ADHD as a stay at home mother can be problematic. See, like a child with ADHD I get easily overwhelmed with my tasks if they aren’t exactly they way they should be. So, on Saturday I had everything picked up and clean. By Monday morning the whole house looked like a bomb had gone off in it. What happened? What caused this horrific line of events? My dishwasher didn’t dry the dishes so Sunday morning my whole routine was thrown off. Sound dramatic? It is. It’s down right embarrassing that something that small could throw off my whole day. Why, do you ask, it this so problematic? Because if I can’t unload the dishwasher as soon as I get up then things can’t be put directly into it again and I made waffles for breakfast, noodles for lunch, cake for snack and spaghetti and meatballs for lunch. Non of this got put in the dishwasher. My kitchen looked like a war zone and a mess is overwhelming to me. Hubby was also cleaning out the basement yesterday and found a blanket his mother made and wanted it washed and for me to get the smell out of it. I put it in the wash and it still smelled, I washed it again with vinegar and it still smelled, I washed it again with dish washing detergent but it still smelled so it was in the wash all day and nothing else got washed. So all the diapers were dirty and all the laundry from the weekend.
On a normal day I start by breastfeeding the baby, unloading the dishwasher, loading anything that didn’t make in it the day before or over night, make coffee, make breakfast, put the diapers in the dryer, put a load of laundry in the wash, go in the bathroom and wipe off everything, sit down and check my email, facebook, and ravelry and write a blog post, hang out with the kids, make lunch, stuff diapers and put laundry in dryer and then in the evening I make dinner, load dishwasher, put diapers in the wash, watch a show, knit, go to bed with baby, read while I nurse him to sleep and then pass out. As long as there is no issue with any of that then my house is cleanish and I’m happy but if there is a disruption it is hard for me to get back in the groove til that disruption is taken care of.
There is also an upside to my ADHD. I hyperfocus really well. If I get an idea in my head I have to follow through with it and I can do nothing but that for a long time. If I need to know about some sort of gardening then I have to sit down and read everything I can find on the subject. I hyperfocus a lot on my knitting. When I was on medication for my ADHD then I couldn’t knit because I didn’t hyperfocus any longer. But on the medication stuff like a wet dishwasher would never have thrown me off of my groove.
Do you have ADHD? How does it effect you?
If you have a friend that is ADHD or a child and they are having a hard time and everything is a mess ask them where they are stuck and help them work through the stuck part. The rest should flow.
