Susan C. Pinsky > Quotes

“For the ADHD client, the finishing task is the most likely to be neglected, so we must therefore value the ease of putting something away above the ease of finding it. (Because if it has been put away, it will be found, but if it hasn’t been put away, it could be lost for good.). For”
― Susan C. Pinsky, 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

“Do not use Tupperware to store cereal and other packaged goods. When used in a way that creates unnecessary extra steps, Tupperware becomes your enemy. For example, transferring your Cheerios to Tupperware containers when it already comes in a perfectly good box is a waste of time and energy. Do you really have all this extra attention to spend on repackaging all of your groceries? And are you planning to label each Tupperware with the appropriate expiration date every time you make this transfer? For heaven’s sake, I’m exhausted just thinking about it!”
― Susan C. Pinsky, 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

“Make your things easy to access and easier to put away. In the ADHD home, ease of stowage takes precedence over ease of retrieval. • Keep things where you use them, arranging possessions within activity areas or “zones.” Give everything a “home.”
― Susan C. Pinsky, 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

“For someone with ADHD, even the simplest task takes much more energy than it takes for others. To shower, get dressed, and get out the door in the morning can require the kind of care and concentration that average people expend over their entire day.”
― Susan C. Pinsky, 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

“Although it will often take someone with ADHD longer to establish a routine (and they will never stick to it slavishly), the complete absence of a routine will ambush organization in an ADHD home as thoroughly as it would in any home. We all need daily routines—looking at your calendar and to-do list first every morning, cleaning the kitchen after dinner every night, etc.—to keep us on track, as well as weekly routines—Laundry Day Saturday, Office Day Wednesday—to ground us in our week.”
― Susan C. Pinsky, 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

“The best organizational system for someone with ADHD is the one that is most efficient, streamlined, most convenient, and the fastest/easiest to maintain, because it requires the fewest number of steps and materials. To set up a maintainable system, we must first eliminate systems that are too inefficient, unwieldy, and tedious and replace them with systems that are streamlined, fast, and convenient. Often these systems sacrifice beauty for efficiency.”
― Susan C. Pinsky, Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD, 3rd Edition: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized

“Tips to Help an ADHD Child Organize ▪ Adjust your expectations for perfect order. ▪ Stay with your child through the room-cleaning process to lend him focus. ▪ Reduce the number of materials in his room so that it is simple and easy to clean. ▪ Make sure his storage systems are easy to access (low-hanging shelves and hooks). ▪ Limit the scope of his chore. ▪ Praise him lavishly when he completes it.”
― Susan C. Pinsky, 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

“Sorting and Organizing Roadmap First: Always start on the floor; a clear floor immediately provides a more restful and efficient project environment because you can easily move about. Next: Clear the surfaces as these provide staging areas for sorting. Finally: Tackle interior spaces like drawers and cupboards.”
― Susan C. Pinsky, Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD, 3rd Edition: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized

“Inventory shouldn’t just conform to storage but should be less than storage, so that it never requires a multi-step dance to put things away. Instead, every item should be stored where it is used so it can be stowed in one single motion”
― Susan C. Pinsky, 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

“Items in a way station staging area are actively in transit. An effective way station must be in the direct path of the object’s journey and should be so obvious (irritating, in fact) that we are motivated to move the item along.”
― Susan C. Pinsky, Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD, 3rd Edition: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized

“A pencil holder and a brightly colored pad of sticky notes should flank every phone in your home. These pads are not just for message taking; they are reminder notes conveniently located so you can catch your thoughts as they occur, and then quickly stick them to the surface (computer screen, exit to home, paper calendar) that will remind you to attend to that task or bring along that item when you leave the house.”
― Susan C. Pinsky, 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

“Keep a dish pan in the sink. For those occasions during the day when you can’t get the dish in the dishwasher, at least if the dirty dishes are in a pan, they can be moved aside easily if someone needs to use the sink.”
― Susan C. Pinsky, Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD, 3rd Edition: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized

“The best organizational system for someone with ADHD is the one that is most efficient, simplest, most convenient, and the easiest to maintain, because it requires the least number of steps and materials.”
― Susan C. Pinsky, 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

“get-it-done fast and sufficiently (not painstakingly and perfectly) “ADHD-appropriate”
― Susan C. Pinsky, Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD, 3rd Edition: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized

“Do not store your linens together in a central location. It is more efficient to store them near the bed for which they are intended. Reducing your linen inventory to two sets or fewer for each bed should make it easy to fit the linens on the closet shelf of their respective bedrooms. Finally, assign each bed a color to clear up any confusion about which sheets fit which bed.”
― Susan C. Pinsky, 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

“Every ADHD home should have a trash can in the family room and any other rooms used daily.”
― Susan C. Pinsky, Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD, 3rd Edition: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized

“IN THE MODERN AGE, OUR SOCIETY’S RAREST COMMODITY IS NOT GOODS, BUT TIME, AND THE ADHD SUFFERER—WHO REQUIRES MORE TIME ON AVERAGE TO COMPLETE A TASK—MUST GUARD HIS TIME AS THE MOST PRECIOUS OF ALL HIS POSSESSIONS.”
― Susan C. Pinsky, 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

“A reader’s tip: put glow-in-the-dark stickers on your remote controls so they are easy to locate in the dark.”
― Susan C. Pinsky, Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD, 3rd Edition: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized

“She also knows that a matching set of opaque baskets might be pretty, but it in no way aids us in storing, and may even hinder us in locating, our gloves. To keep things neat, provide an acceptable and convenient method for her to store her coat next to the door. A hook on the wall or a coatrack next to the door where she usually drops her coat might be convenient enough to induce her to hang it up. A low table with a shallow basket next to the coat rack will provide a handy target in which to drop her keys and gloves. None of this will look as neat as a closed closet door, but it creates a system that might actually get used, and”
― Susan C. Pinsky, 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

“have bought all sorts of boxes and tubs for my basement, but every time I need something, I have to go through all of the boxes, which then end up in the middle of the floor in a big pile. Can you give me a good labeling system?”
― Susan C. Pinsky, 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

“A dishpan with a jumbled, unfolded, heap of towels, dishcloths, and sponges provides sufficient organization. Dishwashing liquid sits next to the sink and old, extraneous kitchen cleaning supplies have been eliminated so that the cabinet contains only those supplies for which there is an imminent need.”
― Susan C. Pinsky, Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD, 3rd Edition: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized

“Give tasks that are naturally grounding to the ADHD family member. Having one’s hands in the warm soapy water or on a broom handle will keep people on task. Putting the food away is episodic and can lead to wandering.”
― Susan C. Pinsky, Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD, 3rd Edition: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized

“Memorabilia/pictures/letters. Place in an attractive, large decorative box on a bookshelf.”
― Susan C. Pinsky, 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

“Do place a lidless laundry basket–style hamper in a prominent location in your child’s bedroom—no tucking it into a closet. I always recommend a tall laundry basket for this purpose; it makes for an easy target when tossing in dirty clothes.”
― Susan C. Pinsky, 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

“Don’t use your money to buy “stuff.” Instead, use it to procure helpful services.”
― Susan C. Pinsky, 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

“immediate neighbors, and place the only one tabbed folder in each hanging file to make the drawer easier to use. Do arrange the files in rough alphabetical order within any given drawer”
― Susan C. Pinsky, 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

“For someone with ADD, even the simplest task takes much more energy than it takes for others. To shower, get dressed, and get out the door in the morning can require the kind of care and concentration that average people expend over their entire day.”
― Susan C. Pinsky, Organizing Solutions for People With Attention Deficit Disorder: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized: Tips and Tools ... Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized

“In designing your most efficient organizing system, you must ask yourself: Can I find what I need? Is it conveniently located? Is it easy to retrieve and, more importantly, easy to put away? Does it require little or no maintenance?”
― Susan C. Pinsky, 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

“The straightest, most effective path to achieving the golden rule of efficiency is reduction.”
― Susan C. Pinsky, 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

“Maintaining available empty shelving will help guard against allowing things to clutter up the floor. The only way to reclaim your living spaces and bring order to your storage areas is to eliminate objects that are overstock or are no longer needed and create sensible and easily sustainable storage—shelves and hooks—for your remaining possessions.”
― Susan C. Pinsky, 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