Adults Diagnosed with ADHD Later in Life, Part 4: The ADHD Struggle of Cleaning for Guests

In this guest blog, my friend Shellie, who was diagnosed with ADHD as an adult, describes life with ADHD and the struggle of cleaning when company is on the way. Many people with ADHD know the routine: the house stays at an acceptable level of mess until guests are coming, and suddenly, everything needs to be done.

Cleaning at Warp Speed

It appears I’ve been involuntarily subscribed to the late-in-life-diagnosed ADHDers. While I fully reject the “late-in-life” assessment, the latter part tracks.

I spent more than 30 years disregarding the hours lost to a single minor task, the endless side quests pursued to avoid a monumental chore that ultimately required just 11 minutes of my attention, and the embarrassing number of projects I started only to abandon once I’d mastered the skill. Why keep doing something when there are so many other things to learn?

After my diagnosis, I lost hours studying executive dysfunction while avoiding work projects. I researched tips, tricks, tools, and techniques that might take the place of medication.

Give me a good hyperfocus activity: something repetitive, full of easy wins, and capable of holding my attention without sending me jumping from one topic to another.

So, company was on the way, and I was tidying at warp speed. Each room became its own area of operation, except for the living room, where my partner sat stewing. I could tell something was up, but time was running out, and I still had a list of things to finish before our guests arrived.

I continued working through my list until he interrupted me, startling me out of my focus. I’d been vacuuming while holding a package of toilet paper that needed to be distributed among the bathrooms.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Nothing! I’ve got it covered.”

“Well, apparently you don’t. You’re all over the place and picking up speed.”

I searched my brain for an easy answer. When I’m in full operation mode, I do not delegate well. At all.

“Why don’t you dust?”

He collected the dusting mitt from the hall closet, his preferred tool for a job it was designed to do. I use a cloth diaper that used to be mine 54 years ago. I’m not even kidding.

I watched from the corner of my eye as he swiped the furniture, sending dust motes scattering around him like quiet fireworks. I cringed. He caught my look.

“What?”

“Do you want the stuff that goes with that? The Pledge?”

“Sure. Where is it?”

Friends, I’m not sure I’ve ever bought actual Pledge. I prefer the almond-scented stuff in a spray bottle. It’s also likely that I have at least three bottles because I always forget to check whether we’re out before buying more.

I suggested it was under the sink and continued marching toward the end of my list and 3 p.m.

A few minutes later, he muttered something I couldn’t quite hear while dragging the contents of the cabinet under the sink onto the kitchen floor. My list grew as I watched the mess unfold and realized I was never going to finish in time.

“Where’s the damned Pledge? It’s not under here.”

Of course it wasn’t. We don’t have Pledge. What we do have is kept inside the mitt he was wearing. In my brain, these pieces of information didn’t require me to actually communicate them. He had to lift the mitt off the bottle of almond-scented cleaner, as though he hadn’t noticed it.

Also, “Pledge” has fallen into the generic-name category along with Lego, Kleenex, and Xerox. In everyday use, the name has lost its unique identity and become a common noun.

While these facts seemed obvious to me, saying “Pledge” apparently meant we must own an actual can of Pledge-brand dusting solution. Again, we don’t, nor have we ever.

So I stopped what I was doing, put down everything I was holding, and retrieved the almond-scented cleaner from the hall closet. When I turned around, he was shoving things back under the sink and cursing—in Spanish, I think.

At this point, my momentum was gone. The pleasant Sunday afternoon had grown cloudy indoors, and the newly airborne dust motes had settled onto the freshly washed floors and vacuumed furniture.

I sighed audibly, turned, and began dusting.

I heard a door slam.

How My ADHD Cleaning Strategy Makes Sense to Me

I was diagnosed with ADHD at 35. I tried medication, but the side effects were strange enough that it wasn’t a good solution for managing what I’d already been managing for decades. “Managing” probably isn’t the most accurate term.

I read as much as I could, provided it was 140 characters or less, engaging without being pedantic, and accessible during the wee hours when I made time to sit still and read.

I try hard not to let my overly full brain and somewhat absurd processes affect anyone in my circle. Sometimes, that means holding on to random thoughts or suggestions that may not be received well. Other times, I try to cloak my unique approaches to tasks.

That afternoon, my method was to maximize efficiency by working in whatever room I found myself in. If I had to put something in another room, I stayed there working until I had to put something somewhere else, and so on.

This is entirely logical and massively efficient.

To me.

But outside my brain, I suspect it went a little like this:

He watched me stride down the hall carrying an extremely full laundry basket, bouncing off the doorframes while trying to see where I was going and not asking for help.

Seconds later, I made my way back down the hall with dishtowels to put away, carrying a pair of full trash cans to add to the kitchen garbage. Since I was in the kitchen, I unloaded the dishwasher and packed a Goodwill box. Then I unpacked a storage box full of dishes and made a huge pile of paper on the floor.

I gathered the paper, staggered outside to stash it in a bin, circled back down the hall to finish making the guest bed, and then returned to the pile of laundry waiting to be folded.

It was when I turned on the vacuum that he erupted.

Eight minutes until our guests arrived.

About the Author

Shellie lives between the beach and the river and works in tech and real estate. She doesn’t believe in the idea of free time, so when she isn’t being paid to pay attention, she can be found kayaking or creating images of Frederick Douglass out of wool.