262: The Most Important Rule for ADHD Brains Trying to Get Their Homes Organized

Stop Following the Rules: Why “Consistency” Is Keeping You Stuck

You already have the vision. You know exactly what you want your space to look like and where everything should live. So why can’t you make yourself take the first step?

I know what’s actually stopping you, and it isn’t a lack of planning. It’s rules.

The Rules Are the Problem

Every corner of organizing and cleaning advice comes wrapped in the same set of demands: build a cleaning schedule and stick to it. Declutter first, obviously. Only keep exactly what fits your current life — nothing from the past, nothing for someday. Never put anything down without putting it away. If it takes less than two minutes, do it immediately, no exceptions. Have a home for everything, and make sure everything’s always in its home. Build a system so airtight that even when life falls apart, you can snap it back together in a matter of hours. And be consistent — and teach your kids and your spouse to be consistent too.

None of that is bad advice in isolation. The problem is what happens when all of it lands on you at once, while you’re already standing in the middle of your own chaos. Your brain doesn’t hear inspiration — it hears an impossible checklist, and it shuts the whole thing down.

It doesn’t help that so much of what we see is from people already deep into — or finished with — their own organizing journey. They’ve forgotten what the beginning actually felt like. Even when you find someone who documented their process from day one and try to binge your way through it, hoping to fast-track their results, you’re skipping past the part where it took them weeks, months, sometimes years to get where they are. That gap between “the plan” and “your actual life right now” is exactly where good intentions go to die, leaving you with a head full of ideas and a house that hasn’t changed.

What Actually Got Me to 250+ Episodes

Here’s a bit of my own story. When I started this podcast, I genuinely believed almost nobody would ever listen. That belief made it easy to be brave — it’s not hard to take risks when you don’t think anyone’s on the other end of the microphone.

I broke basically every rule I was taught in the class where I learned to podcast. I was supposed to post consistently, at least once a week, ideally twice. I was supposed to be active on social media, engaged in Facebook groups, sending weekly newsletters, pitching myself as a guest on other shows. My teacher wasn’t wrong that her path works — it just wasn’t the path I could actually follow.

What worked for me instead was a rhythm, not a routine: when an idea grabbed me, I hit record, edited it immediately, and published it right then. No batching, no schedule, no guarantee of a new episode every Tuesday at 6 a.m. And somehow, that inconsistent, rule-breaking approach still got me past 250 episodes and 435,000-plus downloads — numbers plenty of far more “consistent” podcasters never reach, because a lot of people quit well before episode 50.

There are real gaps in my publishing history, and that’s fine. I need genuine sparks of inspiration to record something that feels honest — I can’t just work through a backlog of saved ideas on schedule. The real shift wasn’t discipline. It was letting go of arbitrary rules and arbitrary definitions of success. I stopped caring about consistent week-over-week downloads or newsletter open rates. What actually kept me going was a heartfelt review, a listener emailing to say an episode put words to exactly what was going on in their head, watching people in my membership community try something and celebrate the result.

None of that came from following a checklist. It came from caring about the right things.

So What Should You Actually Care About?

Go back to that list of rules — the cleaning schedule, the two-minute rule, the home-for-everything mandate. None of that is actually what you’re chasing. You don’t care whether your sink stayed clean for 37 days straight for its own sake. You don’t care about proving you can locate a twist tie in under two minutes.

Would all of that be nice? Sure. Is any of it wrong? No. But it’s not the point. The real question is: who are you doing this for, and why?

It’s not about hitting a metric. It’s about sitting down at night to watch a show with your spouse without shoving clutter out of the way first, and actually getting to enjoy putting your feet up. It’s about walking downstairs for coffee and not discovering the pot is still dirty from last night, sitting in a sink that’s already full before you can even start.

If that’s still where you are, you need permission to do this wrong. Messy. Inconsistently. The only thing you actually need to be consistent about is being inconsistent — giving yourself room for good days, bad days, false starts, and things that just don’t work out. This is a grand experiment, not a pursuit of the one correct method. The goal is whatever makes you feel better and shows you progress in the next fifteen minutes.

Try This Right Now

Stand up. Look around the room you’re in and pick any single surface. Grab your phone and snap a quick “before” photo. Now set a timer for 15 minutes and make that one space a little better — nothing more ambitious than that.

Start simple: is any of it trash? Gather it and carry it straight to the can. Are there loose papers, magazines, or flyers scattered around? Stack them together without worrying whether they’re related. Look at what’s left — anything with an obvious home somewhere else in the house? Walk it there. Anything you know you can live without? It doesn’t need a donation box; carry it to the car in your bare hands if that’s what it takes.

When the timer goes off, snap an “after” photo and compare the two. If it feels good, say so — out loud, to yourself, in a community, wherever. That reaction, that wasn’t so bad, I could do that again, is the whole point. Then, if you want, reset the timer and pick another spot.

The only goal that matters is this: can you make one small spot a little better in the next 15 minutes? That’s it. Not perfection. Not somebody else’s system. Just a timer and a decision.

If you try this, I’d love to hear how it went — email me at joy@joylovinghome.com (I’m not always fast to reply, but I do get there), join the free community at bit.ly/joylovinghomecommunity, or check out the $10/month membership with weekly accountability Zoom calls at joylovinghome.com/membership.

You’re not alone in this. There are plenty of us fellow fish brains out here, myself very much included, still in our own messy middles. We can figure this out together.

Until next time, continue to choose joy.