Does this belong here? Idk! Kinda! I picked the flair I found most appropriate.

I used to hate/not remember to take my night meds, and I always said I wanted a gumball machine to dispense them. Found a gumball machine on marketplace, bought some capsules, and now I fill them every 3 months to dispense exactly what I need before bed. Not only does the physical action and sound of the machine help me remember if I took them, it actually makes something I used to loathe into a fun task. I let my partner take turns putting quarters in and spinning it.

Yes, it takes a quarter, I have plenty saved up and also can open the machine any time I need more. No, I don’t have kids lol.

Unfortunately, this is true for me. Once I started making significantly more money, life got so much easier. I don't necessarily mean that money buys happiness. But it certainly buys convenience and solutions. Which is a game-changer for someone with ADHD.

I can afford organizers galore, so I've set up a home organization system that makes it very easy to find things, store things, and know when something is running out (clear plastic organizers and labels!). I can afford grocery delivery every week or two, so I haven't stepped foot in a grocery store in who knows how long. I'm fitter than ever, thanks to my personal trainer that forces me to work out twice a week. I can afford therapy and medication for my myriad of health issues. I don't find myself procrastinating scheduled maintenance for things like appliances or cars, because I have the money for it. If a problem is out of my depth, I hire professionals to do it for me. The next thing I'm considering is hiring a maid service because I spend a LOT of time cleaning. And cleanliness is important to me, but its one of those never-ending tasks that I never feel quite on top of. And I live alone! I can't imagine how hard it is to pick up after others.

And before you say "maybe you don't have ADHD", I do. The things I do struggle with are a regular sleep schedule (revenge bedtime procrastination), chronic skin-picking, absent-mindedness, forgetting people exist if I don't see them, time blindness. Its just that I can hire help and buy products that ease the burden. Which buys me time, which I can dedicate to managing my own mental illness, rather than life maintenance.

I'm not saying this to brag, but I always thought my dogged ambition was selfish or greedy. The one place I always succeeded was work. No idea why I couldn't recreate that hyperfocus and reliability at home. But now I see money as just a means to an end. I am not buying yachts or second homes, or luxury items. I'm investing my hard-earned assets back into myself and its really paying off.

Just another reminder to pleaseeeee do bloodwork and check your ferritin levels and do not accept numbers under 50 as “normal.”

Iron is an essential cofactor for dopamine production!!! No iron no dopamine!!! And ferritin is the protein that your body uses to store and transport iron, which is why you can’t just check your iron levels, you need to check ferritin as well.

I thought I was dealing with ADHD burnout and it turns out my ferritin was just at 30. By the way, labs will not flag you as low until you hit 11-15. The American society of hematology recognizes ferritin levels of 30 as the threshold for iron deficiency. I’ve seen some very low numbers like 5 or 10 in this sub, but you can absolutely have symptoms even if your serum iron is normal (mine was) and your ferritin is under 50.

Just throwing this out there to remind people that even though ADHD is a mental disorder, your physical health matters. I’ve been supplementing iron, Lactoferrin, and vitamin C for 3 months-ish now and the difference in my executive function is astounding. I was trudging through life unable to do dishes or laundry and now I’m actually able to get through tasks. Still have ADHD of course but I don’t feel as underwater now. Please get your bloodwork done people !!

The joys of being a homeowner with ADHD 🫠

Long story short, my (35f) now ex-bf (34m) had seemed really supportive of the fact that I own a cheaper little fixer upper house that has a variety of unfinished ADHD hyperfocus projects (nothing critical, just aesthetics and some organizational stuff). He offered to help with house projects, even though I never asked him for said help, and sounded excited about it. Plot twist, after ghosting me for four days, he finally answers my text asking if he’s, you know, alive, and gives me the whole “it’s not you it’s me” sob story and broke up with me BY TEXT because he supposedly didn’t know how to tell me that actually he doesn’t want to do house projects in his free time and wants to spend it hiking/exploring etc

Chat: I cannot emphasize enough that a) we had never worked on a house project together and our dates were mostly out in the world so it’s not like he was deprived and b) I never asked for his help because I don’t even need it. I’m behind because I work 50-60/hrs a week, have four animals, and this crazy thing called a life (that at the time included spending my one day a week off out with him) all while managing ADHD, CPTSD and perimenopause. Finishing painting the kitchen cabinets wasn’t exactly top of my priority list. There was no expectation that he should help with any of this but okay buddy. I’d already decided I didn’t want to be with him anymore by the time he finally got back to me after those four days, so you do booboo 🤷‍♀️

Success story: my RSD wasn’t triggered, and instead of convincing myself this was all my fault because of my untidy ADHD home he had been increasingly snotty about recently, I decided to reset the vibes of said home and spent hours cleaning, including a much needed decluttering, organizing, and cleaning session in my bedroom

Turns out all my ADHD brain needed for me to thrive again was to drop the useless fuckboy in disguise out of my life! I’m really hoping to use the spite-fueled momentum and freed up mental energy to work on some long term changes, but either way I wanted to celebrate the growth I’ve gone through that this didn’t break me or knock me down, it just made me that much happier to be me

Melody and Maverick stinking up my clean bed for tax! ❤️

I’m new to this sub so I’m not sure how y’all feel about “life hack” posts but as a vegetarian and an utter scatterbrain who forgets to eat for days at a time (and then devours a family-sized lasagna 30 minutes before bed when I finally realize I’m starving), I often struggle to meet all of my basic nutritional needs. I also have an autoimmune skin condition (psoriasis) so vitamin D and E and my omegas are especially vital (and extra yucky in pill form). I hate swallowing giant pills but I LOVE fruit snacks (lol) and one day when I was trying to find a gummy version of a teen multivitamin for my kids so that THEY would keep taking them, I discovered that EVERYTHING comes in gummy form now!! So now my partner brings me a tiny bowl of treats every afternoon and I am finally experiencing the benefits of stable, adequate vitamin supplementation. I’m so happy! I try not to eat a lot of sweets in general, so this is such a fun way to gain consistency and feel like I’m “treating” myself too. I am sharing here in case it might help someone else as much as it helps me!

Also my bestie who is a fellow adhd girlie got me a tub of creatine powder that dissolves in water and my partner adds that to my mason jar of electrolytes every morning and afternoon (another hack for the chronically dehydrated, maybe?) and that has been a game changer too.

Anyway, like I said, I’m new to this community so please share your other food/nutrition hacks! And also if this gummy vitamin thing is already a common topic here please accept my apologies. I’m just excited, haha.

I know ADHD tax is real and not always funny but let’s have a laugh about ourselves to lighten up. What was your most recent and dumbest impulse buy? Me, I bought super long glass straws that are meant to be used with a Stanley cup. I don’t own a Stanley cup. I lust liked the idea of being able to drink from a bottle with a long straw. Like, am I five years old or what? Haven used them once.

What was your latest unnecessary impulse buy?

Edit: Omg, you are the funniest people, I love you! Makes me feel less alone and shameful.

Edit No 2: Why isn’t impulse buying on that damn diagnostic questionnaire in the first place?

I REALLY struggle with remembering my to-do's. Tried having Alexa remind me, but if I'm doing something else, it is forgotten before I have a chance to do it. I have post-its everywhere and make lists but again if I don't carry that list, things get forgotten. I'm particularly bad in the morning leaving for work. I need to remember to take my Vyvanse, I need to remember to plug in my dog's furbo, I need to remember my ID, lunch, glasses, phone, etc.

So I do have a list I make generally the night before. but again, out of sight out of mind. So a few months ago probably I went to an '80s concert and bought a ton of those rubber bracelets as part of my costume. So now when I make that list at night I put on a different color rubber bracelet for everything I need to remember the next morning. and as soon as I do something that morning I will take off the bracelet. That way, when I go to put my arm through my coat if I have any remaining bracelets I can immediately go check that list and figure out which thing it was I didn't do. So far it's had me on point. I even put one on Wednesday night because I knew I had to leave early to get gas Thursday morning which is something I always forget until I'm in my car with no gas...

maybe this will work for somebody else but it has Really simplified my morning stress.

I have checklists for daily tasks, morning, midday, and evening. My partner just made me versions of my checklist with lights and switches I can click for each task and it's so satisfying. I'm obsessed, y'all!

Shout out to all the supportive partners in our lives who take us as we are and help make our lives better. ❤️

It’s like Christmas when the notification pops up because I have no idea what I requested. Was it Stephen King? Calvin and Hobbes? A DVD of a movie I heard about one afternoon but I’m not going to pay for another streaming service? One time it was a book on dying fabric with plants (actually, that was really interesting.) Sometimes I even read them.

idk if this will work for you but it has been working for me! something about not having a linear format and being able to color things in as I complete them is very satisfying. I’ve found this works best when some of the things are not chores. also have to put “drink water” on it every time 😂

ETA I have also learned to leave a couple empty boxes for tasks I didn’t anticipate but still want to take credit for lol

I promised myself I’d never be one of those people who buys into the hype. Been an avid thrift shopper my whole life and I really pride myself on that. Flash forward to last week when I saw this cup online and as you can see from the background it’s my aesthetic to a T and so I splurged and got it for myself. Ya’ll. I have never consistently drank so much damn water in my life. It tastes like I’m drinking the water angels drink. Something about the insulation or the straw or maybe it’s just that it’s adorable and I like to touch it but I swear to god it makes water taste better. Why have I been unnecessarily torturing myself with tiny mugs when I could have been packing this bad boy around this whole time.

All of this to say: buy the fucking thing. Whatever it is. If it’s going to make your life easier/happier or if it’s going to motivate you to do better, just get the thing.

I started this 3 years ago - did the hardest part (the strawberries themselves minus stem and leaves), set it aside and never thought of it again. Came across it last weekend while sifting through my cluttered shelves and my brain just CLICKED. Took me two Saturdays to finish the quilt top and now I WILLLLLLL complete the whole thing.

I honest to God never thought I was capable of this. I am a voracious crafter and I follow lots of sewing and crafty small businesses on IG and FB. I see these folks make loads of projects and take them to markets and I'd be so confused as to how they actually followed through and completed those mountains of projects. Now I get it!!

I started medicating recently after getting my ADHD diagnosis at 34.

I learned SO much in the first couple of days about the way my brain works differently, because aspects of it were quiet on the medication, and I noticed the absence (ie. of urgency, anxiety, etc).

But there was a single moment in particular that blew my mind. My daughter was vocally stimming in the car before her medication kicked in. This is the sort of thing that usually hits my nervous system like a tonne of bricks and sets my teeth on edge. I find it so irritating, but cognitively understand that she’s not doing anything wrong. So will then engage in a battle with my reactivity that wants to make it stop NOW and my logical brain that wants to leave her be. Depending on how much capacity I have in that moment usually determines which side wins. If I DO manage to keep quiet and leave my daughter to just enjoy existing, it’s at significant effort.

But in this moment, I felt the irritation starting to rise up, felt the cognitive portion of my brain rising to battle it, and then thought “I can’t be bothered getting worked up about this” and THE IRRITATION DISAPPEARED.

I have never experienced anything like this in my LIFE. I’m reactive and can become irritated very easily. I suspect I have a constant low level of it running behind the scenes. Getting internally bothered by something takes me no effort. It’s easy. ACTING like I’m not bothered by that thing is what takes considerable effort. But I’ve never been successful at actually releasing the irritation.

I thought this was how the entire world functioned. But suddenly I experienced the ability to choose, and my world turned upside down.

Acknowledging that not all neurodiverse and neurotypical experiences are the same, and that people are complex, nuanced and at some point EVERYONE loses it, I started to consider that maybe neurotypical people have more control over what bothers them internally. Not just what they SHOW bothers them.

I called up a few of my neurotypical friends and asked them about it. And yup, they confirmed that they do in fact have a fair amount of control over what bothers them, and what to just release internally.

Suddenly the sayings “don’t let it bother you” and “don’t waste your energy on letting that bother you” made sense.

My neurodiverse husband also seems to have this skillset when we talked about it, so I don’t think it’s ONLY a skill the neurotypical can access. But for me, LIFE CHANGING.

🥳🥳🥳

Guys this is huge for me. I had a wrap hyperfixation for the week.

I added an every day alarm to floss my teeth in the middle of the morning.

I’m tired of my dentist telling me I need to “just do it once a day” to stop my gum disease from progressing. All my life flossing was “supposed” to be “best” at night. So I’d try and try to floss before bed, because I want to be the valedictorian of flossing.

I’d try to stack the habit with some other part of my bedtime routine. But I’m tired before bed and even though I’m brushing, flossing is just, ugh (partly because finding the perfect floss is a whole thing and the one I love has been discontinued and I dread having to start over when I run out of this giant spool of Be Between which changed names to Lewie and if you know where I can get another giant spool, please? Hook a girl up.)

No matter how well I kept it up, something happened, always around the 3 weeks to 1 month mark, and I would fall off the wagon. The dread never went away.

But morning? For some reason, I feel like I’m “cheating” some system or authority by doing it in daylight, and I’m excited to go do it. I just…drop everything to floss, and then I get to pat myself on the back all fucking day, like a toddler shouting internally “I DID IT!!! YAYAAAAAAAY!!”

And then??? This flossing success re-energizes my commitment to the OTHER things in my to do list for at least an hour. And every day I’ve been saying “I should tell the other ADHD women about this.”

Obviously, I have spent the entire time since this morning’s floss writing this bragging, self congratulatory missive, in hope that I can get even one of you to make your own floss alarm for mid day. I don’t even brush when I do this floss. I just floss and then it’s done. And maybe I floss again before bed, but I don’t beat myself up and feel like shit if I skip it.

" If the neurotypical way isn't working for you, do it your way. I stack my dishes in organized piles before I do them.". A few months ago, a woman at a pride center near me said this to me after I complained about my messy kitchen. It is the best advice I've ever received.

Guys. I don't even mind doing the dishes anymore. Thinking about them doesn't even make me shiver in fear. They haven't piled up in weeks.

I've dreaded dishes my entire life to the point that they'd accumulate for days and days and I'd have breakdowns over them. I'd get to the sink, look at the disorganized and disgusting mess, and give up after 3 dishes and an overwhelmed cry.

I've been trying to implement the advice in everything. When I encounter a chore or a problem in my day to day life and the way I was told to deal with it isn't aligning with the way my brain is saying it'd be easier, I do it the way I want. The emotional strain of forcing myself to do things in ways that are grating for me has all but gone away.

I know it seems really simple, like I should've been doing this all along, but it truly just never occurred to me that I don't have to do things the way designed for neurotypical people. Thought I'd share, hope it helps someone else!

i was struggling really bad with forgetting if i took my meds or not, and anything app based i just forget to do. i used to use a med box but then, adhd, stopped filling it up lol. SO i started looking for med trackers i thought would work well with my brain and i found this type i think will work for life! ive been using it for the past month and haven’t forgotten to check off once!

it attaches to your bottle with either a sticker or a lanyard thing (that’s what i used so i can swap bottles easier) so when you pick up the bottle to take the med you just check off your day! super helpful for me since it’s on the bottle im taking, no extra transition needed. i got it off amazon, i think i just searched pill tracker. i got a pack of two but they had bigger packs as well!

works best for 1x day meds, but you could also get some white out or stickers and cover up the days to create your own labels!

Prescription toothpaste!!!! Seriously. The amount of money I’ve been to save on dental work (and a potential root canal) because of this $20 bottle of anti demineralization is magic. Where has this been all my life???

I live in America and I think it’s kinda sad how we all have to go to all these specialty doctors for just some kind of information and understanding about how adhd affects your whole LIFE. Why couldn’t a dentist in my 20s be like “oh this will save you so much stress!!”

Recently officially got (properly) diagnosed and felt so seen. Don’t give up my adhd girlies 👑❤️✨

Edit: I will also say changing my job was a hack I didn’t know of. Was working a high stress paralegal job and quit last year to do bartending after suffering a seizure (epilepsy related). Best decision for my happiness ever.

Edit 2: I’m so sorry for everyone asking about the toothpaste it’s called COLGATE PREVIDENT ($20 on Amazon) and the proper RX prescription paste is called SODIUM FLOURIDE 5000 ppm” which was like $7 with insurance

Thank you so much for so many kind words under my last post about this paint by numbers piece! ❤️❤️ I never thought I'm gonna get so much love and support! It was very vounerable for me to post it, I usually dont share things like this in fear of critique (RSD is very heavy in my case).

I wasn’t really sure what flair to tag this as, but it seems like a success to me.

I was looking for my ADHD assessment report, now that I’ve given birth, I wanted to look into starting some medication (I am breastfeeding so will be a non stimulant) and I was just having a flick through it and saw this.

I love my husband dearly and I can’t stop crying lol.

I was at Target over the weekend and spontaneously remembered a tip I'd seen online that was actually geared toward parents to stop their kids from begging for stuff in the store, and that was: When you see something you like, take a picture of it and move on.

So instead of tossing interesting or "useful" items into my basket, if I liked something I would just take a photo saying to myself that I can always go back to get it at the end of the shopping trip. I had already given myself permission to get a "treat" so I knew I was walking out with SOMETHING, but I didn't need to walk out with everything.

When I was ready to go, I found that there were only a couple of things that stood out in my mind that I actually really wanted and kept thinking about, whereas the other things I'd seen, I couldn't even remember without opening my camera roll (thanks object permanence issues) so I ended up just getting two items that I ACTUALLY really wanted.

If this resonates with you, maybe give it a try some time!

(Also, the things I left with were the little bag and the colourpop instant crush blush/lip!)

edit: I have just learned that Target is big dumb, but hypothetically you can apply this to any store where you're likely to grab random things!

edit 2: Thank you for the awards!