70: Break this Decluttering Rule for ADHD Brains – Clutter is Junk

Break the Rule: “Decluttering”

Every tenth episode, I take a decluttering, planning, or organizing rule and challenge whether it actually serves our ADHD brains. Today’s rule to break might sound strange: quit decluttering. What I actually mean is breaking our relationship with the word “clutter” itself, because that single word carries so much dread and negative weight that we’re defeated before we even start.

The problem with the word itself

Clutter, by definition, is a crowded or confused mass. Add to that all the guilt-laden messaging floating around, quotes implying that everything sitting in your home represents wasted money or a failed decision, and it’s no wonder stepping into a cluttered space feels heavy before you’ve even opened a drawer.

A different way to picture your belongings: the suitcase story

Imagine packing a suitcase for a beach vacation, swimsuit, sunscreen, flip-flops, all perfectly suited to that specific trip. Now imagine you never unpack that suitcase. Instead, months later, you pack an entirely new suitcase for a fall trip to somewhere like Vermont, jeans, sweaters, boots, again perfectly matched to that journey. But this time you grab the old beach suitcase too, just in case, without ever opening it. Then a third trip comes, a spring visit to New York City, and you pack a whole new bag for that too, still hauling the other two unopened suitcases along with you.

Your home is the suitcase for your life

Every item in your home was, at the moment you acquired it, a good and reasonable choice suited to whatever stage of life you were in then. Young kids meant certain purchases made complete sense. As that stage passed and a new one began, we often never fully unpacked the last one, we just added a new layer on top and kept carrying all of it forward. Looking back at those items through a lens of distance and labeling them wasted money or bad decisions isn’t fair to the moment they were bought in. They had real value then. The only reason they read differently now is that you’ve moved on to a new destination in your own journey.

Editing instead of decluttering

Instead of decluttering, think of it as editing, or selecting, for your current stage of the journey. When you’re ready to release something that belonged to an earlier chapter, remember there are people behind you on that same path right now, someone in the newlywed stage, someone with a new baby, who could genuinely use exactly what no longer suits your life. Releasing those items isn’t discarding failure, it’s passing something valuable forward to where it’s needed next.

Picturing the room at its happiest, not its most photogenic

When facing a space, don’t picture it as a polished Instagram frame. Picture it in the fullest, happiest version of how you actually want to use it right now. If your living room’s purpose right now is gathering family and friends, that happy picture might include board games, cozy blankets, and a small dish of seashells from a meaningful trip, not seven untouched boxes of craft supplies nobody’s used in years. Keep the few meaningful souvenirs that genuinely represent your journey, and let the rest move on to whoever’s on that leg of the trip now.

Your practical, actionable step

The next time you face a space full of items from a past stage of life, resist the word “clutter” entirely. Ask instead what this space needs to hold for your journey right now, pull only those items forward, and let the rest travel on to someone else who’s still on that part of the path.

Until next time, continue to choose joy.