Untidy and messy
My place is untidy and messy a lot of the time except when my stepdaughter has had a blitz, but no one from the council has ever read me the riot act.
For me it's to do with executive functioning difficulties(organising and planning) which often occur with ASD and dyspraxia . I am not dxed with either but probably fit for dyspraxia and possibly for ASD(certainly have traits at a minimum) .
It's hard to get anyone within psychiatry to accept there's an issue as all symptoms are seen rather myopically and unintelligently as leading back to the psych diagnosis.
Efforts to open up a discussion on it, when I can get past my historical fear of being rebranded awkward,demanding and troublesome for seeking more help, have fallen on deaf/daft ears.
As for strategies ,sorry to say I'm clueless . I've heard it said to break things down into smaller parts , but that is easier said than done when you are not sure how to sequence multi step tasks .
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Socially drifted middle class
I wouldn't say messiness is specifically an autism trait, whether due to executive function or not. Maybe you're just messy, personally? Some are, nothing inherently wrong with that.
I'm very organized, ordered, neat, minimalistic. I feel crowded by too many objects around me, like I'm living in a rubbish dump (I'm living with a hoarder at the moment and it's a nightmare). My system is watertight. Everything has a designated place and function, and I don't have any objects that don't. I know where everything is, so I never get stressed out about losing things, misplacing things, etc. I have to know where things are in order to be prepared.
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Alexithymia - 147 points.
Low-Verbal.
I struggle with this also — always have, probably always will, even though I do prefer a neat environment by far. In the past, I have, at times, had help with this, but I also find it distracting/difficult to have a person come over to tidy and clean. I seem to be unable to "simply put things back where they belong" (which is what is generally suggested when you Google this).
The only thing that has helped somewhat here is, since I live with two (equally messy) children, for each of us to give the other person very specific tasks to do. We generally do better tidying each other's desk areas than our own, for instance, so that is what we do.
