this space a “utility drawer” because if it’s genuinely junk, then why isn’t it all in the trash to begin with? The items therein (like screwdrivers, matches, sticks of gum, and bag clips) are usually quite useful. But for the sake of colloquialism, we’ll go with the common name.
Cleaning Out Your Junk Drawer: An Exercise
Open your junk drawer, and if possible, look at it as if you’re a disinterested house guest trying to find a AA battery. What do you notice? Leave the judgment aside if you can. It’s a neutral space, aside from your opinions about it. Objectively, what’s really there? Are you seeing just one layer of items on the top? Think of yourself as an explorer -- what can you discover?
OK, Explorer, let’s get brave.
Pull everything out and place it on a flat surface. If this move feels like too much, just pull out half.
A little order is always better than none.
If those messages about how you “should” have already cleared this drawer out, or how you “shouldn’t” have kept all those old business cards start buzzing in your head, you can take it slower. It is what it is, and this is your quest.
But as an Explorer (as opposed to a fearful, defeated mortal), you can be curious:
I wonder what this old key went to? If I can’t figure that out, what would make the most sense for it?
What would this drawer be like with only the pens I like, or that actually work?
If I collected all the spare change, how much would I have?
How could organizing this drawer make my life run more easily?
What if I could grab a AA battery as soon as I needed one? What would that experience be like?
How do I want to feel when I open this drawer?
Why do I usually open this drawer? What am I usually looking for?
If this drawer could be anything, what would it want to be?
Once you’ve answered a few questions like these (or maybe allowed them to simmer if you aren’t sure), usually possibilities open up. Maybe take some notes. You might even remember some positive past experiences, like the time you single-handedly cleared out underneath the bathroom sink in 90 minutes flat. Didn’t that feel good? Maybe now, you can agree with yourself about what stays or goes. Letting go of the dried-up pens means you’ve made a decision. When a decision is made, there is clarity.
When there is clarity, there is relief.
Soak that relief in, and see what happens.
Maybe you’re not quite there yet and are feeling stuck in making decisions about what to let go of…
Applying Your Decisions Going Forward
“The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure.”
- Joseph Campbell
After you go exploring and hopefully make a few decisions, you can set about creating a space that fits what you need going forward.
For example, do you want your junk drawer to have little separate containers for things? Do you want it to be attractive? Labeled? Functional? All three?
Or...is it totally OK to leave it a little jumbled? The only rule you need to plug into your experience is determining whether or not a space works for you -- instead of you working for it.
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You can ask questions in almost any life order scenario that can open up a new way of thinking about your challenges. Whether we’re pondering and decluttering our schedules, our lists, or our cabinets, we don’t have to let past experiences dictate future results.
One space, one aspect, one step at a time, we can embrace what is in order to envision what might be.
Sara Skillen is a Nashville-based organization coach, professional organizer, founder of SkillSet Coaching and Organizing, and author of the book Organizing and Big Scary Goals: Working With Discomfort and Doubt to Create Real Life Order.
Relax the overwhelm with a few minutes to yourself lying on a Bed of Nails acupressure mat or mat and pillow set. We love ours here at Human Amplified. For real. Brandi uses hers to meditate while she’s decluttering her mind.
Credits: Grahpics by Brandi Fleck. Personal photos provided by Sara Skillen. Title photos from unsplash.
About the Author
Sara S. Skillen, a Certified Organizer Coach® and Certified Professional Organizer®, is the founder of SkillSet Coaching & Organizing based in Nashville, TN. With a varied background in music, education, and the legal world, Sara has always been intrigued by how environments (both exterior and interior) affect work, productivity, and life. As a result, she was inspired to start her company in 2012, helping overwhelmed people from all walks of life manage their stuff, time, and tasks. Sara’s writing has appeared in numerous publications including Unconditionally Her Magazine, “Music City Moms” blog, and her own blog “The Stuff Behind The Stuff.” She is the author of Organizing and Big Scary Goals: Working With Discomfort and Doubt to Create Real Life Order. Sara is also a co-facilitator of the long running ADDNashville support group. In addition to her work, she is currently pursuing a certificate in interfaith Spiritual Direction from the Haden Institute. She lives in Franklin, TN with her family and two extraordinarily productive and focused Labrador retrievers.
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