I Have Known About My Inattentive ADHD for 30 Years, but I Am Still Stupid About It

by Cynthia Hammer, MSW

I like to do my own fix-it chores around the house, but I often wonder if I come out ahead.

I make so many blunders along the way to a finished job that I should have hired a professional. But when I get enthused about another job around the house, I forget my earlier missteps and mistakes and am optimistic that This Time Will Be Different. (I just realized these are five words people with ADHD should never say. As much as we hope something will be different, it rarely is unless we change what we do.)

I have gotten smarter as I learned to do things differently.

Now I always change into my painting clothes, no matter how tiny the paint job is. Are most people with ADHD as messy as me? I used to finish a paint job with paint on the walls and my clothes. I usually didn't see the paint on my clothes until it dried and ruined them.

I put down masking tape to paint crisp edges and covered the floor with a drop cloth. Doing this routine prep work improved my paint jobs. Previously, I went from my idea, "Let's redo the bathroom." to start immediately painting. I thought it was unnecessary to put down masking tape and cover the floor. I would be neat this time. After enough mess-ups, I finally realized I would never be neat enough to not need masking tape and a drop cloth.

I learned to remove all hardware and screws and properly store them so they do not get lost. If I take care of the removed pieces, I won't need to shop for missing parts later. Removing the fixtures ensures that I don't get paint on them, causing more work later, removing the unwanted paint.

Yipee! It sounds like I have learned a lot and can be proud of the progress I made and yet….

I had to caulk the seam between the walls and baseboards. I wore my everyday clothes. If I thought, "You should put on your painting clothes first," I ignored that thought. "This is caulking, not painting. I will be fine." Later, I discovered the dried caulk on my slacks. I didn't realize dried caulk is as impossible as dried paint to remove from clothing.

In getting ready to paint the bathroom, I set the paint tray on the drop cloth on the floor. Maybe I thought, "That isn't a good place for the paint tray." But, as I said earlier, I am still stupid about my ADHD.

I forgot the paint tray was on the floor, backed up, and put my left foot wearing a jogging shoe in the paint tray! I wiped paint off the shoe’s bottom and thought I was good to go. I left the bathroom and went down two flights of stairs to finish cleaning my shoe in the basement sink.

Later I noticed every other stairstep had paint on its edge.

I could not understand what caused this strange pattern, but I got to work removing the paint. It was only then that I realized I had not clean the backside of my shoe where a lot of paint remained. Every time I lifted my left foot to go down a step, the shoe on that foot put paint on each stair step.

The bathroom was almost finished.  I just needed to reattach the fixtures.

I had lost a few of the screws and had to make a trip to Loew's for replacements. 

But all and all, I finished the paint job with few mishaps—and a few new learnings.  My next do-it-myself household job will go even better.