Feeling shelf-ish, part two

Yay! We found the book on Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD.  It was in a box, under the bed of a son of mine who has ADHD.  So, good.

The long-lost book.

We found it as we were disassembling the bed and packing up his stuff, getting ready to move the bed and the stuff to his new apartment, where he'll get to be all organized (or not) all by himself, with minimal intervention from a rather Organization-obsessed mom.

I mentioned a while back that I'd learned two really helpful things from this book (although now that I reflect on this, I want to up that to "three" helpful things), one of which is to have a giant paper recycling box that you think of as a box of "chronologically sorted paper".   Another useful approach this book advocates is to pare down possessions, and to correspondingly move your approach from being "the person who has everything I might need" to "the person who can creatively make do with anything that I happen to have".   The idea is that storing a lot of stuff is overwhelming for a person with ADHD, and as much as I'd love to load N-son down with a year's supply of, say toothpaste and shampoo, I have to admit that he functions a lot better if he doesn't have to sort through those many many bottles to find, say, a stick of deodorant.  So pare his possessions indeed.   We've done that.

But here's the shelf-based thing that I've come to learn from this book.  And that is, dressers with drawers are just about the worst possible way we could ask N-son to store his clothes.  I already knew they were kind of problematic because of his handedness issue*, and long ago (back in 2007, or so) I'd redone his toy shelves so that his toys were in bins I'd made from paper boxes with viewing notches cut out.

N-son's old toy bins, made out of trimmed paper boxes.

* N-son had a stroke in utero, and so coordination between the left and right side of his body

 is harder for him than it is for other people; two handed tasks (like opening a drawer to put something in, hanging things on hangers, or buttoning a shirt are all possible, 

but they're enough of an obstacle that he's often likely to avoid them, 

especially when he's distracted).

So, what this Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD book says is that I was on the right track, and in fact that I should have done something similar for his clothes, too.   The book recommends wire mesh shelves and plastic bins, but of course I say to heck with plastic bins.   Instead, I nabbed a bunch more paper boxes and trimmed one side down -- this time, the long side.  While N-son stayed with us these past few months, these boxes fit well on the shelves we'd intended for my husband's books.  

Clothes and books, all on bookshelves.

As much as this looks a little more messy than I'd like in my own bedroom, I have to say it's worked really well for N-son while he's with us.  He rolls his clothes in a Marie-Kondo-inspired way (although she'd die and then roll over in her grave if she realized his efforts came from her approach), or else he just kind of shoves the clothes in.  Either way, they're all in pretty much the right place, and we know what clothes he has that are clean, and which clothes we need to replenish.  

The boxes have all made the transition to his new apartment, where they're lined up beautifully and neatly on the carpet at the edge of his bedroom.  I still think I'll go help him get a set of wire mesh shelves, but we're definitely not getting him a dresser.

Meanwhile, N-son's old dresser is now down in the basement, serving to hold my assorted hardware and tools.  The drawers are awesome for me, because they keep my power tools and supplies clean (out of the way of sawdust and paint).  I don't mind opening drawers, but I'm not going to make N-son do it again on a regular basis, if I don't have to. 

And now that N-son has moved out, we have a bunch of shelves opened up for my husband's books again.  It's kind of magic that things have worked out so well.