130: Bend this Organizing Rule if You Have ADHD – Keeping Like Items with Like Items

Bend the Rule: “Keep Like Items With Like Items”

Every tenth episode, I cover an organizing, decluttering, or productivity rule worth bending or breaking for ADHD brains. Today’s is a bend, not a full break: keep like items with like items.

Why this rule genuinely works, at first

When I walk into a client’s jumbled space, sorting by like items is one of the most useful early steps. It surfaces trash and broken things immediately, making the whole project feel smaller right away. It reveals duplicates you forgot you had, the item you keep rebuying because the original never had a home and you can never find it. And it shows you when you’ve quietly accumulated ten nearly identical white shirts, when really you only ever reach for one or two, the rest just filler. Sorting like with like during the pulling-apart phase genuinely primes your brain to think clearly about the space. I’m fully on board with that part.

Where it goes wrong: obsessing over how things go back

The mistake I see constantly, the reason clients say “I can’t maintain this,” is putting all the effort into how beautifully things come out of a space rather than how easily they go back in. Those elaborate folding methods, the file-folded t-shirts so you can see every decal, the multi-step underwear folds that somehow require a pocket, look impressive and genuinely useful for things like t-shirts you need to visually distinguish. But for underwear, socks, pajamas, does that level of precision actually serve you? Pulling exactly what you want out of a perfectly sorted drawer feels wonderful in the moment, but if putting it back that precisely is what’s keeping you from maintaining the system at all, the front-end payoff isn’t worth the back-end cost.

Do the maintenance math honestly

If it takes two minutes to fold and sort laundry into perfectly rainbow-ordered categories, but three seconds to toss it into a general drawer and three seconds to grab it back out, the six-second version wins on total time spent, especially when you’re doing it while juggling everything else life demands. The “ten minutes of prep saves an hour of searching” logic organizers love doesn’t always hold up when nobody’s actually timing how long it takes to grab a pair of socks from an unfolded pile.

This applies to kids’ rooms too

I’ve worked with type-A parents frustrated that their kids can’t maintain elaborate systems, winter pajamas separated from summer ones, matched sets kept together. All that precision is often what makes the system impossible for a kid to actually follow. A single drawer labeled simply “pajamas” works fine, if they’re cold, they’ll grab something warmer, if they’re hot, something lighter. Nobody needs to sort by season to find what they need at bedtime.

Trade specialized categories for broad zones

Instead of hyper-specific like-with-like sorting for the long term, think zone defense. Tops in one drawer, bottoms in another, socks here, underwear there, nothing more granular required. In a kitchen, that might mean a baking zone, a food storage zone, a plates-and-silverware zone. You’ll find what you need within the general area almost every time. If you genuinely can’t, that’s usually a sign you have more of something than you need, not that your zones need to be more specific.

The real question when reorganizing

Don’t put something back simply because you own it and need somewhere to put it. Ask instead whether you actually need it, and whether it belongs in this space’s actual purpose at all. An office that’s also become a game storage room might need a rethink of what belongs there in the first place, not a more elaborate sorting system to accommodate everything you currently own.

Your practical, actionable step

Sort by like items while you’re pulling a space apart and deciding what to keep. But when you put things back, resist the specialized subcategories, set up broad zones instead, and let three seconds of quick retrieval win over two minutes of picture-perfect folding.

Until next time, continue to choose joy.