i should’ve known no one here would read the title 😂😭 post your own fave memes please!!!

this is gonna sound stupid but bear with me.

for like two years i'd buy groceries with genuinely good intentions and then find the chicken weeks later, still sealed, absolutely rank, in the back of the fridge. we were doing takeout 5 nights a week. i have a full time job. i can run an entire project at work. i could not make dinner happen and i could not explain why to anyone, including myself.

what fixed it wasn't planning better. it was not planning at all.

every day of the week has one job now and it never changes. monday is anything you can fold into a tortilla. tuesday i boil water. wednesday is eggs, breakfast for dinner, i don't want to hear it. thursday is rice with stuff on top. friday is food you eat with your hands, nachos or tortilla pizzas or whatever. saturday is one pan in the oven and then i leave the room. sunday we just eat whatever's already in there.

so at 5pm i'm not standing there going "what should i make." it's tuesday. water's going on. only thing left is which pasta and i know like four.

couple other things that mattered more than i expected

i buy the same 20ish things every week. same list every single time. i don't read labels anymore, i don't compare prices, i just get the stuff. if a meal needs a 21st ingredient i don't make that meal. it's unbelievably boring and that's sort of the whole point.

and this one felt dumb when i did it. i wrote down the lazy version of every meal ahead of time. like beef tacos is a real thing i make. but when i've got nothing left the version is: warm a tortilla, cheese in it, fold. that's it. the reason writing it down in advance matters is that at 6pm on a bad day i genuinely cannot invent a shortcut. but i can read one off the fridge. that one thing cut our takeout more than anything else i've ever tried.

also an alarm at 5 that just says START DINNER. not plan dinner. starting was always the problem. the actual cooking is like 12 minutes.

anyway it's been a few months, i've fallen off twice and climbed back on twice, which for me is a record.

what's your tuesday. i'm nosy

We’ve been using this system for nearly a year now and both agree this is one of the best things we have come up with to make living together work.

My boyfriend really likes to keep things orderly, and gets anxious if things end up really messy. I of course try my best, but keeping my room neat was something I was never able to do as a child, demanding me to do it would only backfire, so obviously this is something I struggle with. Nowadays I do want to show respect to my living space by keeping it in… not absolutely horrible condition. But me and my boyfriend still have very different ideas of what’s an acceptable amount of messiness, I also often just forget about cleaning up after myself, and so he’d end up taking care of it instead. While he initially said its okay, it was pretty clear he was building up some resentment about it. We talked about it often, but it was difficult to make things work when I could not bring myself to immediately clean things, would forget about it later on, and eventually he would just stop asking and automatically clean up after me because “at least then it gets done”. I felt very guilty about this and did a lot of thinking to come up with something, and finally after some months I came up with a system that lets him express his mind without feeling like he’s ordering me around, and gives me time to start when I feel ready without letting me forget about the task.

I present you with Pibble. I would assume some people here are familiar with Pibble, but those who aren’t, Pibble is a meme puppy that tells you to wash its belly. My social media feeds were filled with Pibble at the time, and every time I would excitedly wash his belly without question. When I had the thought “I will gladly wash anything Pibble wishes. I wish I was as eager to clean things when people ask me irl” I realised that maybe we could actually have our own Pibble around. And so, Pibble became a mysterious “autonomous” entity in our household.

The basic idea is that most of the time Pibble is stationed at his assigned resting spot. However, if I leave a mess somewhere and my boyfriend would like me to clean it up, he’ll move Pibble to that spot. Sometimes he’ll come and tell me “Pibble is on the move”, which actually fills me with excitement because making Pibble satisfied is a whimsical little side quest, not a boring, stressful, judgemental sounding demand like “go clean up the mess you made” is. Other times I’ll just find Pibble has appeared somewhere on my own. I don’t have to clean the mess immediately (although I now often do prefer to do it asap because seeing Pibble move back to its resting spot is a reward I really enjoy), as Pibble stays there as a visual reminder until I get it done. Sometimes I’m not sure if I have cleaned enough, so I’ll ask if Pibble is satisfied, and if not my boyfriend will tell me what spots Pibble has issues with.

It’s a silly way of going about this, but that’s exactly what has made it work for both of us. For just the visual reminder part a “clean this” sign would work as well, but at least for me having funny little critter there that I can pretend I am serving makes all the difference when it comes to making the task a bit more enjoyable.

I’ve been wanting to share about the Pibble system for some time, and realised that this topic in this subreddit would be the perfect place to do so. It’s easy to end up having chores mainly end up falling on person’s shoulders, and if I had figured this out earlier in my life I feel like living with me would have been much less stressful for my family members. But living with someone that could actually end up getting tired of living with me gave me the extra motivation to find a way that works for everyone involved. I know many ADHD men in my life that also struggle with this, but in a lot of those cases the men seem to just rely on their girlfriends to take care of the messes, and both parties accept it as just “being the way men are” despite it causing tension in the relationship. I feel really fortunate and proud that, while with us the roles were reversed, I really took the time to find a way to make this work and be less stressful for both me and my boyfriend

Lately I've noticed I've fallen into a really bad pattern.

I want to do a hobby/interest but I feel like I can't until do something that I "must do" → I procrastinate doing ANY of the things on my "must do" list → I scroll/read/play games on my phone because I'm not doing either my hobbies or my "must do"

I feel like I can't do anything fun until I finish all of my to-do list. And I then feel too overwhelmed to complete a single thing on my to-do list. And I allow myself to be on the phone because it's not the true fun thing I want to be doing. Anyone else have this problem?

And see if the mechanism comes apart for cleaning. I've had this Owala tumbler for almost 2 years. I discovered literally ten minutes ago that the slide mechanism on top comes apart for cleaning. It was VILE under there. I've used this every day since I bought it. 🫠

Don't be me, clean your Big Drinks more often. And check to see if the seal comes off for cleaning

It wrapped up recently after 8 weeks and I just picked up my glazed pieces the other day.
I know you all know what that means.

Yes, I’ve been researching pottery wheels and home kilns all day and in my head I already have a thriving Etsy store.
Because who doesn’t need handcrafted, bespoke pottery for the kitchen in THIS economy?! 😂

For me, it was realizing that you don’t have to eat “breakfast food” for breakfast. There’s literally no rule saying what you can or can’t eat based on the time of day.

I know that probably sounds silly, but think about how something like eating ice cream for breakfast is treated as a societal 'no-no', yet "breakfast for dinner" is fine.

So now I’m curious: what’s a societal rule you eventually realized was just… made up?

I work in State gorvernment, and one of the only perks is that I get all public holidays off automatically. I was so proud of myself last night when I turned off all 7 thousand of my alarms for today so that I could sleep peacefully through this morning without confusing myself. As I was doing this, I panicked a little for my next-Monday self, because it wouldn't be the first time I forgot to reset the alarms and was late for work a whole week later because of it.
So, ladies who need to reset your alarms; go do it NOW. Ladies who woke up too early today and got confused; you're all good, sorry for the interruption and enjoy the rest of your day. Ladies who do not get public holidays off; carry on, but know that we see you. You are the true unsung heros.

saw the post about putting stickers in a drawer until you can find the right thing to put them on

so i thought i'd share my sticker drawer ✨ some of these in here are weeks old but i have some that are at least 6 years old

In the last couple years I'm noticing that it's getting harder to speak to people correctly. The words and thoughts come out jumbled, I can't think of the correct words, and generally feel like a blithering idiot when I'm trying to explain something. Is this common with ADHD or could it be a deeper issue?

Meds or no meds, I get so bored so quickly, it's frustrating. I tried shuffling hobbies but with each shuffle, my interest decreases minute by minute. Tried new things - metaphorically flipped the table because novelty doesn't excite me either, especially if it's challenging (no matter the degree). I've been able to keep focus on my job only because it gives me a salary with some recognition of my skills (not necessarily promotion though). I've been rotting in bed because it's the only second thing I can do consistently.

I always struggled to sleep. Since I was a kid, at the time to sleep, my mind has always been a showreel of images, videos, people talking. This would get even worse during stressing periods because my mind would race to work conversations, ruminating about life, my relationship, playing now exams would go.

Someone on this sub suggested they imagine themselves during a process/calm activity (they would do exercising) and somehow this would relax they brain and they would fall asleep. So I tried.

When my mind started racing about work images at 12AM, I started imagining myself preparing my favorite recipe. Very slowly, step by step. IT WORKS.

I realized my mind just needs to be fed with some imagination and I can control it!!! I did meditation and breathing exercises before but somehow I guess the imagination was not strong enough. If you have troubles sleep, try it!!

Ok so I need to know if this is an ADHD thing or just a me thing.

I genuinely don't mind cooking. Give me a recipe and 20 minutes and I'm fine. The problem happens way before that — it's standing in front of the fridge, opening it, closing it, opening my phone, scrolling through 15 recipes I've saved and will never make, closing the app, opening it again... and somehow 30 minutes later I still haven't decided anything and now I'm too tired/hungry/annoyed to even cook the thing I finally picked.

Some nights it genuinely feels like my brain just refuses to pick ONE option out of infinite options. Like the deciding itself is the exhausting part, not the doing.

I've tried:

• meal planning apps (still makes me choose from a list, same problem)
• meal prepping on Sundays (great in theory, I have the executive function of a golden retriever by Wednesday)
• "just eat the same thing every day" (works for like 4 days then I can't even look at it anymore)

Does this happen to you guys too? And if you found something that actually works, please tell me because I am so tired of standing in my kitchen like it's a hostage situation 😭

I got over my shame spiral and went all in on decluttering.

I found Cass and the Clutterbug podcast about 2 years ago, I'm a butterfly, and I have been working on decluttering and reorganizing in a way that works for my brain space by space. This has led to the final boss, the major doom room basement.

She has referred to 'your decluttering muscles getting stronger' with practice, and last night was the first time I finally felt what she meant.

Here is my before and after from my night. Started at 6pm, finished at 5am with MANY interruptions (tending to my family's needs, i.e. mom of 3 kids).

I'm logically aware I made serious progress, but emotionally I just hate how bad it was and how much MORE I need/want to do.

Would love some external validation, cheerleading, and/or camaraderie.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk...

Hey all!

My household of 3 (boyfriend 27, brother 31, and myself 26) are all ADHDers. Our kitchen, specifically the fridge, has been the bane of my existence for many months. Hundreds of dollars of food waste a week while eating out because there's "nothing to eat," disgusting fridge with several months expired food because "we should wait for garbage day," the whole drill... I have finally undertaken the dreadful task of a full clean out: vacuuming chunkies, hosing out our produce drawer "soup," lysol fit to kill a horse, etc. It was awful but the "next weekend I swear" job is finally completed.

We are all plagued with the "If I don't see it, it doesn't exist" gene. How can I avoid this going forward? I plan to put the condiments in the produce drawers now, but if there are any other tips and tricks that helped you guys, it would be much appreciated.

(Cupboards are on the docket for another day- happy to hear your tips for those as well ♥️)

Much love to you all! It's hard out here 😪

This isnt a begging/donation post, i really just want to vent so hearing me out will help.

I am 19(F), a college student and an artist, and Im severely struggling with inattentive ADHD, it has affected my life so much especially my education and hobbies. I am currently in university/college now but i've needed to take a break due to financial instability and i have to help with the bills in order to go to uni. In context, i also have other mental (severe anxiety, adhd, depression) and *PHYSICAL* illnesses (incurable blood disorder) which makes looking for employment even harder for me. Not to mention, i live in asia where a minimum wage wont be enough to survive and ADHD meds are VERY expensive.

I wanted to vent because no matter how hard i try, i can't do shit AT ALL. The only way for me to earn is to do art commissions and even then im mediocre at that, im not necessarily a bad/beginner artist but im not amazing either. My ADHD just makes it worse because it slows my work down despite trying to pull myself back up everytime.

It hurts to see myself and my state like this, i want to be able to do more, and i know that i am more than this and that i can do better. But i do not have the privilege to function like a normal human being. Why??? Do i not deserve to live?

I’m on week 3 of this semester and I’ve missed 10 assignments already. I bed rot every whenever I’m not at school. I just keep thinking about not being here. I’m not suicidal tho.

How do you find the patience n care to start trying? I’m depressed. I’ve always struggled with depression. So the adhd and depression are just fueling each other rn. I’m trying to take more adhd meds (200mg quelbree) but they’re not doing shit either. I just want to drop out and rot in my room forever.
A part of me is upset at myself but I’m also in denial that I have adhd despite being diagnosed last year so I’m really not helping myself either. I keep treating it like it’s just a skill issue. But that’s not going to get me to start either.
I dunno. Any advice helps.

I started taking vyvanse in December of last year and I’ve had a great time with it. I feel a lot more present in my body and am actually able to formulate cohesive thoughts and do things. But my psychiatrist recommended that I take breaks on days I don’t necessarily need to be productive (ex weekends). This wasn’t so bad a few months ago but as of recently on my “tolerance break” days I’m soooo tired. I feel so incredibly exhausted that it’s hard for me to do anything aside from scroll on my phone and some days I feel like I’m not a real person because of how lethargic I am. Does anyone else feel this way?

I’m a therapist. I go into a very specific mode when therapizing [sic].

When I take Ritalin, I am on time and do all of my paperwork. But - the therapy is not up to par.

I feel like I can’t connect. I know people say they feel cold on stimulants. I feel like I am having a conversation, not engaging in therapy.

I have to stop taking it.

I’m at a point where things are bad enough that I would really appreciate some pharmaceutical support. I couldn’t therapize on Guanfacine, either, even though it felt like it solved all of my other problems.

I can’t think or feel right in therapy on meds. I don’t think the ADHD is helping me therapize as much as the drugs are dampening something that does.

I’m just going to have to live in chaos if I want to make money? I’m feeling very defeated.

I a day job and a side hustle consulting on the same thing I do in my day job. Last week I paid for LEGO Serious Play Training which I've been wanting to do for years (because I'm really into creative research and facilitation techniques), paid a few thousand pounds out of my own pocket to attend and came away so inspired and excited to try it.

I've just mentioned in a meeting for my day job that I'd recently been certified and thought it could be exciting and relevant to the project the meeting was about, and a senior woman went "I'm not sure, I've been in one of them and it's a bit ... cringe, don't you think". I said no I didn't think so and she replied "oh ok."

Guys I am a complete mess - this week I've just returned to work from maternity leave, my baby's started nursery (and is hating it) my two elder kids have gone back to school, I've had two freelance deadlines this week and I'm burning the candles at both end and am TIRED and this passing comment has hurt my feelings so much, I can't stop crying (luckily I am WFH).

My self confidence is already teetering on the edge because of being out of the workplace for a year and I'm due on any day which isn't helping my emotional regulation. But I am so angry that this one woman's opinion has completely taken the wind out of sails about something I was really excited and optimistic about ☹️ all I am going to think about now if I try and run a LSP workshop is about how cringe I am. RSD can fuck off, I hate feeling like this.

I don't even like my job. Or like, it's fine. It's a job. Sometimes I have a good time at work, mostly it's just fine. The money is pretty good.

I HAVE to be medicated at work. I can't do my job otherwise. But this means that when my workday is over, my medicated window is also over. The last hour at work I crash and then I remain in that state until I take my meds again. More or less.

So, my actual life get nothing. My hobbies, relationships... I have nothing left to give. The balance is completely off.

My weekends are me trying to catch up and trying to rest so I can survive next week.

I wish I didn't have to give all my medicated hours to work. I want to give them to the people and things I love.

I always used to be a super romantic person growing up. Like I remember as a preteen I already “knew” I wanted to be married and have kids. Hopeless romantic kind of thing. Well as an adult now that I take medication I realize that being fixated on love is NOT normal. As well as being fixated on CRUSHES. To the point of limerence. Well when my medication isn’t working perfectly (in the morning or at night) all this limerence floods back to whatever crush I’m having at the time. It’s genuinely so annoying because once my meds r in my system I could care less. 😭😭 Like I know it’s all dopamine seeking. Is anyone else like this?…. It makes me feel delusional/crazy.

I’ve currently got someone I’m hyper fixated on and it makes me ashamed. Don’t know why