244: From Guilt to Experiments: A Better Way to Love Your Home if You Have ADHD

Stop Flying Into the Window: Why “Just Be Consistent” Doesn’t Work for Us

One answer shows up over and over when I ask new members of my free community what’s keeping them from feeling good about their home: “I’m always trying to find a system to stay consistent with. I just can’t seem to not feel behind.”

A story from my own house explains exactly why that pursuit keeps failing.

The bird in the window

A few months back, sitting with my morning coffee, I heard banging noises and discovered two wrens had flown in through the open back door. I have a huge, fixed statement window in the room just off my kitchen — the height and width of the wall, and completely sealed. Both birds kept slamming into it over and over, convinced it was their way out, even though it would never, ever open. Meanwhile, I’d opened six other windows and the back door again, waving a towel to guide them toward the actual exits. One bird found its way out fairly fast. The other kept battering himself against that same fixed window, at one point knocking himself behind the couch, until I finally managed to steer him toward the real door.

Consistency is our fixed window

That listener’s answer, “I haven’t found the system I can stick with yet,” is the exact same instinct as that bird slamming into glass. Organizing and productivity culture preaches morning routines, evening routines, cleaning routines, all resting on one promise: just be consistent, and it’ll all sort itself out. It looks like the obvious, bright, easy way out.

For our brains, it’s a fixed window. It might work for a little while, but monotony is our actual kryptonite — we’re wired to seek novelty, not sameness, and any consistent routine eventually turns into something we resist rather than something that carries us. My husband, who I lovingly call a monkey brain, is the opposite: he’ll complete every step of his routine even when a step is genuinely unnecessary, because breaking that consistency is what feels wrong to him. We each have our own kryptonite. The difference is that society applauds his consistency, even the unnecessary parts, while creativity and constantly shifting approaches get treated as flakiness instead of the equally valid brain-wiring it actually is.

The real fix: run experiments, not systems

Once you stop chasing the one elusive system that will fix everything, you get back an enormous amount of energy that used to go toward guilt, frustration, and the cycle of starting something that works for a week and then feeling like a failure when life throws it off.

That energy can go toward something more useful: treating your home like a series of experiments instead of a single system. Try something different each week without fear of failure, because everything you try, whether it sticks or not, is just data. Focus entirely on the kitchen and entryway one week and let the rest of the house go. Shift to obsessing over spotless bathrooms the next week and let the kitchen slide. If you were previously stuck, overwhelmed, and doing nothing, then doing anything at all is a genuine improvement — deep-cleaning a bathroom once a month instead of once every few months already means less to dig out the next time company’s coming.

Even something that works well will eventually lose its shine, and that’s fine. Chasing the next new thing to try isn’t a flaw, as long as each new experiment is still moving you toward the same underlying goal: feeling better about your home.

Match your expectations to your actual season of life

Part of the fix is being honest about what phase of life you’re actually in right now. In the newborn phase, the only real priority is sleep — everything feels heavier and more overwhelming because you’re exhausted, and that phase doesn’t last. In the toddler phase, if you organize one space only to turn around and find the next one destroyed, that’s just toddlerhood, and it’s temporary too.

If your life currently runs from car to practice to therapy to school pickup, acknowledge that your life is in the car right now. Nobody’s expecting hours of house projects from someone who’s living in transit. Lean into that season instead of fighting it: turn off devices during drive time and actually talk with your kid, or if you want to be productive, pack a small bag for the car — emails to answer, school papers to process, scattered post-it notes to consolidate into one running list while you wait outside practice.

If you’re approaching an empty nest like I am, the enemy flips entirely: it’s not too little time, it’s too much of it, with no built-in deadlines or accountability. That abundance of time is its own trap, because it quietly convinces you that wasting it doesn’t cost anything.

Your practical, actionable step

Stop hunting for the one system that will finally make you consistent. Instead, pick one experiment to try this week in one part of your house, and let the rest of the house be exactly as imperfect as it needs to be while you do it.

Until next time, stop flying into the window, start looking for the side doors, and continue to choose joy.