Several years ago I did some research about how to organize bedrooms for my two kids who have ADHD predominantly inattentive and ADHD predominantly hyper. This is what I found.
I even went into detail and looked at different ways to fold my daughter’s clothes.
My daughter, Maria, has ADHD (predominantly inattentive) or what used to be called ADD.
She would often get frustrated in the mornings when she couldn’t find the clothes she wanted to wear to school.
Usually what she was looking for was in her dresser, but it was on the bottom of a pile of jeans or tops.
She didn’t have the patience to carefully look through the stack, so she would frantically paw through the pile, clothes flying everywhere until she found the desired item.
The idea of picking up what she threw on the floor never seemed to enter her mind. I found her room in varying states of chaos nearly every morning after she left for school.
Asking her to pick up her clothes when she came home was usually futile. She was easily overwhelmed by the mess.
Often, she just stood and stared panic-stricken and unable to comprehend where to begin. Sometimes she would cry and scream in frustration.
If I wanted her clothes picked up before they got mixed with the dirty clothes she threw on the floor I had to do it myself.
I tried many different methods trying to avoid the daily mound of clothes on the floor. Deciding what to wear the night before just moved the chaos to a different time of day.
Our house is quite small and we did not have space to hang all of her clothes. When I tried asking her to tell me what she wanted to wear, so I could get it out, she couldn’t find the words to tell me what she wanted.
Most of her ADHD problems sat in the language center of the brain. Compounding this is the fact that Maria is extremely dyslexic.
I couldn’t seem to figure out how to solve the problem and help her find her clothes easily.
My research led me to Marie Kondo’s book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing.
I tried folding my daughter’s clothes as she suggested. The clothes stood up in the drawer instead of laying on top of each other. Instantly this made a huge difference.
Maria could find what she wanted by glancing in her drawers, and the before school clothes-throwing frenzy stopped.
How to Fold your clothes using Marie Konds’s KonMari method
The idea is to fold your clothes so they stand up in your drawer. That way you can easily see what you own.
After I started folding my daughter’s clothes this way I began going through my own drawers refolding my clothes to stand up.
I really enjoy having my clothes arranged in this way so I can see everything and easily decide what to wear.
Everyone is different. I tried folding my husband’s clothes Marie Kondo style, but after trying it for a while he didn’t feel that having his clothes standing up was particularly helpful.
I quit taking the extra time to fold his clothes this way and decided to concentrate on having my children’s clothes well organized as well as my own.
Take a look at the photo guides I made to illustrate how to fold different items of clothing.
Basically, you try to fold everything, even big skirts, into rectangles which later get folded down into squares.
I made charts to show how to fold: Tank Tops, Long sleeved shirts, T-shirts, Dresses, Shirts, Sweatshirts with hoods, and pants.
I hope my folding charts are helpful for you to feel free to print them out and use them at home.
The page Our Favourite Resources has book tips and other helpful information.
https://theadhdminimalist.com/our-favourite-resources/
If you need to teach your child how to clean their room and stay organized you can read about what works for my ADHD child if you click below.
https://theadhdminimalist.com/help-adhd-add-kids-clean-their-rooms-and-stay-organized/
To read about why a monochrome room is helpful for ADHD click here.
https://theadhdminimalist.com/a-monochrome-bedroom-decreased-my-daughters-stress-and-adhd/
To ckick through to my page on How to Create a minimalistic monochrome bedroom click below.
https://theadhdminimalist.com/how-to-create-a-minimalistic-monochrome-bedroom-with-easy-to-use-storage-a-helpful-illustrated-guide/
Copyright Annie Eklöv
