Five Games to Play to Start Tidying NOW

A cluttered living room with 70s coffee table covered in hobby items.

We all know how things tend to pile up, and, having ADHD myself, I am no exception. Here’s a current photo of my coffee table. My dog treat bucket, the XBOX controller to plug into my laptop for a game I haven’t played in three weeks, a coloring book and colored pencils from a low energy day, my laptop bag from my last work from the car Friday, buttons for teaching my dog words - none of these belong here, but I spend most of my non-working, non-sleeping time on the living room couch, and that’s where things begin to pile. 

First, identify your hotspots, like my coffee table. Surfaces in the spaces you hang out for any given time are the typical culprits: your bedside table (or floor beside your bed), your computer desk, your kitchen table, or your coffee table. An additional hotspot for me is the kitchen counter just inside the front door, which tends to accumulate items I’m not sure what to do with.

But face it - us ADHDers have a hard time building routines like “spend 15 minutes putting things away every night” and “put things away when you’re done with them.” That’s why games can help give us the dopamine boost we need to get things done. 

Game 1: I Spy

Watercolor rainbow - Designed by Freepik

Pick a color, any color. Use a color that’s common in your household if you’re ready for a big session, but if you want to start small, pick something more obscure. For me, common is black or brown and obscure might be purple.

Starting from where you are right now, identify the things that are your color or have that color on them. Take them to where they go, or if they don’t have an official home, to the room they’re most closely associated with, like books to your bedroom if you don’t have an official bookcase, or medical supplies like wrist braces to the bathroom

Go from room to room finding the things that are your color and putting them away/close to where they belong.

You can say you’re done at the end of any color, or if you’re getting jazzed up and want to keep going, pick another color! Bonus challenge: Choose a color related to the previous color. If you start with red, go to orange or pink, etc.

Why it works:

• Many ADHDers ROCK at spontaneous observation. You see the kitten in the ditch on the side of the road and the balloon floating over a house two blocks over while walking your dog. But what you have a hard time with is interrupting what you’re currently doing to take care of a less pleasant task, like tidying or cleaning. But what if the task is spotting things? 

• ADHDers are GREAT at wandering from room to room, noticing things, and getting distracted. Let’s roll with that. 

• Initiating tasks is HARD. Picking something small and specific can get you started, and often once you’re in motion you’re willing to stay in motion. We know it’s all over when we sit down.

My example: Purple

• the full, unopened purple Le Croix can on the side table goes to the fridge in the kitchen

• my loose colored pencils (also on the side table) go back in the box

• The colored pencil box (picture of the purple pencil and the text outline) and the coloring book (purple cover) go where they belong on my bedside shelves upstairs

• Back downstairs, my dog’s purple treat bottle is on the floor. I refilled it for him and he ignored it, so I put it away in his toy box.

• I ran out of purple things around the time I had a client call - perfect!

In my mind, the color adjacent to purple is pink, but maybe for you it’s a dark blue or even red.

• peachy-pink card deck and a book with a hot pink spine go upstairs on my office bookshelves

• While I was up there, I noticed a conference nametag I didn’t care about, so I tossed that - not pink

• Fixed a maroony-pink neck cooler and put it away in my bag of tricks (my decluttering go bag) in my office

Is that it for pink? Let’s do red. 

• Threw away the tangled beginning of a macrame project I started two years ago

• Found my red water mug and filled it - this is your sign to drink water

• Put away the three leftover buttons from the “teach your dog words” project

• Dog treat bucket has a red label, put it where it usually goes on the side table

• but first I had to move a couple books that had come to live in its spot

• Remembered I forgot the pink hot water bottle in my bedroom, so I grabbed that and drained it

Then I got bored - time to move on to another game!

Game 2: Safari Time

Typical Midwestern front closet with winter coats, winter gear, and clutter.

Grab your telescope, aka a cardboard tube from a paper towel or toilet paper roll (or the whole roll, don’t wait for an empty!). From the door where you normally enter your house, pretend to be coming home from a long day at work. If you don’t work, or work from home, start from where you wake up in the morning instead.

Stop at the first soul-sucking location, the spot that makes you go UGH when you first get home (or wake up). This might be the entryway closet, or like me, the spot on the counter where I dump things on arrival home. Hold your telescope to your eye, point it at the spot, and memorize what’s within your view. Tackle just that spot (and above it if the spot you picked is load bearing!) Does the thing belong elsewhere? Do you really need it at all? 

Once that spot is clear, containing only what belongs there, move on to the next spot, but feel free to stop here if you need to. Repeat the next time you remember!

Why It Works:

• The tube narrows your focus. When your home is cluttered, every item v. Finding one spot to start gives you a small success, and like above, sometimes it’s not so hard to keep going.

• Clutter can be incredibly draining, but you aren’t able to notice until the clutter is gone. Tackling the clutter in the order you experience it when coming home or waking up delays the feeling of overwhelm just a little, then a little more as you keep working at it.

• Starting in one spot and delivering elsewhere helps our honeybee brains, which love to pick things up and put them down somewhere else, wander from room to room, and get distracted by new things to put away 

My example:

I actually just decluttered my doom pile on the kitchen counter two days ago, so I’m working on the top shelf in my entryway closet where all our winter gear is stored.

• The exact circle I looked at ended up being mostly my husband’s waterproof snow pants that belong there, so I moved on to the rest of the shelf, then on to the rest of the closet.

• Decluttered:

• Two ball caps and a cheap stuffy from the county fair from two years ago that were tossed up there and forgotten

• An old pair of mittens

• Found a poncho? Husband said he wore it when he walked to work years ago

• Reminded me I had what I thought was a rain slicker that turned out to be not at ALL waterproof that should go

• These all went into a white garbage back for the next trip to the thrift store!

• Moved elsewhere:

• My sunhat - it’s February, I think I can do without it!

• A pair of flip flops - put them with my summer shoes in my closet

• Addilocks went into a shoe I don’t wear often in the hanging organizer

• A bag of winter accessories I emptied got put in our ‘reusable bags’ bag, where I discovered a few paper bags which we don’t normally keep, so I weeded out a few of those as well

Game 3: Race the Clock

An hour glass in progress

This one is a classic, so you might have heard of it. Set a timer for a manageable time - for some that’s 25 minutes, but you could do as low as 5 or even 2 if needed. Make it visual if you can - a kitchen timer or a big countdown clock app. Bonus challenge: If you live with someone else, make it a competition! Each pick a room and put away as much as possible in the time allotted - the one with the tidier room at the end wins. Take a photo before and after in case there is any doubt.

Why it works:

• Time pressure helps our ADHD brains. Something about only having a few minutes kicks us into high gear.

• Competition with a time limit kicks the Race the Clock game into hyperspeed.

My Example:

When I’m trying to beat the clock, I start in the places most closely tied to my mental health. If my kitchen is a disaster, the people close to me know I am Not Doing Well. I start picking up clutter in the kitchen, taking it to where it belongs, pick something up from the room I went into and take it where IT belongs, and so on. If I get stuck, I just return to the kitchen. My office is always 100% a disaster, because up until recently it’s been gaming space, 9-5 work space, closet, overflow library, craft storage area, and place my husband stows things that have come for me what I haven’t ~dealt with yet. It’s the end home for most of my belongings. Not today, office.

Game 4: Pin the Tail on the…Direction.

I struggled to name this one.

If it’s safe to do so in your space, close your eyes and spin around a few times, preferably in a room with even lighting so you can’t cheat. :) Open your eyes and work on tidying in as straight a line as possible without injuring yourself on furniture.

Why it works:

• Like the other games, it’s a way of randomizing or playing with what you start with to make it less overwhelming

• The physical activity gets you up and moving!

My example:

I spun around a few times in my living room. Joke’s on me, I happened to open my eyes in the direction of the coffee table I didn’t finish tidying early, and the stairway upstairs. The coffee table taunted me with the items I hadn’t gotten to in my color game, so I put away my laptop bag, a random scrap of paper, and my game controller I use to play games on my laptop.

Game 5: Play Pretend

Designed by jemastock / Freepik

Remember playing pretend as a kid? At some point, it became embarrassing to play pretend, but most of us still have one-sided conversations in our heads! This game is one of my favorites, because your imagination is the limit. I use this especially with cleaning cleaning, but depending on what you’re pretending, it can work with decluttering or tidying. You can be a princess relegated to the role of a scullery maid in her own home (looking at you Cinderella!). Maybe it’s not even your house and you’ve been hired to clean! You can be a widower in the Wild West trying to keep the homestead running in your wife’s absence. You have an apartment inspection scheduled for tomorrow! YOUR MOTHER IN LAW WILL BE HERE IN AN HOUR. This works well when mid- to deep- cleaning a single room, or when taking the whole house down a level. 

Why it works:

• Our brains are always whirling. This game gets you out of your head and into someone else’s for a time. Telling yourself a story in your head as you carry out mindless tasks like cleaning or putting things away takes your mind off what you’re doing and keeps you entertained. 

• It taps into a childlike sense of play which we desperately need while adulting

My example:

• Listen…tradwife content has become popular for a lot of people in 2024/2025 and we can reject the mindset behind it while enjoying it as an activity. This is usually the narrative my brain is spinning up when I’m zenning along doing household chores and cooking.

It’s your turn!

Did you play any of the five games I listed here, and did you make progress? Are there any games you play that I haven’t thought of? I’d love to hear from you in the comments down below!

If you’re ready for professional help with decluttering your life (clutter makes life so much harder), contact me!

My Decluttering Story

I grew up in a hoarded house. My dad called himself Junkman John with pride. He had piles of tires filled with black widows, rusting cars, a school bus, piles of 2x4 planks. He bought a dump truck load of shattered glass because he believed it would increase in price and he could resell it for a profit. A year later, part of our fence made of scavenged garage doors fell onto the glass pile and became the perfect summer basking and reading spot for his 12 year old daughter, me. My mom did her best to keep the house clear, but the stuff crept into the porch…then into the spare room…then in one elder brother’s bedroom when he moved out, then the next brother’s bedroom when he moved out.

As a teen, the shame of growing up in that home was intense, but as an adult, I can see with clear eyes that my dad had a deep pain inside him, and hoarding is a coping mechanism like any other.

As an adult, having moved 13 times since age 15 and having ended up across the country with just a carload of belongings, I didn’t have a whole lot myself. I had a few close calls with a spare room where things just began to pile up a la my dad, but the final straw was when I threw a foam mattress pad on top of the pile and I realized I had to get the room in order.

I found myself taking great joy in decluttering friends’ parents houses on holidays, turning a small garret into a lovely big dressing room, micro-organizing jewelry, tearing through closets. In late 2022, my boyfriend (now husband) and I went home to visit my mom and found that her small 2-bedroom apartment had descended into utter chaos. Her bedroom was full of stacks of boxes that hadn’t been unpacked in years. A blanket with vomit and feces from a cat that had passed away a year prior lay in a heap on top of a mish-mash pile. Her not-quite walk-in closet was full of both her AND my little brother’s junk. Every surface was piled with the bits and pieces that no one ever knows quite what to do with. I was amazed, astonished, aghast. What had happened here? How did it get so bad?

After unpacking her precious memories from the various moldering stacks of boxes, we evicted trash magazines and old VHS tapes from her beautiful cedar hope chest and filled it with the things she actually cares about. We dismantled her closet and made my little brother put his belongings in his own room…just kidding, he decluttered most of that too. We went through each drawer and looked under the bed. We threw out bags of trash, recycled dozens of boxes, donated carloads of belongings to the local thrift store, set up a row of laundry to be done. We wiped down and vacuumed, we arranged displays of her favorite things (rocks) on her vanity, we made her bedroom feel light, refreshing, and joyful.

After that, my mind really began to churn. What if I did this as a business? Do you just put up a shingle? How would I get people to let me, a total stranger, into their homes, a deep source of secret shame?

I ended up posting first to my neighborhood Next Door, of all things, which got me my first paying client. In all ways, Brenda was an ideal first client - I’ll post more about her someday but some of her before and afters are up on my home page. I’ve been decluttering professionally but part-time for two years now, and I find nothing more invigorating than clearing space for joy!

My parents are a big part of why I call my business Declutter with Compassion. Through them I’ve realized that most people who struggle with chronic disorganization, especially so-called ‘hoarders,’ are hurting deeply. Their brains create a safe little nest to protect them. What starts out as a small disorganization problem rapidly snowballs when people experience trauma, to the point that the only way their brains can cope with their coping mechanism is to put blinders on and pretend it’s not happening, or not that bad.