Asperger's and chronic disorganization

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I haven't known that I've had AS for very long (a month almost) but I do know one thing, I've been chronically disorganized (and sometimes just downright messy) since preschool or before. I've just recently been reading about the connections between AS and being chronically disorganized and it explains even more about me than I thought possible. I'll be 24 on Monday and if you were to look at my house you would probably think that a 5 year old ran the joint.

It's utterly embarassing and it's gotten to the point where I don't know what to do about it. It's just too much to sort out and go through and just looking at my house causes me a high level of anxiety and overload that I can't even work on it. It doesn't help that my mother contributes to my mess because she herself is chronically disorganized as well as a compulsive shopper. The majority of the mess in my house is baby clothes my mother has bought for my daughter.

Besides that, I can't seem to remember to wash the dishes, take out the trash and remember to do other simple "normal" people things. No one understands that I'm not intentionally doing this and it's frusterating!

The worst part is that my almost 2 year old daughter has to live in this mess with me and I hate doing this to her, I know she runs the risk of being disorganized just like her mother if I don't do something to fix the way things are. I just don't know where to go or who to ask for help. In the past I would have gone to my local community services board and seen if there was something or someone there but I recently stopped going to my local one as the therapist I was seeing insinuated that my homosexuality was due to incestual feelings for my younger sister(scary on the therapists part, eh?) and continued to insist that I have a personality disorder. So being that I'm on disability ( have been for 5 years for the supposed BPD) and only have Medicaid for insurance, I have no way of getting other forms of help or guidance.

My question is this, is anyone else with AS chronically disorganized and what have you done to make things more managable for yourself? Are there things that other people have taught you that have helped?

I'm also chronically disorganized. However, I have ADHD on top of my AS, and I think that my disorganization is more of a result of the ADHD. To combat disorganization, I always put my keys, wallet, etc. in the same place. I make extensive use of post-it notes to remind me of what needs to be done. I use my cell phone to set alarm reminders thirty minutes before I'm supposed to be somewhere. Finally, I take stimulants (Concerta and Adderall) and they help to somewhat improve my organizational skills.

Well for me, I *likely* am an HFA, but what I was first diagnosed with was NVLD, nonverbal learning disorder. One question I have, do you have to like, "think" everything you do through? It was an odd realization for me that most people don't have to "think" everything through verbally like I do. Anyway, read up on NVLD, and to test if you got it, find a verbal IQ test and a performance IQ test, and if your verbal IQ is like 20 points higher than your performance, it's likely you got NVLD. My IQ gap is like 130 verbal to like 80 nonverbal. To me, the NVLD diagnosis is a bit easier than an AS diagnosis to accept, and for me, I wasn't diagnosed til I was out of high school at 17. NVLD diagnosis criteria is a bit more scientific imo, than an AS diagnosis. Just the incidence of NVLD is rare, it's like 1:1000 and AS is like 1:100, and more girls tend to get diagnosed with NVLD, too.

Anyway, for me, I'm generally pretty messy and unorganized. To compensate, what I do is I just randomly clean things I like. Like, I'll have my car be spotless inside and my bedroom be a mess, that sorta thing. As far as I can tell, the only thing that keeps me more organized is taking a lot of stimulants, caffeine keeps me really organized. I'm tempted to get an Adderall prescription, I've read on a NVLD website this lady's NVLD husband did really well taking Ritalin.

I don't know, odd advice, but I'd check into NVLD if I were you. Some people with AS are the complete opposite, and keep everything extremely organized. For me, I'd like that, but I feel like I physically can't do that.

It sounds like you might have some ADHD symptoms in addition to AS. For me, it always felt like I was missing that "everyday life" manual. All of those daily behaviors and routines that everyone else seemed to take for granted were confusing to me. My mom had to explain everything ad nauseum about why each of these tasks, like laundry or making the bed, should be performed before it finally sunk in. And even so, my time management skills are poor, so I have trouble remembering what I need to do and when. My advice is just be patient with yourself. If the clutter is becoming an issue, take care of it little by little. Mark off a corner of a room to organize and work from there. Don't try to do everything at once or you'll just overwhelm yourself (and nothing will get done).

I know that I've posted this before but it sums up my life and what I would say in response to this post so perfectly there's no reason not to post it again. XD

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/06/this-is-why-ill-never-be-adult.html

I am rather disorganized and a lot of time organization just confuses me more.......like if I try and keep important papers in a filing folder box and put the little lables on the folders I can't find anything. If I put them in a folder and then put the folder somewhere random or just the stack of papers I seem to find them easier.

I have this problem. My room is just such a mess! And everything I do is a mess but it seems perfectly fine to me until I step back and realize that it is impossible to go back to understanding that mess. Sometimes I manage to come up with some neat stuff out of it. I thrive on structure and patterns, however, my mind prefers chaos and complexity. Scary. Anyway what helped to me was simply having less stuff! I literally have only a few clothes, two pairs of socks, alomst no books - everything is in my PC which I somehow manage to keep organized. I need something - I get it from library or borrow etc. Use it - get rid of it. I gather this is not something you would see often in this capitalistic society but living a simple life brings in a lot of peace. Idk if it's good for kids though they might end up wanting stuff even more. I grew up in a very hoarded household and maybe since then part of me has a great dislike for things.

I got interested in this NVLD thingy. It seems to go along with ASD, however, to me completely different - I would not think in words for a very long time and was selectively mute as well. And even now this pressure to verbalize thoughts is driving me nuts and whenever I attempt thinking in words I get very anxious. I have very poor verbal intelligence yet I excel in math. I think it is likely that I have ADHD (if such thing exists ).

For the record, I've been diagnosed with damn near everything under the sun, psychiatrically. I can't help but associate ADD with "crazy" despite the fact that I probably do have some componets of it. I was bullied mercilessly growing up for having ADD. So I tend to shy away from the ADD explination. (no matter how valid it might actually be)

I've thought about NVLD as well. I've recently been going through all my psychiatric and school records and NVLD is quite a possibility from the reading I've done, I had all the classic symptoms of AS and NVLD and it's a real wonder how I got diagnosed with everything from Schizoaffective to Borderline Personality Disorder when the evidence of the true nature of my problems has been staring everyone in the face for nearly 22 years(my mom says she could tell at 2 that I was "different"),

I do put notes on my phone and computer in hopes that their presence on devices I use very much as a college student will help me to remember to do things other than study, write and research (which is what I prefer to do over many other "normal things") but it seems like nothing "sticks"

I have problems "shifting gears" as well, I can write all the notes I want but if my mind is otherwise preoccupied with whatever I'm reading/studying/researching/doing then I can't stop doing that and do the thing I need to, even if it is something as simple as brushing my teeth. and if I'm not pursuing an interest, most times I can't just can't remember period. Which is how I wound up here lol.

I can relate to this so much, especially the aspect of getting so overwhelmed/overloaded when trying to think about how to deal with it. It makes me miserable in my own home.

I also have attention deficit problems, for what it's worth.

^ yep, I'm like this. I'm a random access finder. I have no idea where something is in the pile, then I touch a few objects and am led to the precise location of my target object. And when I dig through the piles of crap in my room, I am subconsciously memorizing the position of every object for the next finding.

@sogj

Thanks alot for posting that link. That really sums up my life and I just laughed (with some crying in there too, why, I don't know) so violently that the person sitting next to me just asked if I was ok and looked at me like I was on drugs.

Yes, I am very disorganized. It has gotten worse the past few years because of my other health problems. My IBS has me in the bathroom too much, leaving me less time to do other things. My sleep apnea leaves me too tired to do much, or I will take a nap to try to get some more sleep, using up more time that could be used for cleaning and organizing. My bad knees and back make it hard to do any standing work, like the dishes. My fridge and freezer are full of dirty dishes, as are the sink, and the stove top. Lately I have been using disposable dishes and plastic ware. Once they get too dirty I can just throw them out. Vacuuming is a problem because of my bad knees, but also because the vacuum is broken. I am too tired to go to Walmart for a new one, or for any of the many other things I need, so the place is pretty creepy. I need to have my brother come over to put up my storm windows. I have a kind that mounts on the inside of the main windows in my trailer, but I don't want him coming over until I get a new vac, because the windows are covered in cob webs. I would like to change from a dial-up computer connection to DSL, but I don't want any service people over to set it up until I am able to clean the place a little. Who knows when that will be. I have been heating the place with my gas stove because I have a lemon furnace that breaks down within a couple of months of being repaired every year, but I don't want the men over to fix the furnace until I can do some cleaning. Besides, I am not sure I want them to even bother this time. It costs several hundred dollars each time, and a new furnace would cost several thousand dollars. I think I will just get an infra red heater big enough to handle the whole trailer, but I need to get to the store to put money on a prepaid credit card, so I can order the heater, only I am too tired to go out. I am going to try to take more naps for a few days, so I can hopefully manage to get to the store then.

Good luck with your own disorganization problems, and remember, we on the spectrum are all:

A Different Drummer

If a man does not keep pace with his companions,
Perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
Let him step to the music which he hears,
However measured or far away.

--Henry David Thoreau

I have AS and ADD. My wife is constantly on me to clean up. I figured out why the messes. I have a tendency to miss things in plain sight. If every thing is a mess, I can find it quicker. Because I have to search "The Mess." When I look at the mess, I don't see just one item. So I have to sort everything there. I am able to find what I am looking for. Everybody else just see the mess and gets upset.

So you see, the mess is a way to cope with "Plain Sight Blindness"

I have piles of plum stones ect in my bedroom. I'd say more but then I'd have to name names and I don't know if that is ok or not.

I try really hard to be organized, but it doesn't stay that way for long. Even when I was younger and in school, I can remember the teachers setting aside specific time for me to clean out my desk apart from the other kids because so much clutter would accumulate in there. I never really thought about it being related to AS before, but I guess it's a possibility.

This is me too. I don't have a diagnosis, but appear to have ADHD and AS traits. I'm a full-time mum and my daughter goes to school, so I'm supposed to do most of the housework, which for most people would be achievable, but I struggle to keep up. This week, I've had sciatica, so my husband has been dealing with all the housework. The ironing is down to nothing, whereas usually it takes up most of the space in the computer/spare room. I've been like this all my life. It's one of the reasons I drove my manager potty. The thing is, I hate clutter and would love a minimalist life. I love a good clear out, but the place doesn't stay that way for long.