50: Bend this Organizing Rule if You Have ADHD – A Place for Everything and Everything in its Place

Bend the Rule: “A Place for Everything and Everything in Its Place”

Every tenth episode, I usually break an organizing rule that doesn’t suit ADHD brains. This time, I want to do something a little different: keep this one, but bend it significantly. The rule in question is the classic “a place for everything, and everything in its place.”

Why this rule has real value

Even swimming in the current of a fish-friendly life, there’s still value in having some banks on either side of the river. A place for everything provides useful structure. The trouble tends to live in the second half, everything actually staying in its place, and in who gets to decide what that place should be.

There isn’t one “right” place, there’s your place

A professional organizer might insist glasses always go next to the fridge, or paperwork always belongs in a home office. That reasoning makes logical sense on paper, but it only works if it matches how you actually move through your space. Instead of asking where something should logically go, ask where you actually are at the moment its usefulness ends. If shoes always end up under the coffee table because you never think to take them off at the door, the solution isn’t scolding yourself into a new habit, it’s putting a basket right next to the coffee table. If keys always vanish because you empty your pockets while changing clothes upstairs, hang a hook or set a dish in your closet or on your dresser, wherever your body naturally ends up, rather than insisting they belong by the front door you never actually reach on autopilot.

More than one right place is allowed

If something is easy to duplicate, scissors, tape, a phone charger, there’s no rule against keeping one in every room you regularly need it. Editing down to exactly one of everything is only useful if it doesn’t create a barrier that stops you from doing the thing you wanted to do in the first place. Eliminating friction is worth more than a tidy inventory count.

Start from what already works

If the whole idea feels overwhelming, look for what already has a natural home in your house right now, your toothbrush, your coffee mug, wherever your clothes generally live even if the drawer itself is a mess. These utilitarian, daily-use items usually already have an intuitive place. Use that as proof it’s possible, then expand outward using the same logic rather than trying to solve everything at once. Big, broad categories work better than an elaborate system of tiny subdivisions, one large toy bin can be more functional than fourteen tiny labeled cubbies, if the smaller system creates decision fatigue instead of ease.

A useful guiding question

Dana K. White’s question is worth borrowing here: if I were going to look for this, where would I go look for it? That’s often a better starting point than any theoretical “correct” placement.

Less really is more

If nothing seems to have a workable place no matter how you arrange it, that’s often less about organization and more about volume, there may simply be too much to reasonably store. Decluttering first can make this whole rule dramatically easier to actually follow.

Your practical, actionable step

Pick one item that constantly ends up in the “wrong” spot. Instead of asking where it should logically belong, ask where you actually are the moment you stop using it, and create a home there instead.

Until next time, continue to choose joy.