Not everything — JUST the kitchen sink
Filed under: Clutter, Planning, Proactivity, Procrastination
Being proactive is hard when you have ADD. It’s not in our nature. Throwing it all together at the last minute –the project, the presentation, the meal — is much more our style, and often, despite ourselves, it work out. But as an ADD coach, I’m striving to put in place some of the habits I gently nudge my clients toward — and every time management guru in the book seems to put proactivity right near the top of the list every time.
My post tomorrow is on making Monday more manageable — a worthy task, most would agree. The main thrust of that post is the importance of having what you need ready to go on Sunday night. The ugly truth is that at 10:00 p.m. Sunday, that’s not always as easy as it sounds. The hustle to get everyone off to bed at a reasonable hour (currently in my house, that’s after the Clone Wars, a few pages of The Lord of the RIngs, and satisfactory brushing of teeth) often results in a mysterious pile of dishes in the kitchen sink. From my vantage point at the sink, I also see a jumble of crayons on the breakfast table, a pile of boots and backpacks by the back door, and the weekend paper piled on a couple of dining chairs. Being proactive, if I can bring myself to do it, will mean taking care of some of this detritus.
Don’t get the impression my house is a mess. But with the typically frenetic life of a family with three kids under 10, there’s a lot of cargo coming and going,and not everything always gets put away. One of the great paradoxes of my version of ADD is that while a) I could easily procrastinate about the dishes and the mess, persuading myself that it won’t take long in he morning, b) once I finally screw up the self-discipline to get going, I want to get the house — or at least the kitchen — in immaculate shape. Spic-and-span, top to bottom. I could be at it for a couple of hours.
But it’s now 10:15, and I plan to get up early tomorrow to work out before the kids get up. I feel the urge to tidy and clean welling up — not because I love cleaning, but because the perfectionist in me craves the notion of a truly clean house.
I’m not sure what signaled it this time, but I was able to rein myself in by asking myself the question I ask all my clients whose ADD runs to perfectionism: “What is the least I need to do here?” On the surface this might look like an invitation to laziness. But for a perfectionist, this question is a lifeline, offering rescue from work that could wait until later, could be done by someone else, or perhaps doesn’t need to be done at all.
For me the least that needs to be done is that the kitchen is ready for breakfast tomorrow, so that I can hit the bike. Not everything but the kitchen sink; just the kitchen sink. And a couple of countertops for good measure, but that’s it.
One of the best — and funniest — advocates of the “kitchen sink theory ” is FlyLady, who runs a fantastic website on conquering household clutter. I’ll be visiting her site again soon.
