#anyway sorry this is too long and that jordi-savalls-jockstrap endured most of this shit in the dms before it occured to me to apply it her

[deadpanwalking]

this is big stupid, but can you rec any books or websites on cooking with adhd, where it's not just reminding me to be organized (aka have you tried not having adhd) or assuming that i have a huge kitchen or telling me to spend $ on very nifty but useless containers?

Sorry I've been sitting on this for 10 weeks 😬, but it's a really good question. It's been a while since I checked, but I don't know any books like that. The thing is, organization is something that can actually be so personal! Moreover, being disorganized isn't a fixed character trait—you only believe that because you got forcefed the one-size-fits-all prescriptive Container Store ass definition that never worked for more than one week at a time before your locker/backpack/room started looking like shit again. The fact is that any organizational system that's designed with the neurotypical person you want to be in mind will be rejected like a mismatched organ transplant every fucking time—and you'll only realize after it's too late to return all that crap to the Container Store.

Listen to me. It's in your self-interest to stop hating yourself long enough to prioritize making daily life (which includes but is not limited to cooking) easier. No amount of medication, therapy, or products will rewire your brain into working like another kind of brain. I know self-acceptance can feel like giving up, but the alternative is paying $3000 a month for a shithole where your kitchen is booby trapped so you can't even make shakshuka for your ladyfriend.

A small kitchen is a great place to experiment with accessibility as a practical form of self-care because it's a low-stakes high reward way for you tweak your environment, and the results are quantifiable—easier to focus, things take less time, you sustain fewer cuts and burns, you cry 23% less.

In my specific case, visual-spatial stuff is a huge problem—and it's something that's an issue for lots of folks with ADHD and NVLD, not to mention those who have strokes or neurodegenerative illness. You know how some people have a cluttered aesthetic that they can navigate, because their brain will automatically process visual input and filter out unnecessary detail? With me, too much visual input causes the neurological version of poor rendering and lag in a video game.

The solution? I slapped labels on all my storage boxes, drawers, shelves, and containers. Yeah, it is big stupid and my kitchen looks like Memento (2000) but my brain can handle verbal input like a dream, so I no longer have to create the universe in order to bake an apple pie. But like, before that? I spent decades (and $$$) trying to make it look and function like a Normal Kitchen™, messed up a lot of basic shit, and didn't even have fun doing it.

Anyway, if someone does have a bookrec that fits the bill, they should drop it in the fishbowl comments, but until then, think of specific challenges that you keep running up against when you're trying to cook, and move shit around.