If It's in the Way, It's Clutter

That newspaper on the table before breakfast, still neatly folded and waiting for you to notice the Book Review section, the magazine section with an article about a favorite subject, the classifieds with ads for gazillion-dollar penthouse apartments in Manhattan – on Sunday morning it’s a gift. A little slice of pleasure in a day bookended by laundry when you got up and lunchboxes at bedtime.

           By suppertime, the same newspaper will be in the way, strewn in an untidy heap across the table, a few pieces slid to the floor out of your reach underneath; and no one small enough is willing enough to fetch it out. If you’re eating supper in the kitchen again, it’s in your way.

           You’re having supper in the kitchen because the dining table is, well, the laundry’s on that table, and it’s clean laundry, but it’s in your way, so in terms of where you can eat supper, that laundry is clutter. Now if the clothes were taken on upstairs where they belong, and put in drawers and closets, the dining table is clear for supper, the newspaper in the kitchen is still all over the table but not in your way, so there is no clutter, right?

           But there are problems remaining. Most obvious is that we’re not sure those clothes are going to get upstairs, and if they do, where they’ll land. But, as far as supper is concerned, no clutter. As far as bedrooms are concerned, maybe. And to the extent medications for your ADD may be helping you anticipate the scene at bedtime, clothes toted upstairs and left in the middle of the hallway are, in your mind’s eye, in the way. Already. This is a tough problem when other people’s capacities for anticipation are more compromised; or their motivation flags. (Whose value is it to have things put away, anyway? Parents value that, not children, generally).

           Less obvious is that newspaper. Not in the way – not preventing anyone from eating there, anyway; but where is homework happening? Or the writing out of tomorrow’s lists for Getting Ready for School? Where’s the common work space in your house? Less apparent still is how very much in the way something can be simply because it falls in your line of vision, repeatedly, as you move through space trying to sustain your focus on a chosen activity or conversation or train of thought. It can be like tripping over something, cognitively, over and over again. So, while the paper isn’t physically in the way, it is surely in the way of smooth mental operations for the woman with ADD getting together the evening meal for her family.

           Now, suppose you’ve had about enough of trying to wear imaginary blinders, by lowering your gaze – even your very head – as you pass by the table, and you scoop up the paper and stack it more or less squarely in one spot because straight lines, at least, trip your thought-stream less. That act, the little act of scooping up the paper, may well attract a child two rooms away whose sensitive ears pick up the sound and whose hyper-reactivity blasts her into the kitchen with a screech (and now that sound is clutter because it is harsh and therefore in your way in the same manner that your scooping job interrupted her [what was she doing? oh nooo, she was starting to carry a laundry basket upstairs …] and became clutter in her landscape because it got in her way) (is this going too far? yes, and it’s how far it goes, and we’re not halfway there, and it explains why we’re late to school half the time, the other half of which days are triumphs, really, and evidence that people with ADD, especially women with ADD who have children with ADD, are not the underachievers we’re made out to be but instead, overachievers, and yes, this parenthetical remark is about to become clutter because it’s in the way of the point to be made here) – so she’s screeching that the puzzle page is part of her school assignment for tomorrow (hoo-boy, tomorrow? And you count quickly backwards from bedtime and know that showers tonight are clutter because they will be in the way of your daughter completing the word jumble. Either that or the homework is clutter because it’s in the way of personal hygiene).

           In the proper context, all of these things mentioned are not clutter, at all. Maybe there is no clutter except as defined by its context. (Nahhh, tiny bits of flotsam from the bottoms of pockets are clutter and always will be, no matter where they end up; dirty dishes are clutter because they are meant to be clean; if they aren’t clean you can’t use them, so if they are out, and  unusable, they are by definition in the way. Unless you have a large capacity dishwasher and more dishes, which I do not advise because that increases the potential for clutter to astronomical proportions.

           How many glasses, plates and such could be in bedrooms, bathrooms, living rooms, on staircases, and you not even know it, both because you’ve gotten good at wearing imaginary blinders, and because there are more dishes in the cupboard? One trip at bedtime and a mother with ADD could fall down wherever she is standing just from the sheer weight of her own medicinally-enhanced vision of the clutter that has accumulated, that is now in the way of the usual, marginally efficient and hard-won Bedtime Routine of choosing clothes at night, brushing teeth, skip the shower, remember? (the Word Jumble – where is it? [talk about clutter!] ten minutes later, found, under a plate cleared from the dining table and placed on sink’s edge, teetering both actually and symbolically between becoming clean (and not-clutter), and staying dirty (in the way).

           Those blinders have to come off, and at the risk of tripping over things in the way, having them off is the only way to see, and take care of, what’s in the way. A person with ADD can sit on the very edge of a chair several inches too high, turned 90 degrees away from the work she’s doing, in poor light, neck aching, and never consider that the discomfort, if she’s aware of it, could be relieved by two or three simple adjustments. It almost seems then that her very body is in the way (the human body? clutter? what are we coming to?), and she’s practiced ignoring what bothers her for so long, this is just another one of those.

           But tripping over the clothes basket your daughter brought up in good faith and on her own initiative (oh wow, medication does allow her to do the things she sets out to do!), sitting on the edge of the tub while towels spill out on the floor (those were clean an hour ago; do you want to wipe your face [or your, uh, you-knows] with a towel that’s been on the floor where the dog has walked?) is a major inconvenience (and major inconveniences definitely are things which are in the way), so it qualifies as clutter.  Either you sort the towels for dog-walked-on ones, or you re-wash them, or you put the blinders back on and put them in the closet as is; but whatever you do, you had to pick them up again, or direct someone else to do so.

           If your daughter’s medication carries her through bedtime and she’s old enough, she might voluntarily, or encouraged by a “look” from you, understand it to be her responsibility because she generally does, when she can, and when it’s clear to her what to do (we all know ADD is more about setting oneself in motion to doing things than it is in knowing what to do, or even in wanting to do them). So she might pick up the towels, but ohhh, so-o-o-o slo-o-o-o-wly, so even as she claims responsibility for the clutter (dropping them casually on the floor put them in her way), she shares it, by virtue of her out-for-a-Sunday-drive pace. Downstairs you have Important Things To Do (lunchboxes, remember?), and this slow-down is, well getting in your way, and that qualifies it as -- guess what -- clutter.

           Another time we’ll skip these daily sorts of clutter (things that get in our way) and have a go at other kinds of clutter, like multiple apologies which clutter the conversation and the relationship; many simultaneous thoughts; indecision; interruptions like phones and door bells and Time (can you believe that? Time as clutter? Well, is it in your way?); noise and smells; relating to more than one person at a time; things jumping from back burners to front burners unbidden (people with ADD who take effective doses of medications learn quickly that most stoves have more than one burner; and theirs does, now, too -- it’s exciting, and hopeful, a bit frightening, and we’ll get to that) and look out, because things in your way on a stove can be more than just thrilling.