Disorder cocktail, anyone?

(***Disclaimer: This is purely a commentary on my own life and not to be taken as downplaying any of the referenced disorders.)

I’m not a doctor, and I don’t play one on TV. However, as I was looking at my train wreck of a house, I realized that I need an excuse. And everyone knows a medical excuse is way better than any other kind, so I’ve decided to create mine.

The way I see it, I suffer from ADHD, bipolar disorder, and CDO, (which you may recognize as OCD, but I prefer to see the letters in alphabetical order). 

If you’ve known me any length of time, you know that ADHD isn’t a stretch. Or deniable. Just ask any of my teachers. Ever. 

Being still while not completely absorbed in what I’m doing will not happen. No way, no how. (Pausing now to go put on socks…it’s 30 degrees under my floor.)

Okay, I’m back. Yes, I found several other things to do on my way back downstairs. The guest room bed was covered with stuff, so I thought I’d clean it off, which meant finding a box for Goodwill things, a bag for cousin things, and a place to stack the other boxes of stuff I found, which meant clearing off a spot on the floor, and there are dog footprints on the sheets, so I needed to start the laundry, and well, you know. I think I left my socks upstairs…

Anyway,  ADHD aside, why bipolar? In my cleaning philosophy, absolutely. I would LOVE to have a clean house. I mean magazine, unexpected-guests-come-on-in, photo shoot, eat off the floor clean. And there are days that I am well on my way to meeting that goal! I’ve been known to scrub baseboards with a toothbrush, clean grout with a bleach pen, and even take the oven door apart to clean the glass BETWEEN the glass, and then the next day, let dishes sit in the sink overnight while the pile of dust multiplies exponentially on the ceiling fans.  I can manically clean for days on end, seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, following FlyLady’s program (as well as several others that I’ve compiled into a journal on one of my “I have scrapbook supplies and I must use them” days), and then the next day, poof. Not gonna happen.  I’m just done.  The house looks terrible, but I don’t have they energy to do anything about it. No, I don’t smell that. I can force myself to ignore the piles of laundry and dishes and dog hair. And it doesn’t take much to derail me. Like finding a cake mix in the pantry that just HAS to be used. Oops. Spilled some batter on the oven door. Not much sense in cleaning that up. It’ll burn off. And off I go, chasing the next rabbit, (squirrel), down the rabbit hole. And the cleaning. just. stops. 

CDO/OCD? Oh yes. Meticulously cutting out articles from magazines, or printing them, (in color), and actually scrapbooking them in my cleaning/organizing ideas journal. (Yes. I use a paper cutter. Straight lines. And every corner has glue.) 

See? Isn't it pretty? LEGO head timer thinks so.

Nice little tags so I can find stuff to do on any given day...

Making sure all the plants have the same drip tray design when I bring them in for the winter. Putting books on the shelves in size order, then alphabetically. Serrated knives go on one side. Smooth blades on the other. Yeah, it’s there. But only sometimes. Because sometimes, my spoons jump into the wrong compartment of the silverware divider. And I LEAVE THEM THERE!

I need a way to overcome. I am the champion of starting projects and leaving them unfinished. For days. Months. Years. Decades… Ask my dad about the Corvair in the garage my junior year of high school. (It would still be there if he hadn’t kept after me to get it OUT of the garage.)  The piles of stuff to be scrapbooked are threatening to collapse the metal shelf upon which they rest. (See how I adroitly avoided that preposition at the end of the sentence?) And there’s a freezer in the backyard waiting to be converted into a cooler for parties. It’ll be so cool when it’s finished. (Ha! Cool, not cold, because it’s not a freezer anymore? Yeah. I’m distracted already.)

 But it will be awesome! Think chalkboard paint and cedar corners. Maybe a(n?) hydraulic lift for the door? And a bottle opener. Can't forget the bottle opener...

And my house IS NOT CLEAN. The red rug in my living room is gray from dog/cat hairs.

If the first step in overcoming your problems is to identify them, I’m there. Step one. I have a form of ADHDBPDOCD. Since all of those share the disorder tag, I can drop a couple of the Ds and declare myself ADHBPOCD.   Or maybe BADDCHOP.  

Step two…how do I fix it? How do I put the energy from the ADHD into the high/manic state of Bipolar and make that obsessive/compulsivity work FOR me instead of against me? This will be quite the experiment.

Today, I’ll be working on making BADDCHOP work for me. Unless I find something more interesting to do. And after I find socks. My feet are cold.