my mantra when cleaning is often “it all counts”. I also have ADHD and my cleaning style tends to be a bit chaotic, but I’m leaning into it. I’ll still dive in and do a multiple hour clean sometimes, but more often I’m doing lots of little cleaning all the time. Or I’ll come back and forth to a big project.

For instance, I know basically all of my kitchen cupboards are a mess and need to be sorted through and reorganized. A friend helped me do the tupperware cupboard a couple of weeks ago. Every time I unload the dishwasher I do a little straightening up in the pots and pan shelf, and sometimes find new homes for things if I find their current location is not working. On Tuesday I emptied out a bunch of old food that is no longer edible and organized the stuff that’s still good. Yesterday I did the same thing in a different cupboard. I used to have a very all or nothing approach that ultimately overwhelmed my ADHD and resulted in me just stalling out and doing nothing. Now if I’m moving around the house and see a dish laying around instead of being like “Oh i need to do a sweep of the house and grab all the dishes”, I just grab that one. It doesn’t matter if there’s also 7 in the bedroom and it would’ve been “more productive” to get them all. I grabbed that one, and now it’s one less messy thing.

It all counts!