I recently watched an episode of the Late Bloomers podcast called THE ADHD Hackers: 10 unhinged hacks that actually work for your brain.
It was full of practical, slightly chaotic-sounding tricks that ADHD brains use to get things done when willpower alone doesn’t cut it. And as I watched, I found myself nodding along, not just because the hacks were clever, but because I recognised nearly every one of them. They were already built into The Clutter Shift and my Home Declutter Kit, just dressed up in different language.
This isn’t really a coincidence. So many of the people I’ve worked with over the years have had ADHD or ADHD-type traits. I didn’t set out to build a programme specifically for ADHD brains. But because The Clutter Shift was shaped by years of working with exactly these clients, it ended up doing precisely that, almost by accident.
And the link runs deeper than my own client base. One study found that almost one in five adults with ADHD had clutter and disorganisation severe enough to seriously disrupt daily life, compared to roughly one in fifty people without it. That’s ten times the rate. And that’s just the most extreme end of things. Ordinary, everyday clutter and disorganisation is more widespread still. If you’ve got an ADHD brain, or ADHD-type tendencies, clutter isn’t a character flaw or a failure of discipline. It’s what tends to happen when your brain works the way yours does, and ordinary decluttering advice was never built with that brain in mind.
Here are ten parallels I noticed.
1. Defined blocks of activity are more effective than open-ended time
In The Clutter Shift, you’re never told to “tidy the spare room.” With my support, you’ll decide on a specific, area to focus on for the week, then a live Shift It! session where we work together for a set window. There’s a clear start and a clear finish.
Why it works ADHD brains tend to overestimate how long an unpleasant task will take, so a task like that can feel like an hour’s grind when it might really take ten minutes. A visible end point removes that distortion. You’re not guessing how long you’ll be stuck in it, you can see exactly when it stops.
2. Start with the win, not the war
People often want to dive straight into their worst area of clutter, the one causing the most visible pain. I usually steer them somewhere else first: a smaller, less emotionally loaded area where they can get a real result faster and more easily.
Why it works Demand avoidance, common in ADHD, doesn’t only come from someone else telling you what to do. It can come from the pressure you put on yourself, the “should” that says you ought to tackle your worst area first to prove you’re serious. Starting with an easier win sidesteps it, you get a real result without first having to face down your own expectations of yourself.
3. One slice, not the whole cake
During the Weeding stage of my process, you’re never asked to decide on a whole bookshelf or a whole drawer in one go. You take a small batch, a handful of items in front of you, and make decisions on just that batch. Then move on to the next batch.
Why it works ADHD brains tend to catastrophise a task by picturing every step of it at once, which creates paralysis before you’ve even started. Shrinking the scope to a handful of items short-circuits that. You’re not deciding on the bookshelf, you’re deciding on what’s in your hands.
4. A treat is part of the plan, not an afterthought
I always encourage people to plan a treat for when they’ve completed a session: something to look forward to, agreed in advance, scaled to the size of what they’ve taken on.
Why it works ADHD brains don’t always get the dopamine hit from finishing a task that other people’s do. Lining up a treat in advance gives your brain something concrete to chase, a reward you can actually feel coming, rather than relying on a sense of satisfaction that might never show up on its own.
5. You’re never doing this alone
The live group sessions and the Shift It! calls mean you’re working alongside other people, and alongside me, even when we’re each dealing with our own space.
Why it works Body doubling is one of the most consistently reported ADHD strategies, even though nobody fully understands why it works. Something about another person’s presence, even remotely, reduces shame and creates a kind of accountability that makes a task feel possible, when alone it felt impossible.
6. You’re not designing the system, you’re using one
The Home Declutter Kit gives you a ready-made structure: categories, decision frameworks, a clear sequence to follow. You’re never starting from a blank page, wondering how to even organise the process.
Why it works Each extra step or decision in a task is a point where an ADHD brain can stall or abandon it altogether. A ready-made framework removes the step of having to invent your own method, so there’s one less place to get stuck before you’ve even begun.
7. A place for everything removes the need to remember
One simple example is the landing station I recommend just inside the front door: a tray for keys, so they’re always in the same spot. It’s a small piece of a bigger principle running through the whole process, that your environment can hold the structure so you don’t have to.
Why it works The thinking here is to stop trying to solve a recurring problem through willpower and instead redesign the environment so the problem can’t happen the same way again. Things will go missing or get left undone if you rely on remembering or trying harder. Building the environment around that reality works better than fighting it.
8. The investment itself changes how seriously you take it
Joining The Clutter Shift, and The Home Declutter Kit itself, is a genuine investment, in money and in the quality of what you’re given. And within the process, I recommend investing in good-quality storage solutions, ones that are pleasing to look at and use, rather than whatever’s cheapest.
Why it works ADHD brains are drawn to novelty and aesthetics, and that pull can be enough to override resistance to an otherwise unappealing task. A storage system that’s genuinely nice to use is far more likely to actually get used than one that’s merely functional.
9. The group creates its own momentum
Working through a fixed four-week block, as part of a group, creates a natural energy that a solo declutter never has. Nobody’s handing out scores, but you naturally notice your own progress against where you started, and against where the group is heading together.
Why it works Competition and play trigger dopamine in a way that dutiful, obligation-driven task completion simply doesn’t. A shared deadline and a sense of progress against the group, even informally, can shift a chore into something that feels closer to a challenge, and a challenge is far easier to engage with than a duty.
10. Label it, write it down, don’t trust yourself to remember
The category piles in the Weeding stage are clearly labelled. And for anything going into the action pile, I ask people to write the actual next step on a Post-it and stick it directly onto the item, rather than leaving it in a box and hoping they’ll remember what it was for.
Why it works The issue isn’t only that ADHD affects working memory, it’s that in the moment you feel completely certain you’ll remember, so you never write it down. Labelling piles and pinning the next action directly onto the item removes that false confidence before it has a chance to cost you.
What this tells me
If you’ve ever felt like normal decluttering advice was written for someone else’s brain, this is probably why. Most decluttering guidance assumes you’ll remember, that you’ll feel the satisfaction once it’s done, that a vague deadline is enough, that you can face the hardest area first because you’re “supposed to.” For an ADHD brain, none of those assumptions hold.
That’s exactly why The Clutter Shift works differently. It’s not a system that asks you to push through with more willpower. It’s built around small steps, real structure, company, reward, and an environment designed to hold you rather than catch you out, the same things that actually work for ADHD brains, whether or not you’ve ever had a formal diagnosis.
If that’s what’s been missing from every decluttering attempt so far, that’s exactly what this is built to give you.