How to Organize Your Home So It Works for Your Neurodiverse Family
“Why do you never put your shoes away?” and other questions that aren't helping.
Do you recognize any of these?
“We need to do it this way!”
“Why do you never put your shoes away?”
“Why do you always leave your stuff everywhere?”
“Why can't you follow my system?”
“A lot of times it's because we have these different organizing styles.”
-Audrey Berry
You may have beliefs about how things should be organized in your home, but those ideas aren’t helping your kids get out the door in the morning.
We understand the unique challenges that come with parenting atypical kids, including overwhelming clutter and conflicting ideas about organization. That's why we're excited to bring you this episode, filled with personal experiences, expert advice, and actionable strategies to help you navigate the journey to a more organized home.
Join us in this empowering conversation as we explore how to organize our homes to better meet the needs of our neurodiverse families. Listen, watch, or read the transcript below. Ratings and reviews on Apple Podcasts are extremely helpful!
Audrey Berry is an Expert in Organizing Spaces for People With ADHD
She has a wealth of knowledge on creating calm and organized homes for neurodiverse families. In this episode, titled "Creating a Calm and Organized Home for Your Neurodiverse Family," Audrey will be sharing valuable insights on understanding different organizing styles, managing conflicts, and setting up systems that work for your family's unique needs.
We'll also explore the challenges of morning routines and getting out the door, as well as discuss practical tips for creating functional spaces that support our children's independence. So, get ready to discover a new perspective on organization and find empowerment in creating a calm and organized home for your neurodiverse family.
Discover Audrey's insight into the four organizing styles, which stem from a combination of visual preference and organizing scale.
Learn why different family members may have conflicting ideas about what "organized" looks like, and how to find common ground without compromising individual needs.
Audrey's approach centers around understanding and accommodating different organizing styles within a household, recognizing that what works for one person may not work for another. She shares how she helps her clients conquer clutter and develop organization skills through practical tips and transformative perspectives. We'll dive into the concept of visual and non-visual organizing, macro and micro organizing, and how these preferences can impact our home environments.
From creating designated spaces for specific items to making belongings easily accessible for children, Audrey emphasizes the importance of functionality and the benefits of teaching independence to our neurodiverse children. Gain insights into how to reduce clutter and streamline daily routines to foster a calm and organized living environment.
By the end of the episode, you'll walk away with a newfound understanding of your own organizing style, as well as the tools and perspectives needed to create an environment that works for your whole neurodiverse family.
Plus, don't miss out on Audrey’s free gift: a workbook that provides examples and exercises to help you further explore your own organizing style:
Your Signature Organizing Style Workbook.
See details at the end of this article.
And if you liked this, here’s another great conversation with Audrey:
One Parent's Compassionate Call to Help Others on the Atypical Kids Journey.
Focus on creating systems that work for your family's needs, even if they go against conventional norms. Don't get caught up in trying to achieve the minimalist or rainbow-colored homes seen on social media. The goal is to create an environment that enables children to do things independently and feel a sense of calm and organization. When it comes to organizing, functionality should take precedence over perfection.
Tune in to "Mindfully Parenting Atypical Kids" wherever you get your podcasts, and let's embark on this journey to a more organized and harmonious home together.
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Ratings and reviews on Apple Podcasts are extremely helpful!
Transcript:
Kate Lynch: I'm here with Audrey Berry, a friend who I sought out because I needed help with organizing.
I am a classic neurodivergent scattered and creative person With a lot of ideas and projects all going on at the same time, very multi passionate, and Audrey specifically helps people with ADHD to organize their homes, which is so exciting. So I had a consultation with Audrey about my sock drawer, and I was probably your worst client. It took me months. I actually ended up doing what we had talked about, and it was really helpful, and I am very proud of my sock drawer now.
Audrey Berry is the creator of Just an Organized Home where she helps creative-messy-ADHD women conquer clutter, learn organization, and reclaim their space. As an ADHD organizing specialist, Audrey is all about functional homes that work for you. She is also a homeschooling alum having graduated her 2 kids, including a special needs child.
That is so cool. You fit right in here.
This is what I wanted to talk about today, and you can tell me what you think. I'd love to have you help us figure out how to organize our homes so they actually work for our whole neurodiverse family. We can talk about what you think is important about that as a parent and organization expert.
Listeners, you can let me know if this is true or not, but generally, I think we all want to parent our neurodivergent kids with less chaos and more ease.
So I'm hoping this conversation will help us all to set up our systems in our homes, in our lives, that'll help our whole family, the whole neurodiverse family, because it's not just about one kid or the kids. It's about all of us, to feel calmer. And more organized. What do you think?
Audrey Berry: Yeah, definitely. I know for myself, my oldest child hit middle school and the wheels just came off the wagon. It was like, why is this not working? Why is this so hard? And in the years that followed of exploring what does that mean and what is, what are the issues and what can we do differently or better, or how can I help this? And that's really where I started learning a lot more about neurodivergence and realizing for myself when my own kid had diagnoses, I was like, Oh, That sounds like me, especially the ADHD. My daughter is not only ADHD, she's also autistic. I don't have a formal diagnosis for myself, but I'm pretty sure that apple did not fall far from this tree.
You know, I do understand that feeling of like, why is this not working? And I think a lot of parents, they have beliefs about how things should be organized in their home, specifically. But those ideas may not be helping their kids like get out the door in the morning. Yes, for sure.
I know for myself, one of the ideas that I came across in, in all of my years of working on, how do I organize better? How do I organize me better? All of that sort of thing. I eventually became An ADHD organizing specialist, but along the way I read a lot of books and I did a lot of exploring and one of the ideas that I came across originally came from a book about clutter bugs and it's these organizing types and that really super resonated with me and explained so much about why is it that you have your ideas about what organized looks like and those messages come from your home of origin, your own personal preferences, your temperament, a lot of things, but one of the biggest things is your organizing style.
I interpreted it all into how does this framework work with neurodivergence and in particular for ADHD. But really this applies to anybody who has neurodivergence. One of the things that she talks about is this grid.
Imagine four quadrants. The four quadrants are on these two axes. There's one that's, are you visual or non visual when it comes to organizing? Do you need to see your stuff? Or do you not like to see your stuff? You want it all put away. That's one axis. And the other axis is, are you a macro organizer or a micro organizer? And a macro organizer thinks in big categories, big buckets like, One drawer for all the office supplies is fine, whereas a micro organizer wants the little desk organizer with all the little slots so that all the pencils are in one place and the pens are in another and, that sort of thing. Micro, little tiny categories for everything. And when you put those two axes together, you get these four different basic organizing styles.
And when you fall into one of those styles, and your child falls into a different one, or sometimes it's your spouse that falls into a different category, you can end up with this conflict of uh, we need to do it this way. Why can't you follow my system? Why isn't this working? Why do you never put your shoes away? Why do you always leave your stuff everywhere? A lot of times it's because we have these different organizing styles.
And especially as a parent, because what a lot of people think of as organizing is what they see on Pinterest, which are these like immaculately perfect, beautiful, minimalist or rainbow colored homes, right?
K: What would you call, what style would you call that?
A: If I was going to put that into that category, most of the time what you see is visual micro organizing. If you think of the home edit, They decant everything into those little plastic containers so you can see it, but then they organize it by rainbow color, right? That makes sense for some things, like clothes maybe. But if I rainbow organized all those books behind me, I would never be able to find my books. It would make me crazy.
A lot of times what you see is that I would say if you've ever followed Marie Kondo, most of us have heard or seen her show or whatever. I would say Marie Kondo is more of a, also a micro, but a hidden organizer. She's a non visual. But those are like a, The categories most of the time what you see in books and magazines and stuff are these micro organizing systems, either visual or non visual, but they're often very micro focused, like you’ve got to have everything in the exact right spot, and you’ve got to have the right containers in the right and everything has to match and all this kind of stuff.
K: I have a funny story about Marie Kondo. I loved the idea, I heard all about Marie Kondo, I sometimes I watch the show, it's so fun to watch. But I got the book, and the book sat at the top of a stack of books for about a year. I took a picture of it. I was like, this is just too hilarious. I've got this stack of books with this Marie Kondo book teetering on top.
A: Teetering on top, mocking me of how much I am not like her. It's so true. Yeah. People, because they think this is what organizing looks like, or that's the way my mom did it, or my grandmother, or whatever. That's how we do things. And so when it doesn't look like that or that doesn't work for you, you end up with just chaos a lot of times. Or you end up very frustrated with the other people in your house or sometimes frustrated with yourself. Cause like I can relate to that feeling of like, why can't I make it look like that?
K: I've had a lot of shame around it.
A: Yes, there's a lot of shame around not, having your house be like picture perfect all the time. Like you could snap a picture at any second for Instagram and be proud of it. And it's like, oh my goodness, almost nobody can do it. You took this picture, but I want to know what did you shove out of the way?
K: I was just looking around.
A: Right. Because before we got on the camera, I'm like, Okay, what's in the background? Do I need to move anything? You feel that way you feel like you need to perform.
K: And when we have neurodivergent kids, we can't. So that all goes out the window. You tell me, but for me, especially when Ocean was younger, everything was in chaos. Everything went out the window and I just sort of gave up on a lot, including having an organized home.
A: Yes. Yes. For myself, because I think I am also have ADHD tendencies, I did great all the way up until I had children. I could keep it together because I just didn't have that much stuff. But once I had kids, It was just like the explosion of baby gear and being incredibly tired all the time and just having little people that just constantly create masses and It just was that was the straw that broke the camel's back for me Like I just couldn't keep up with it And then we started homeschooling, like when my kids were like preschool age, we started doing preschool at home and my house was just unbelievably packed with stuff and chaotic and because I'm a non visual like I don't want to see all this stuff, but there literally was no place in my entire house to put all this stuff. I live in a house that's over 100 years old, and there is no storage space in my house.
K: So what did you do?
A: It just piled up everywhere. I went vertical, I had shelves that just had so much stuff crammed on them. I had Games piled so high on top of a dresser and everything was just shoved everywhere and it was chaotic. And I just hit that breaking point where I was like, I can't do this anymore. I feel that shame thing, like I'm a bad mom. I'm being a bad example. My kids aren't learning how to clean up and it's just like, what are they growing up in? It's horrible.
I spent an entire summer when my kids were two and four, I think that's how old they were, I spent a whole summer working on decluttering my house and getting stuff out. I learned a lot in the process of what works and what doesn't work.
It helped a lot to just reduce the volume. But even reducing the volume doesn't necessarily make your house functional. It's better for sure. Like not having towering piles of stuff is better, but. Finding the ways that actually work for you and work for your children is a big deal. I personally am a non visual macro organizer. So what I what works best for me is what I call hidden home organizing. I don't want to see the stuff, but I also don't want it to be hard to put away.
I like baskets that you just toss things into, I love things that can go like in a closet or a cupboard and then you just shut the door and you can't see it. That's what I like, okay? And my children are also macro organizers. We could not save our lives by putting every little thing in a slot.
K: I know people who love that.
A: There are people who love that, and that's great. And it's fine as long as everybody's on board with that. But if that's your style, if you're a micro organizer, But you have neurodivergent children, there's a very good chance that your neurodivergent children are macro organizers.
Now, not everybody who's neurodivergent is. I'm just saying, there's a tendency to kind of drift that direction especially for ADHD people, macro is almost always the default because you just can't be bothered to put every little thing away in a certain place. It's just hard.
K: On the spectrum of neurodivergent, I'm thinking of OCD.
A: OCD is a whole other story, people definitely are probably micro organizers.
K: More often.
A: More often. They want everything to be in an exact space and a particular slot. You can't mix the pencils with the markers. In a container like no, no, no, we can't do that. So it gets really tough if that's your inclination, but you have a child that's could care less about which way. They just shove everything in whatever. And I would say small children tend to default to macro organizing because they're little and they just don't have the capacity to do a whole lot more than that. As they get older they will, naturally, shift to one of those kind of positions. But when you have the opposite, and sometimes it's the other way around, it's a parent who's a macro organizer and you have a super meticulous kid and they get really upset when things are not just so.
K: A lot of people with autism like to line things up in order. And organize things in that way.
A: That's why when you're talking about neurodivergence, you're talking about a whole spectrum of people from extremely micro organizing to extremely macro organizing.
K: And they could all live in the same house.
A: They could all live in the same house, and it can be super hard. So generally speaking, the people who want more categories. Usually, in order to keep peace in the house, you have to give way in the public spaces to the people who have less categories. If you want them to put anything away, you have to make it possible for them to do it. In your personal spaces, you can be as micro as you want to be. But if you have people who are macros and you want them to get laundry into a hamper, it's better to just have one basket that they can throw things into, rather than making them sort it by color.
The more categories you create, the less likely it is for them to succeed at it. And so the default has to be to accommodate people who have less categories, and with the visual versus non visual, it has to go towards the people who need the visual, because, like, for me, I don't want to see it, I want it all put away, but for someone who needs to see their stuff in order for them to even know that it exists. You can't hide it. You can't put it behind closed doors.
K: Right, like if I put certain things away, I would never remember to do them. To take care of them.
A: If you make your kid put their homework away in a drawer or in the backpack or inside of something, for them it may cease to exist, right?
K: Exactly, yeah.
A: And so the default has to be towards the people who need to see their stuff, which means visual. So the default has to be towards the people who need to see their stuff and less categories.
K: So how do you do that?
A: When I think about my kids, we started out with dressers for clothes. But even four or five drawers, first of all, it's a bunch of different drawers that you have to sort clothes into. And second of all, it's out of sight. When you shut the drawer, they're gone. It took me a long time to realize that my kids were struggling with that, with getting their clothes into a drawer, like sorting it.
Even though, in my mind, that's not that much sorting, but for them it was, and once they put it in the drawer and shut the drawer, it's like. their clothes just disappear. They don't exist for them anymore. What I found was my kids would never put their clothes away in the dresser. The dresser would just be empty. They would just leave all their clothes folded up in the laundry basket. These are clean clothes, right? So I finally realized, does it really matter if they put their clothes away? Who actually cares? Besides maybe me because I want things to be put away and hidden but my kids did not want that and they had a hard time with it and they just didn't do it. And I'm like, I'm not going to put all these clothes away.
So I finally decide, you know what, this does not matter. It doesn't matter if their clothes sit in a laundry basket in their room and they just get clothes out of it every day and put them on.
K: And that made it possible for them?
A: To this day, both of my kids, they are adults now, they don't have dressers at all. My son up until the day he left home, he had a laundry basket full of clean clothes and another box that he put dirty clothes into. That was his entire system. It's either clean or it's dirty. And it all sat out in the room so he could see it. And my daughter is the same way.
Now she has a dresser and what she does with the dresser is she puts away the out of season clothes. But she has told me many times. She's like, mom, I can't even remember what's in there. She has no idea what's in those drawers until she opens them and digs through them. So whatever she's currently wearing, she keeps in a laundry basket.
K: For me, a couple of times a year. It's like Christmas. I go through my off season clothes and I'm like, I get so excited! I'm like, oh, I forgot I had this.
A: So for me, a lot of it was just realizing, does this actually matter? And it's like almost all the time the answer is no, unless there's literally a health or safety issue involved, it actually doesn't matter. What matters is, does this work? Is it functional? If it works, then that's a great system. It doesn't matter if that's not what other people do or the right way to do it, whatever.
K: I think a lot of parents when they're struggling with parenting and advocating for their kids and all the other things they're wanting it to be simple.
So I know one of the big things is getting out the door in the morning and teaching our kids life skills, activities of daily living. And I'm a huge fan of the visual checklist, like things to make those routines easier. But I'm wondering if you have suggestions of ways to organize space. To make those routines, especially that one of getting out the door in the morning because there's so much pressure.
A: It's so stressful. There's this pretty hard deadline, especially if your kid catches the bus. I was a bus kid all of my life. There's this dread to this day. Sometimes when I hear the sound of a bus go by, there's this like moment of like panic. It's like, Oh my gosh, am I missing the bus? I haven't ridden a bus in decades, but that feeling still exists within me. So I understand that stress of you've got to be at the bus stop. You've got to get going because you only have so much time to get there.
A few things that come to mind. One thing is doing things the night before is a big deal. Make sure the backpack is fully loaded. Make sure the lunches are made all the way to whatever point you can make them. Pick out your outfit the day before. If all you had to do was get up, put on the pre selected clothes, grab your backpack, grab your lunch box, boom, you're out the door. Maybe you need to brush your teeth or eat some breakfast, whatever. But like you could roll out of bed and be out the door in five minutes if you had to be.
K: I know parents who put their kids in their clothes the night before and have their kids wear their clothes for school.
A: That could work too. It would definitely cut down on a lot of trying to hurry.
K: Especially if those kids are still learning how to dress themselves. That's a big thing of expecting kids to be able to dress themselves. They were able to do it on Saturday morning when they had all the time in the world, but suddenly Monday morning comes and we have to be out the door by 6:30, and they have their pants on backwards or they, can't figure out and they get frustrated. And then there's a meltdown.
A: Right, right. Having things as ready as possible ahead of time is good. Having things at their point of use. That is also another big thing. When your kid gets home from school, what do they do as they walk in the door? Probably they drop their backpack and their jacket and their lunch box. They just drop everything right by the front door. So, hey, if that's where people are going to drop things anyway, why not create a space to put those things. Right away as you come in the door, here's a hook, you're just going to hang your jacket and your backpack up right here, or take your shoes off, there's a nice place to put your shoes when you come in the door. Whatever it is that you do in your home, make it easy, point of access.
Laundry baskets, think about where do people get undressed? Do they do it in the bathroom because they take a shower or a bath at night? And that's where the clothes come off. Then you need to have your laundry basket in the bathroom. If your kids get undressed in their bedrooms, they need a laundry basket or a hamper in the bedroom, right? Where is it that they do things? If they come home and like in my house, we take off our shoes. If you, if they take off their shoes and socks, and then the shoes and socks just end up in a big. the heap at the front door. Maybe you need a little sock basket. This is where you put your socks when you take them off when you get home. And here's your spot for your shoes.
And even if they don't actually get it into the slot or the basket, if you're coming along behind them picking up, it's super easy for you to be like, shoes here, socks here. You have an easy way to pick up and put things away. I'm taking notes. Because it's right there point of use is a big deal. Sometimes we resist having more than one of whatever because we think, I already have that. I don't want to spend money on that, but sometimes having an extra whatever is super helpful.
K: Water bottle.
A: Well, hello, water bottle.
Hello, scissors. I cannot tell you how much time I have wasted looking for pairs of scissors because someone borrowed them and used them and left them wherever they used them. If I have a pair of scissors in the bedroom and I have one in the kitchen and I have one in my wrapping paper station because, oh my gosh, the last thing I want to do if I'm trying to wrap a gift is go look for a pair of scissors. Is it that hard to have a pair of scissors wherever you need them? No.
K: Yeah, but I'm so resistant to it. It's so funny.
A: I know. The scissors go in this kitchen drawer. That's where nobody uses those scissors. Put them where they get used and duplicate them if you need to. I think about yeah, water bottles is a good one. I actually duplicated the vacuum cleaner because I live in this incredibly vertical house. It has tiny floors. There are four levels in my house. Do I want to lug a vacuum cleaner up and down all of those stairs? No, I do not. And because I didn't want to, I didn't vacuum as much as I needed to be vacuuming. I finally said, you know what? We need an upstairs vacuum cleaner. And I bought another vacuum cleaner so that my kids could vacuum their rooms without having to go all the way downstairs to get the vacuum cleaner and lug it up and then lug it back down. Because they were never going to do that.
K: I love that. And I never would have thought about that.
A: Does it seem like a little redundant and expensive to have a second vacuum cleaner? Yes, but does it save a lot of like frustration and stress? Yes.
So you’ve got to think how much is that stress point worth to you? Is it worth a hundred bucks for a second vacuum cleaner? It's not to be the greatest vacuum cleaner in the world. It just has to be something that the kids can run over their carpets or whatever the thing is that's hindering you, right?
K: I just want to pause for a moment and acknowledge; if you're listening to this and you're thinking, my kid is never going to vacuum their own room. Or, my kid freaks out at the sound of the vacuum cleaner because it's like a sensory assault and they feel like they're being attacked. You are not alone. You are not alone. And it is incredible what maturity does. It's not about age based developmental milestones. It's not about that at all. It's your own child's maturity. But you will be surprised as your child gets older, what changes happen. And I'm not saying they're always good, but I can't, like as far as Ocean is concerned, there are things I never thought he would be able to do that he is doing now.
Yes, he still needs a lot of reminders. His job is the recycling and we live in an apartment building. So maybe you have suggestions for this, but getting him to check the recycling himself has not happened yet, but the fact that he gets the recycling, takes it down to the basement by himself, comes back up, puts the bins away under the sink. I never would have thought that was possible.
A: Yeah, my kid is 20. She's grown up, right? And, yes, over the years, there are more and more things that she's been able to do. And she becomes more capable. But even now, a lot of times, she's capable of doing the entire task, except initiating it.
K: Oh yeah, task initiation.
A: I feel like task initiation is like the last piece i n the puzzle, like it will take the longest to get to that, where they see something that needs to be done and they do it. They can know how to do the entire task and be like able, but that task initiation thing is it's just takes a long time for that one to get there.
K: Don't be discouraged, but can you suggest any organizing, other than like having things be more visible. I guess that's the most important thing is like if they see it, they might actually realize it needs to be done. They might. Anything else?
A: Yes. I actually asked my daughter what are some of the things that you think were really helpful? And one of the things that she said was, for her at least, was that having certain objects having a designated space. For example, her phone, she only allows herself to put it down in two different places. It either goes on the nightstand or it goes, on the desk. Like those are the only two places that she will put it down because if she puts it down somewhere else.
K: Where's my phone?
A: I don't know where it went. It disappeared. I can't find it. Having a certain space, like, this is where this thing lives. And you try to put things where you're going to use them. So it makes sense. But she said that was really helpful. Sometimes the labels are helpful. Either like they could be words, but they could also be pictures depending on your kid and where they're at. Sometimes just a picture of what goes where is super helpful.
I know sometimes when I work in the church nursery, they have these little pictures of where all the toys go back, and that's super helpful, because I wouldn't necessarily know, I might put them away, but they might not be really where they're supposed to be.
K: Yeah. Brilliant.
A: And also just limiting the amount of stuff helps a lot. For her, it was just like, mom, I just can't handle that many different objects. Sliding towards minimalism for her was helpful. Be sensitive to what your kid is telling you, you know? How much can they handle?
Do they need a collection of stuffed animals that's just so many, they can't really deal with it? Would they be better off having, their two favorite lovies sitting on the bed, instead of 50 of them, because then they can never make their bed. Or can you corral all of those things and make them a single unit? I've seen those little hammock things that you can put all your little stuffies in and then it's one unit, instead of a million things you have to take off the bed and put back. One at a time. But like a basket full of lovies isn't so hard. I can deal with that.
K: Ocean had a really hard time with getting rid of any of his stuff. I think that he felt so identified with his things that it almost felt like tearing a piece off of him. That was the sense I got. I'm wondering, have you come across that where people just really are so attached to their stuff.
A: For sure. I would say my son tended to be much more attached to things and objects. Like I can remember at one season of his life, there were things like he did not want me to throw away his old toothbrush, and he didn't want me to throw away his raggedy worn out sandals that didn't even fit his feet anymore, but I couldn't throw them away. He was like getting things back out of the trash if he saw them in there. I think sometimes the answer is to just let it be for the moment and not get so uptight about it. Sometimes as a parent, you just need to be like, It's okay.
K: I feel like that's a big lesson that we're learning today.
A: Yes, sometimes it's okay. Because the kid is gonna keep maturing. At some point they may be like, why are these here? I don't want these anymore. And then they're ready to get rid of those things. And it's certainly much easier. With kids that like out of sight out of mind just put it away where they're not seeing it all the time without actually getting rid of it. Because if they ask about it, you still have it. But eventually they're going to forget about it and then you can just get rid of it. Sometimes it comes down to that, because you cannot keep old toothbrushes and old sandals forever, right?
K: Not in this apartment.
A: You only have so much space. But I do understand the sometimes one of the things that I found helpful was letting your child decide how much and what they want to keep. For example my kids each had a box that they could keep their special memory items in. And that was totally up to them, but whatever they kept had to fit in the box. Over the years, things would come in and go out because as they got older, they'd get rid of things because there were other things they felt were better treasures, but it was their decision what to keep. I just limited to a certain container. This is what we can keep. Or you can only have as many clothes as fit in the drawer or the laundry basket and it can't fall over onto the floor. And if it is, that means that we need to decide which ones we are ready to let go of.
K: Yeah, I love that. And I loved it - just to bring it back full circle - when we were talking about my sock drawer, one of the things you said was, how many pairs of socks do you actually need, and decide on that. And then just have that many pairs of socks.
A: Especially if you have a lot of something, the chances that you're gonna wear out any given pair is so low because you have so many of them. You're never gonna wear them all out. There might be a few favorites that you do wear out.
I remember one client I had. They were into pajamas. They had a lot of pajamas, so many. And it was really tough for them to get rid of any of them because they all had a special meaning. Oh, these are the ones my mom gave. Oh, these are the ones that, oh, I love these one. They all had some special, whatever. And it was really hard for that person to get rid of them.
We talked about containers like containers are like the limits of what you can have. If you want to have more, for example in this person wanted to have more pajamas. I was like, where do you keep them now? It's like they're supposed to be in this drawer or this bin Do they fit? No. Okay. She was able to get rid of a few, but not very many. Then it was like, okay, if you want to have another container full of these, that means that you need to get rid of something else to make room for this thing that's more important to you.
So for me, if you look behind me, you see a lot of books. I have a lot of books because I value them and I want to make space for them. But that means I don't have lots of little figurines or knickknacks or photos or whatever, because I don't have room for those.
K: It just reminds me, something I love to ask my guests is what are your core values? Because I really want listeners to be thinking about that themselves, like bringing it back to what's most important? Yes. So do you want to talk about your core values?
A: The thing that I keep coming back to is, what is the most important is it has to work. It doesn't matter how pretty something is if it doesn't work for you. That's what I keep coming back to, like for me, containers, it's all about function. How much space do you have? If it doesn't fit in the space, then it's not functioning for you. It's overflowing and becoming a problem.
Here's an example from me. I, at one point thought, Oh, it'd be so cool to have all those clear containers in the pantry and everything all matching and all uniform. And I bought a whole bunch of those containers and I decanted everything into them. And I put them on the shelf and I realized this is so much work, like not just the setup, but like maintaining it. Like every time I buy a package, I'm going to have to open and decant it into this bin. And if it's not completely empty, it's not all going to fit. So then I have to figure out what to do with that little bit of extra. And I realized I just created a much harder thing for me to do. And I also realized, which I did not know before I did this, that All those containers take up the same amount of space, whether they're full or empty. Whereas my little bags of beans, I used them up, they got smaller. And I realized, this is actually less functional for me. Because it's creating more work for me, and it's taking up more space.
K: That makes so much sense.
A: So it's not actually functional, even though it looked really like the photo op was great. It looked beautiful, but it didn't work. It wasn't functional. So I come back to that a lot. Think about what is working, not only for you, but for your kids.
What actually works for them? Do they need you to move things so that they are where they use them. Do you need to buy another one? Do you need to make things accessible? Do you need to lower the clothes bar down lower so your smaller children can reach the clothes bar? If they can't reach it, they can't hang anything up. Or, do you need to put all your lunch supplies down low so that your kids can get things out and make their own lunches? Or whatever the situation is, are you making it functional? Are you making it work? Even if it doesn't seem like that's how other people do things, or that's not the way you see things organized on Pinterest, or whatever. That really doesn't matter.
It comes down to what is going to work for you. And what is going to keep the peace and the stress levels low? Because do you really want to be constantly harping about, put your clothes away, do you really want that to be your relationship with your child? Where you're constantly bossing them around and telling them what to do, what to do, what to do, what to do. Or are you going to create an environment that makes it more possible for them to do things without you constantly harping or reminding about things? I realize there's a spectrum of how much support do your children actually need. But you want to enable them to do as much as they possibly can.
K: We create the scaffold, right? And then we start to take away the scaffold, but it has to make sense. Like you said and if it's more streamlined, then hopefully as you start to take away the scaffolding. They can maintain the structure.
You have something that you're going to give away to our listeners, right?
A: Yes, I do. I have a workbook. I'm just going to show this isn't exactly the cover, but it's pretty close to the cover. It's this thing about organizing styles.
K: Oh, look at that. It's great. And for those who are not looking or only listening, we should probably describe it, but also they will, they can get it. They can download it.
A: So this is what this is. It's a grid. It's got four sections, like a quadrants, four quadrants in it. And each quadrant is one of the four styles, and it's a picture of like what does this style look like when it's organized. And this workbook talks through those four styles. What are they and what's the difference between the styles and it gives a lot of examples, both written and visual pictures so that you can see and get a sense of where do you fall in the spectrum. Because it is a spectrum right it's not like you're one or the other. Sometimes you can be one in certain areas of your home but a different style in other areas.
K: That's the case for me for sure yeah absolutely.
A: When it comes to like laundry maybe you're one way but when it comes to your desk drawers you like them a different way. There's it's mix and match as well, but understanding not only how you look at organizing and what makes sense to you, but also what makes sense to the different people in your house. And how can you accommodate and how can you set expectations so that like you're not accusing the other one of being messy, or disorganized, or not listening, or never doing their job, or whatever the thing is. Because that causes a lot of conflict, right?
K: I love that. That's so liberating. They're not wrong because they're doing it differently. They might just have a different organizing style.
A: Yes. When you understand that, it suddenly makes so much more sense. Why your child wants all their possessions to be out, because if they're visual, and you make them put them all away, they can't see any of it. And then for them, it's almost like it doesn't even exist. And they don't want that. They want to see all their stuff. And when you understand that then you realize they're not just being messy or disobeying you or whatever. It's like they're just trying to do what makes sense to them.
Then you can try to find ways that will work for them. Set up systems that work for their style that will be organized instead of just a pile of toys on the floor because they want to see everything. Now you've got, like some open shelves with clear bins that they can see everything, but it's more organized, right? You can create organization systems that will work for them and make you feel better about what's going on, but isn't going to be impossible for them to do.
K: We'll put the link for the workbook, Your Signature Organizing Style Workbook. We're going to put the link in the show notes. And you have a Facebook group.
A: We would love to have you there. It's a supportive place for people who struggle with organizing. I really believe that organizing is a learnable skill. It's not you're born organized or you're not. You can become better at it. I help people realize that they can learn things that will help them.
K: Yeah. And help their whole neurodivergent family to function more smoothly.
A: Yes. As you learn how to organize for yourself, it empowers you to help your children learn how to organize. That was a big thing. I remember as a child myself, I was a messy child. My room, I had so many interests. I was a busy, busy child. And I had a lot of stuff and it was super hard for me to keep it organized.
I remember the most disempowering phrase of my childhood was go clean up your room because I did not know how to clean up my room. I didn't know what that meant. I didn't know how to do that. It was too much. It was too overwhelming. With my children, I never told them to go clean up their room when they were small ever. I said, let's go clean up your room. We're going to do it together. We go in and we're going to work on things together. And I would help them learn how to clean up their room. Some kids are motivated by let's beat the clock and games and other kids like get stressed out by that. Know your kid. But you can put on fun music, you can make it a game, but definitely do it with them, and show them and teach them the skill. It's like that scaffolding. You don't just send them off to build a building by themselves. And eventually I got to the point where I would come in the room and I would. I would coach them, but I'd let them do the work.
And then eventually I could say, Hey going to clean up your room. What are you going to do first? Okay, first I'm going to do this, then I'm going to do this, and this, and they run down the little five step plan or whatever. I love that. And then I say, all right, go do it. I'm going to time you. See how fast you do it. You're slowly taking the scaffolding away, but you're empowering them to do the job because you're teaching them. Because you've learned how to do it yourself, then you can help them learn how to do it too.
K: I feel so much more empowered right now. I wonder if you have any final words. That was a great way to end, what you've shared today is just such a blessing. Thank you so much. If other parents get half as much out of it as I have, I think they'll be super grateful, as grateful as I am. In Audrey's Facebook group tell her what helped.
You can write a review on the podcast and tell us about it. That would be lovely. We would really appreciate that. We'd love to hear how it impacted you and how you're applying what you learned here today. Well, Audrey, thank you so much.
A: Thank you. It was great talking to you. It's so fun. I love this stuff. This is what lights me up.
Here’s another great conversation with Audrey: One Parent's Compassionate Call to Help Others on the Atypical Kids Journey
Audrey has a FREE gift for you as a subscriber here, or a listener of the Mindfully Parenting Atypical Kids Podcast:
Your Signature Organizing Style Workbook:
Stop blindly following systems that don’t work for your family. Discover the 4 different organizing styles so you can work WITH your strengths to create lifelong organization in your home. Set up a functional home that supports your kids’ activities of daily living (ADL), life skills, and routines.
Audrey's website and facebook group:
https://justanorganizedhome.com
https://www.facebook.com/groups/justanorganizedhome
The book Audrey mentioned:
The Clutter Connection by Cassandra Aarssen.
Inspired by our chat, Audrey created a training to help you teach your neurodivergent kid to clean their bedroom:
Clean Your Room!* This no-fluff training will give your kid more independence, clarity, and confidence. You’ll learn Audrey Berry’s proven step-by-step techniques to:
Work WITH your kid’s strengths to create lifelong organization skills.
Support your kid’s activities of daily living (ADL).
Adapt to your child's unique ability levels.
A Downloadable Workbook contains easy charts to remind you of the organizing styles, the teaching process, and the step-by-step plans for cleaning a bedroom.
3 short videos cover:
How to recognize organizing styles and work with them.
Learn how to teach your child essential life skills.
Step-by-step directions for cleaning a bedroom that you can teach your child.
*That’s an affiliate link so I get a little something when you buy at no cost to you. It’s a fantastic deal at $27, I’ve seen the course and I LOVE it and will be testing it out with Ocean. Let me know if you’d like a follow-up post on our progress!
I'm not your target audience since my kids have kids, but I would guess that all of us are neurodivergent in one way or another, so your podcasts are really helpful! Especially this one with Audrey Berry on organizational styles! Even though I don't have to accommodate anyone else's organizing styles since I live alone now, I still really struggle with organizing and it has proven a big impediment to realizing my goals! I have done some reading and a lot of thinking about why I find organizing my stuff so difficult, but hearing about visual and non-visual organizers and micro vs macros organizers gave me the first glimmer of hope! I'm one of those people for whom things that are out of sight are dead to me! It's a lot of work for me to imagine the things I have put away! However, I am kind of a perfectionist in that I want it all to be out of sight! So I am in conflict! Recently I have drawn myself maps of where everything is stored. It's very comforting but it's not the same as having it out where I can see it, which is not practical. Thanks for all the great insights!