Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD, 2nd Edition-Revised and Updated: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized Paperback – Illustrated, June 1, 2012

I have ADHD and have been rather hopelessly disorganized all my life despite the dozen or so books I have bought (and read) on the subject. This book has quite literally changed my life. I understand it, and Mrs. Pinsky understands ME. I now understand why the other books weren't effective for me, and why a few things I had tried (over-the-door hooks) worked amazingly well.This is not one of those books where you are supposed to spend a ton of money on organizing doo-dads to make all your stuff fit better; the first thing she recommends is that you throw a lot of it away. A whole lot of it. It is much easier to organize your stuff if there isn't much of it. Why didn't I think of that? The organizing tools she recommends are a hammer and nails and inexpensive bins you can buy nearly anywhere.The advice is brilliant- and you have probably never heard this advice before either- I certainly hadn't. I nearly cried with joy when I read the advice about the socks. My non-ADD mom has never understood my loathing of sock sorting and laundry in general. I modified the advice to fit our situation of course- oldest son has crew socks and batman underwear, youngest son has taller socks and ironman underwear. Sounds simple but it has made laundry sorting much more bearable at my house.The advice about the paperwork basket- can I tell you how brilliant this is? Not only do I have a clean desk because I am not afraid to trash the one important thing in the avalanche of papers my kids come home from school with; when I DO realize if have trashed something in error (like this morning) I can get it back. Ingenious- or actually common sense. Why didn't I think of this??I fortunately found this book when we were in the planning stages of building a house- I actually altered a few things in the house plan to accomodate the ideas in this book. I also threw out an unbelievable amount of stuff. Truckloads. I know the ladies at the local thrift store by name thanks to the nearly daily trips I made donating stuff. Moving day was a much more pleasant experience after throwing out probably a third of the things we own- things we didn't even need.And guess what? I can find all of my stuff. It all fits in the drawers and cabinets- In fact, I have EMPTY drawers and cabinets. It is a piece of cake to put my things away. I no longer buy things that I think I might be out of, I know exactly what I am out of because I can see it all. I even shop differently now. After throwing out so much stuff, I am much more careful about what I do buy- I consider whether I need the item or whether it will just become clutter and need to be tossed the next time I purge.Was it hard? Sort of. It was sometimes hard to throw away expensive items that I just didn't want or need, but after I got past the guilt it was a actually fun! I now know that I can find everything in my kitchen, the lid to every tupperware container, and every single item in my closet fits and looks great- how awesome is that?Someone came to see my new house the other day and said "wow- you are so organized!" For a minute I thought they were being ironic, because no one had EVER said anything like that to me before- but my house actually IS organized now! I find myself losing things less frequently, and when I do lose them, finding them more quickly because there aren't random piles of stuff everywhere with no home. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you Ms. Pinsky for writing this book! I do think this book would be helpful for people without ADD, and everyone with kids, but for many people with ADD, this will be nothing short of a miracle. It is NOT much different from the 2006 book though, so if you already have that one no need to re-buy.

I'm not a big book reviewer, but this was one that I needed to comment on...Theory is nice, but I'm tired of wasting my time reading literally dozens of books over the past 15 months that explain why I'm like I am (I have ADHD) but that don't provide practical, actionable things that I can do to get around my ADHD roadblocks.This one of the two books that I keep referring back to (the other is Your Life Can Be Better, using strategies for ADD/ADHD by Douglas Puryear--just one tip in Puryear's book has saved me about 100 hours this year). And, as I said, Pinsky's is the ONLY useful book I've read about how to handle paperwork & office organization, which is the bane of my existence. For a year I went with an intermediate version of her "filing" strategy and put my paperwork in monthly folders. I was just afraid that I'd lose something, as I always had in the past. I've since gone with the basket strategy, and it's working just fine. Try it--come over to the Dark Side...you'll never go back to (not) filing/stacking your papers everywhere because you are loathe to file them, again!No, the author doesn't have ADHD, but she totally gets us. I've implemented many of her suggestions, and I keep referring back to the book and implementing more. It's almost too much to digest at once. (Puryear's book is like that, too.)Yes, she tells us to toss a lot of crap, but when you think about it, we really need to anyhow. Purging really helps with clutter, distractions & the stress caused by all of our "stuff."She has some of the most useful tips for those of us suffering from ADD/ADHD that I've read. I can't say enough good things about this book.

I've now bought this book twice - one physical copy and one kindle copy - and I frequently refer to both. It has become THAT indispensable.Pinsky begins the book by demonstrating her understanding of ADHDers' difficulties using traditional organizational methods. And the book has a conversational, easy-to-read tone of voice and uses strategically-placed boldfacing & yellow post-it note style callouts to make the main points stand out. The book shows right away that it was created with ADHD in mind.The book primarily focuses on an organizational philosophy of easy implementation & easy upkeep. The content may mostly be specific solutions, but the solutions aren't the POINT of the book. They're just demonstrative examples, and many of them are good ideas that I hadn't thought of, or had written off as ugly or just too guilt-inducing.Not only does Pinsky prioritize efficiency, but she basically defines efficiency as "what works for you already" rather than "the most efficient system as long as you do it correctly" the way some books do. Most of the organizational solutions she presents are intended to blend in with the way we already move naturally through our day (the book gets 4 stars instead of 5 because of a few small lapses of judgment where she seems to forget this), while most books and systems demand the creation of new habits. This book isn't about beautifying your home or rearranging your life. It's about maximizing the USABILITY of your home by making everything easy to find and - most vitally - easy to put away. Because rearranging your house and upending your life & schedule is just not sustainable, as many of us with ADHD know.She does include some seemingly-counterintuitive tips - like reducing your number of tupperware containers to JUST enough for each member of the family - in order to force some new habits (this, for instance, would keep you from neglecting leftovers & force you to do dishes more often). She understands that will power won't make these habits happen, we have to make it easier to stumble into these habits than to do anything else.It's true, however, that not every solution in the book will work for everyone. Certainly not every solution presented worked for me (I could NEVER get rid of my CDs) but for me it did such a good job of explaining its philosophy of efficiency that I was able to reframe the general overarching lessons into the context of my life, my stuff, and my priorities. If you read this with the idea of "I won't necessarily take the SOLUTIONS literally, but I'll use them as a way to understand the PHILOSOPHY," then that's how you'll get the most out of it.My mother has teased my inability to put lids back on containers for pretty much my entire life, and this book suggests open-top, lowered-front bins so I can literally just toss things into them from across the room. Once you come across a solution like that, one that speaks to you personally, you know you've found YOUR organization book. And even with its imperfections, for me, nothing has come close to the usefulness of this one.