Before I was aware of my ADD, I considered a lot of my organizing troubles to be due to lack of sleep (first as a student, later as a new parent). At some point the kids started sleeping through the night, and the most logical explanation for muddleheadedness crossed over to advancing age.
I only had to look around my in-laws’ house to realize that being old required some rather inelegant coping strategies. Things like light-switch plates with the names of each light scrawled above: PORCH, FOYER, STAIRS, POST LAMP. Those aggressive block capitals, written in fat red permanent marker, would follow me all around the house during every visit. Commands barked out from the backs of old envelopes scotch-taped to the paneling. WATER BILL. CALL DOCTOR. VITAMIN SALE CVS. TRASH PICKUP.
The bulletin board that was meant to be the place for temporary papers had instead become an unchanging art display of old wallet-size photos and souvenir key rings. Thumbtacked there is a yellowed envelope marked RECEIPTS, the word underscored with a big red swoosh, as if to emphasize a longstanding argument. How many times do I have to tell you, stop tossing them on the dresser?!?
Naturally the bathroom is also full of large handwritten labels, either because the print on the pill bottles is too small, or because a hand-soap dispenser has been re-purposed as LOTION, or because there are personal items that require a personal name. And, of course, there are more reminders here, taped up to the mirror, along with a long list of medications, which is protected with a sheet of plastic cling-wrap taped on top.
Admittedly, my in-laws have probably always been more about function than form. It’s hardly a decorator’s touch that accounts for the fact that next to the toilet are two nearly identical plastic wastebaskets. One is lined with a bag and contains what you might expect; the other is full of magazines and crossword puzzle books. A handwritten note on torn scrap paper taped to the second one says NOT TRASH.
Still, it disturbed me, all this senior graffiti, both in its imperative quality and the simple fact of it. When you get old, you will neither trust your eyes nor your mind! What was it like to live this way, your own finger constantly wagging in your face? PUT OUT RECYCLING! BROKEN – DO NOT USE! CHANGE OIL!
And then it started following me home, in a way. We’d ask the in-laws to watch the kids, and we’d come home to notes taped to the stove: BAGELS IN FREEZER. G. HAS A RASH. FRED SMITH CALLED. On the table would be a stack of magazines, covers ascrawl: PAGE 167: SUNSCREEN. IMPORTANT INFO! KIDS NEED AT LEAST 50+. READ AND SAVE.
No matter how many times we would tell them where the pen and paper were, they “could never find it.” And so they’d tear ragged sheets off our pristine printer paper, or bring their own pads, ones they’d made from recycled scraps trimmed and glued together.
I vowed I would never live this way. Usually I vowed this under my breath, in a muttering fashion, as I went around the house tearing down the notes after they’d left, grumbling as I rubbed off the stubborn adhesive residue. I would never allow my house to be cluttered with these notes, this perpetual jumble of scribbled obligations destroying the beauty of my dwelling! My house is to be a place of peace and calm, not stress and chaos!
And then I found out I had ADD….
The joke is, of course, that my house was never a place of peace and calm, much as I strived to make it so. I was swimming upstream, and it showed. Boxes full of mysteries, hastily gathered in a cleanup crisis, lay in corners of multiple rooms. Piles of papers sat undisturbed on kitchen counters. The pantry usually had a bag of groceries parked in it, because the job of finding homes for the purchases was too complex, given the lack of an obvious system within. Loaded laundry baskets sat in front of the TV awaiting folding. The kids would trip over each others’ shoes in the entryway, toss library books on the couch, and leave backpacks on the floor.
And truthfully, hadn’t I already attempted to nag myself in all sorts of ways? Hadn’t I left messages to myself on my answering machine on a regular basis? What were all those pop-ups on my computer calendar there for, if not to nudge me?
Still, I hadn’t landed on anything that was all that helpful. It was too easy to ignore the pop-ups, and they happened to come calling when I was least likely to be productive anyway, engrossed as I was in the Internet. I hated the sound of my voice on the answering machine. I always had this cheesy tone, especially since I was usually calling from a public place and knew people were eavesdropping. “Hi, this is me, with a reminder to myself, defrost the meat…” Ugh.
More than I hate my answering-machine voice, I hate my handwriting. It’s not atrocious, but it’s just….not good. It looks sloppy. When I try to slow down and write more carefully, well, the results look careful and sloppy. My mother-in-law, she of the ugly oversized capitals, has made “jokes” about my messy handwriting. I’m not sure I’d agree that hers compares favorably with mine, but I was unhappy enough with my own writing that I tended not to label anything; it just looked like more clutter, all those words on boxes, on Post-Its, staring out at me…
And now I was staring at ADD, and I realized, in something like a heartbeat, that it was time to embrace the signs. I needed visual reminders, I needed organization, I needed notes and labels and signs! And so I set to work making signs.
But these signs were going to be different, if this was going to work. They had to have staying power. No Post-Its for me.
And they had to look good. That was paramount.
I finally found my joy in the form of white Avery address labels. Instead of addresses, I printed other things on them. Categories, for all those boxes in the pantry: Flour, Corn Meal, Brown Sugar. Labels for baskets and boxes in the family room: Library Books, School Library Books, Books to Return. Labels for magazine files that hold the piles of paper: Handy File, Put on Calendar. Labels for folders that go in pocket mail slots on the wall: School papers, To Do, Papers for J.
I took delight in the selection of fonts for each label. Pantry items were in a matching blue bold engraved-look font, my to-do file a jaunty fifties style. A name tag for a child’s school folder was done in a Peanuts font I downloaded off the Internet.
From there I moved on to honest-to-goodness signs. I have a list of daily tasks posted in the kitchen. There’s one that greets the kids as they walk in the door: When You Come Home From School. Underneath that header is a checklist with about a dozen items. The first one says untie shoes, which sounds like a joke, but it’s not; otherwise the shoes get kicked off, and the double-knots await when the rush for the morning bus comes. I thought the kids would hate it, but they didn’t; turns out maybe they don’t like the sound of my nagging voice so much either. That Peanuts font, which I used for the sign, they like that a lot.
And, you know, I’m starting to like myself a lot better too, as the house slowly falls under the influence of order. Order, not orders, I remind myself, staring into my reflection in the bathroom mirror, which gazes back at me through a blue scrim of dry-erase reminders to myself. Yes, it’s a bit messy. But I can still see through to the other side. And I am there, smiling back.
The Brain Fog Blog 