Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD, 2nd Edition-Revised and Updated: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized Paperback – Illustrated, June 1, 2012

I have ADHD and have been rather hopelessly disorganized all my life despite the dozen or so books I have bought (and read) on the subject. This book has quite literally changed my life. I understand it, and Mrs. Pinsky understands ME. I now understand why the other books weren't effective for me, and why a few things I had tried (over-the-door hooks) worked amazingly well.This is not one of those books where you are supposed to spend a ton of money on organizing doo-dads to make all your stuff fit better; the first thing she recommends is that you throw a lot of it away. A whole lot of it. It is much easier to organize your stuff if there isn't much of it. Why didn't I think of that? The organizing tools she recommends are a hammer and nails and inexpensive bins you can buy nearly anywhere.The advice is brilliant- and you have probably never heard this advice before either- I certainly hadn't. I nearly cried with joy when I read the advice about the socks. My non-ADD mom has never understood my loathing of sock sorting and laundry in general. I modified the advice to fit our situation of course- oldest son has crew socks and batman underwear, youngest son has taller socks and ironman underwear. Sounds simple but it has made laundry sorting much more bearable at my house.The advice about the paperwork basket- can I tell you how brilliant this is? Not only do I have a clean desk because I am not afraid to trash the one important thing in the avalanche of papers my kids come home from school with; when I DO realize if have trashed something in error (like this morning) I can get it back. Ingenious- or actually common sense. Why didn't I think of this??I fortunately found this book when we were in the planning stages of building a house- I actually altered a few things in the house plan to accomodate the ideas in this book. I also threw out an unbelievable amount of stuff. Truckloads. I know the ladies at the local thrift store by name thanks to the nearly daily trips I made donating stuff. Moving day was a much more pleasant experience after throwing out probably a third of the things we own- things we didn't even need.And guess what? I can find all of my stuff. It all fits in the drawers and cabinets- In fact, I have EMPTY drawers and cabinets. It is a piece of cake to put my things away. I no longer buy things that I think I might be out of, I know exactly what I am out of because I can see it all. I even shop differently now. After throwing out so much stuff, I am much more careful about what I do buy- I consider whether I need the item or whether it will just become clutter and need to be tossed the next time I purge.Was it hard? Sort of. It was sometimes hard to throw away expensive items that I just didn't want or need, but after I got past the guilt it was a actually fun! I now know that I can find everything in my kitchen, the lid to every tupperware container, and every single item in my closet fits and looks great- how awesome is that?Someone came to see my new house the other day and said "wow- you are so organized!" For a minute I thought they were being ironic, because no one had EVER said anything like that to me before- but my house actually IS organized now! I find myself losing things less frequently, and when I do lose them, finding them more quickly because there aren't random piles of stuff everywhere with no home. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you Ms. Pinsky for writing this book! I do think this book would be helpful for people without ADD, and everyone with kids, but for many people with ADD, this will be nothing short of a miracle. It is NOT much different from the 2006 book though, so if you already have that one no need to re-buy.

Maybe it's a case of when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. But this book may a profound difference. I've been reading organizing books for over 30 years and pick up a tip here or there, but nothing that made the kind of difference this book has made. I'm most grateful for her statement that for a person with ADHD, getting out of the house in the morning can take as much mental effort of focus and concentration for us than for a person without ADHD exerts in a whole day. First lesson - When a room or areas are designed to work well for a person with ADHD they are is not going to look like a magazine spread. (See you later Martha Stewart Living and Real Simple magazines.) Next, putting things away is much more difficult for an ADHD person than other folks so ease of putting away is the top priority. I've never read anything that acknowledged this. A game changer. Next lesson - shelves and drawers should have lots of unused room. Lets you see what's there and most importantly makes it easy to put back items. Next, if you purge correctly, then YES you will end up having to re-purchase a couple of things. That means you are doing it right. Crazy. This advice was incredibly freeing. I was able to let go of so much. I've missed one or two things but was easily able to make due with what I had. Plus, for every specialized kitchen tool, there is an old-school way of doing that task that works just fine or at least well enough. The approach of describing of the challenges of ADHD folks and teaching her overall approach, followed by a room-by-room approach is fantastic. So easy to jump to what you need help with. And so kind in speaking to the ADHD person. No condemnation or pointing out personality faults. Instead, points out the reasons for life-long problems, says hey you're just fine and just need a different approach. She hit on things I've thought my whole life were shortcomings in my personality: "I'm so disorganized." "I'm wicked lazy." " I'm such an airhead." "I'm not as smart as other people because they manage all this just fine." As you can tell I'm grateful for this book.

I checked this book out from the library… then lost it 12 hours later. So I bought it for kindle to read on my phone. Did eventually find the hard copy. Hard copy is definitely easier to follow.This writer seems to really understand people with ADHD. Some of her tips are a little extreme, but might be necessary for people with very severe ADHD (I’m thinking of her socks and towel suggestions.)I would suggest, as others have, that this writer is mainly writing for people in cities and suburbs with disposable income (that’s who typically hires professional organizers, so that makes sense). If that’s not you I would definitely try to find a library copy and just peruse it, glean what tips you can and love along.But over all I would say this book was extremely helpful. It gave me insight and a lot of usable tips and principles to guide my own approaches to organizing my home. It is not a perfect clean palace now, but it is much easier to clean, which is pretty much exactly what she suggested was the goal.The downsides:I definitely purged stuff I should have kept and ended up spending money to buy stuff to replace what I threw awayI probably spent about a grand on furniture, mostly at ikea, Amazon, and the dollar store on various shelves, bins, and buckets.This will likely take you about 2-3 months to complete. I was able to get through the purge and initial organizing in 3 weeks (thanks hyper focus!) but once school started again was unable to work on the more specific organizing projects. I imagine it will take me a while to actually finish everything I see that needs to be done but at least I got a huge chunk done.If you have ADHD or even if you’re just really bad at keeping your house clean, I would suggest this book.

As an adult with newly diagnosed ADHD, this book feels like it was written for me. I have always struggled with a messy home and disorganized life. I hated myself for it and it would only be the pressure of having guests over that would force me to spend 1-2 days cleaning like crazy to make my house presentable. These tips have already helped so much. There are things mentioned in this book that I didn’t even realize I was doing that we’re making my life more difficult. The book is laid out in an easy to read way and is straight to the point. The author doesn’t make you feel guilty or ashamed, but instead encourages you to understand how your mind works and use it to your advantage. I finally feel understood and have a strategy to improve my life. Would recommend to anyone struggling with ADHD or anyone with a partner/family member with ADHD to better understand how to help them succeed.

Libro facile da leggere, con molte immagini e scritto molto grande. Utile per persone con e senza tratti ADHD. Tuttavia non contiene chissà quale scoperta e i consigli riportati sono spesso puro buon senso. Non lo ricomprerei né consiglierei.

A really useful book that has helped me organise my flat and keep it organised.. Mostly! Chapters come with a tl;dr and the writing is simple and uncomplicated. I would really recommend this and I think it could also help people who are neurotypical and bad at tidying.

If you haven't read a book in the last 10 years, then you probably won't read this.But...keep in mind that if you do, you can highlight things, scribble your own notes and dog-ear the pages. The book is yours and you are a grown ass person.You can also pay people to come over and help you get organized. I may do this one day.

Students and bachelors living alone, 'always on the move' people, single parents, especially artists, writers, bipolars and people dealing with seasonal depression should read this book. It's really going to solve more than half of their daily struggles with arranging and organizing things.