Like many others with ADHD I can suffer from a failure in completing the final 10% of a project, I may have figured out an ADHD hack this week! There are many reasons this happens but in my current life it is often because by the time 90% of something is done it is 100% functional and usually pretty beautiful and the things I have ignored during the project phase added to responsibilities for 5 other people in our family usually become more pressing than crossing the finish line.
I am delighted that I have unintentionally solved this issue for our ADHD closet redesign that I am completing as part of the annual One Room Challenge. The ORC is an 8 week challenge that anyone can participate in with the goal of finishing one space in our homes. Please be sure to hop over and check out the many amazing projects that are in the works for this year - I promise it will not disappoint. Previous posts on the ADHD closet; ADHD Friendly Closet Design, Organizing an ADHD Closet, & ADHD Closet Tips & Finding visual dopamine. In the past few years I have tackled our kitchen, patio, vestibule and our boys shared bedroom.
This was a week of small wins, I knocked two small projects off of my list and one big win, the unintentional completing of the final 10%. Once I decided to not entirely DIY the organizer for the right wall I freed up a week within the closet timeline. My vendor needed 2 weeks to complete my order and there was a lot of necessary back and forth during the design phase which meant that it was started a bit later than I initially planned. This extra ‘slow’ week has been a complete blessing!!!
The difficulty for me with not hitting that 100% is that it bugs me, like really needles me and I yearn to finish the job. Then the issue becomes scheduling the time to complete it and to clean up the inevitable mess completing the project creates. Those two steps involve a host of executive functioning so sometimes they just don’t happen as I'm maxed out by the aforementioned 5 people (joking, kind of!). The two jobs that I undertook this week would certainly have been the final 10% of this project and this week they got done! So now I'm intrigued to see where else I can incorporate this technique. What if I keep one vital and likely more interesting part of a project aside until everything else is completed, essentially baiting myself or incentivizing myself to complete the potential boring final 10% by withholding a more interesting part of the 90%? I'm not sure if this will work but definitely think it is worth exploring! If you have had success with this please let me know!
Last week as I was shooting and editing the wallpaper pictures I couldn’t stop looking at the white line of trim between the door and the wall. I lived with it for a few days before deciding that it had to be painted - it was definitely going to bother me! It just felt unfinished and unintentional. Years of living in the UK definitely accustomed me to painted trim and one of the things that I miss in this house are chunkier mouldings. As I stared at the closet I landed on green as the colour I wanted so I set about mixing a shade with the paint I had on hand from painting the mural in the boys room.
I’m pretty pleased with this $0 solution! It feels elevated and intentional to me now and I love the contrast of the spicier green next to the somewhat staid dark blue.
The other project I knocked off my list this week was the valet rod. It was one of the small touches that I really wanted to incorporate into our closet design. It is an ideal place to keep a hanging item that I want to rewear before washing, will help when planning outfits and solves the problem of my husband not being sure where a hanging item should be stored. He can hang them on the valet rod for me to put away later - items are in the closet (so essentially put away) but not in the way!