People with ADHD are often highly creative problem solvers who thrive under pressure, but we tend to struggle with the everyday stuff like managing time, prioritizing tasks, and finishing the final boring bits of an otherwise exciting project.
In the kitchen this might look like preparing an extravagant dinner one night, then leaving the biggest, most-annoying-to-wash pan in the sink for a few days too many. Or putting on a pot of water forpastaand then completely forgetting about it. Or buying broccoli with the best of intentions only to let it fully decompose in thecrisper drawer. But sometimes it means that when we finally do get around to washing that gross pan, we’ll end up accidentally deep-cleaning the entire kitchen. The goal is finding a happy medium—focusing on a specific task and sticking with it before moving onto something else—but moderation is another challenge for us.
Luckily, with a few easy upgrades and clever gadgets, you can make any kitchen more functional for a person with ADHD—whether that’s you or someone you love. For this list I shared some of the tools that have helped me be more mindful in the kitchen since my diagnosis four years ago. I also consultedTikTok’s favorite psychiatrist specializing in ADHD,Sasha Hamdani, MD,as well asSarah Dettmer, a therapist who works with neurodiverse children and adults. Read on to find out what tricks and tools the three of us recommend for a more ADHD-friendly kitchen.
Open storage
I’ve always been drawn to an industrial kitchen aesthetic, and I recently realized it’s because of all the open storage (well, that, and I love clean lines). The old adage “out of sight, out of mind,” is a constant reality for ADHD brains, so in the kitchen it’s important to keep your most-used tools visible and within reach. "People with ADHD have difficulty with items that are out of their sight because they’re less likely to maintain an active representation of the item in their conscious awareness,” Hamdani, who is very open about her own ADHDon social media, told me. "Basically, if they can’t see it, it is hard to remember it’s there."
In addition to making tools more visible, adding some additional storage around the kitchen can ensure that every item has a home, preferably one that’sclose to where you’ll actually use it. That means that what works for your favorite minimalist Instagrammer’s kitchen might not work for yours, and that’s okay.
"Be honest about what your kitchen needs are," Hamdani says. "No kitchen needs to look and function in the same way as another kitchen. If you use something frequently, make it readily accessible—even if it is big and ‘doesn’t go.’ Organize based on need and not aesthetic."
A pared-down dish set
开放式厨房存储对于患有多动症, but if there’s too much stuff on those floating shelves, it can be overwhelming. "One thing I would urge people to be aware of is clutter," Hamdani says. "With ADHD we often have a hard time figuring out what’s important and what’s not, which leads to a collection of items—hence, the old appliance graveyard in my own kitchen.”