Spring Cleaning for ADHD: Easy Organization Hacks for a Fresh Start

AcademicAlly, LLC: March 5, 2025

Spring is here! The birds are singing, the flowers are blooming, and—wait, is that a half-eaten granola bar under your bed? No judgment. If you have ADHD, you know how easy it is for clutter to pile up in your room, your mind, and your daily routine. But don’t worry—spring cleaning isn’t about becoming a perfect, ultra-organized individual. It’s about making small, ADHD-friendly changes to help you feel less overwhelmed and more in control.

Let’s get started!

Step 1: Declutter Your Mind—Close Those Mental Tabs

Ever feel like your brain has too many browser tabs open at once? You’re trying to remember homework, emails, social plans, and why you walked into the kitchen in the first place. Your brain gets busy, you can’t think clearly, and before you know it, you are in operation overload.

No effective change can begin to take place until you learn to tame your brain. Until you establish a quiet mind, no amount of effort will bring you to a state of organization let alone one that’s sustainable.

So, let’s begin with the basics by lowering the internal volume of that unrelenting loop taped dialogue you have running through your brain:

• Do a brain dump. Set your timer for two to three minutes and write down EVERYTHING that’s on your mind—tasks, worries, random thoughts about dinosaurs. From the sublime to the ridiculous, it doesn’t matter. Get it out.

• Sort your list. Some things are urgent, some can wait, and some don’t even matter (Do you really need to Google how jellybeans are made right now?). So many of my clients are surprised to find hidden gems among the items they jot down during their brain dumps. Maybe you were trying to think of a recipe to make for your class party next week, and that note about tacos reminded you of your favorite nacho recipe you like to make. Problem solved! Sometimes, the brain dump can contain a treasure trove of helpful information!

• Use reminders. Outside of grounding yourself, set alarms or write sticky notes for important tasks so your brain doesn’t have to store them all. Using this reminder system can also be helpful to remember unusual events or tasks like remembering to bring pom poms to the football game or to have your parents sign a permission slip for the ski trip. Carrying a mental to do list taxes your brain, and the more stressed your thinking cap is, the more likely you are to get anxious, leading to loss of focus, organization, and accountability.

Just remember, your brain is like a computer—too many open tabs slow it down. Closing the ones you don’t need helps everything run smoother.

Step 2: Declutter Your Space—One Tiny Task at a Time

Now that we have organized your mind, we need to look at your living space. Your room might currently look like a tornado hit a Wawa. And that’s okay! We are breaking down this organizational feat one section at a time. Cleaning doesn’t have to be an all-day, exhausting event. In fact, trying to do it all at once is a recipe for getting distracted and ending up streaming all ten seasons of Friends.

So how do we embark on this venture of organizing your personal space? Let’s just take this one step at a time:

• Pick one small area to clean—your desk, one shelf, or just the chair that somehow became a second closet. Isolating one small starting point can be helpful to grease the wheel, get things going, and build your confidence. Once you complete one area, start with another one.

• If the prospect of cleaning one location of your room feels daunting, try managing this task by time. Set a timer for 10 minutes and race against the clock to see how much you can get done. By making this into a game, you may decrease the pressure and stress, and once you are more relaxed, your confidence and rate of success will soar!

• Is it too quiet? Before you even pick up the first of many dirty articles of clothing from the floor, take a few minutes to create a “Clean My Room” playlist. Maybe a little Rihanna or Lady Gaga will help you get the job done. Better yet, Kendrick Lamar might do the trick. Or if showtunes are more your speed,make a playlist of Broadway tunes! Playing music or a podcast can keep your brain entertained while you clean. With your attention aimed at the music, you won’t even realize how much you are getting done!

Remember, your room is like a garden. Cleaning is like weeding that garden—when you remove the clutter (aka the weeds), you make space for the good stuff to grow.

Step 3: Refresh Your Routine—Make Life Easier on Future You

Let’s be real, in as much as structure and routine can be super helpful to the ADHD brain, after a while, these regimens can feel boring. There is no denying they help prevent daily chaos (like realizing at 11 PM that you forgot to do your homework), but variety in the form these structures take can make task completion much more palatable. The trick? Make your routine work for you, not against you:

• Choose one habit to upgrade. Attempting an overhaul of every habit can feel overwhelming and will lead to a total shutdown. Let’s start with something easy. Maybe it’s putting your backpack in the same spot every day-doing so will help you to locate your school materials quickly and predictably without losing any time. Alternatively, try setting a bedtime that actually lets you function in the morning. Until you land on your ideal time, you may need to work it back in fifteen-minute increments if you are making a dramatic change.

• Make it fun. Turn tasks into a game-how many pieces of laundry can you shoot into your hamper in a given period of time? Use a reward system-for every assignment you complete tonight, you get a five-minute break doing something you enjoy. Challenge yourself to get ready in record time-set your things by the door before you start getting ready. Establish a departure time, guess how long it will take you to get ready, and then see if you can beat your guestimate.

• Use visual cues. Those external reminders are super helpful. If you need to remember to do your laundry, hang a dirty sock on your doorknob. Put sticky notes on your mirror or digital stickies on your phone. Use pictures instead of words to remind you to do something. Set reminders on your phone. Place your keys and wallet in an obvious spot near the door so you don’t forget them this time (not in the fridge again).

Routines are like switching from winter clothes to spring outfits—they should be comfortable, work for your lifestyle, and make your life easier.

Step 4: Create a Maintenance Plan—Keep It Simple

Now that you’ve cleaned, decluttered, and refreshed your routine, you need to put some systems in place to maintain your hard work, otherwise, what was the point of that exercise? How do you keep things from spiraling back into chaos next week?

I often tell my clients they must outsmart themselves. Just like they observe the patterns and behaviors of their opponent when playing videogames, they have to know themselves and outsmart their self-sabotaging tendencies. What time of day are they at the peak performance? What motivates them? When do they cut corners? What tasks do they frequently forget to complete? Here are some outsmarting tactics you might consider trying:

• Use the “One-Minute Rule.” If a task takes less than a minute (like putting away your shoes), do it now instead of putting it off, only to create a pile up of to-do’s.

• Set a weekly reset time. Engage in that brain dump a few times each week if you aren’t ready to participate in this exercise daily. Pick a time each week (Sunday night, Friday afternoon) to do a quick tidy-up to get your personal space back in order. Take a look at your schedule each Sunday afternoon to see what’s in store for you that coming week so you can plan your time and energy accordingly.

• Don’t aim for perfect. Use my mantra, “Good enough is enough.” Progress is what matters! If you keep up with some of your new habits, you’re already winning.

Keeping up with habits is like watering a plant—a little effort each day keeps things from wilting into disaster.

Celebrate Your Fresh Start!

Spring cleaning isn’t about being perfect—it’s about making small changes that help you feel less stressed and more in control. Even if you just clean off your desk, start using a planner, or finally throw away that granola bar at the bottom of your backpack, you’re making progress.

So, what’s one small thing you can do today to start fresh? Whatever it is, future you will thank you for it.

(And seriously, check under your bed. Who knows what’s been living there.)