Some People With ADHD Swear By The 'Poop Rule' Of Decluttering — And It Might Help You, Too
Decluttering your space can feel like a Herculean task that you’d much rather put off than tackle. But one simple and comically named rule of thumb may help you make some headway. It’s called the “poop rule.”
When trying to decide if you should keep or get rid of an item, ask yourself this question: If the object had poop on it, would I wash it off or throw it away?
This “rule” went viral after ADHD content creator Becka Karle, known as @adhdorganized on TikTok, posted a video on the social media platform about it in July. The video racked up 175,000 views on TikTok before making the rounds on othersocial mediasites.
Karle told HuffPost she first heard about the poop rule from a therapist she was seeing to help manage her attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptoms. At the time, Karle was downsizing her home, having a hard time going through and purging items she had accumulated over the years. Difficulty staying organized is a common challenge among people with ADHD (more on that below).
Her therapist told her to pick up each item in her hands and actually picture poop on it.
“Like an old toiletry or something would be gross, right? So my therapist was like, ‘Would you wash poop off that?’ And I was like, ‘Absolutely not. It would be all in the cracks, you know?’” Karle said. “And she was like, ‘Exactly. Now, what about a shirt that you wear to work a lot?’ And I’m like, ‘Honestly, I probably would wash it.’”
Karle said the poop rule worked for her because she’s “a very visual and literal person” and it kept her “accountable.”
In the comments of Karle’s viral video, one TikTok user compared the poop rule to Marie Kondo’s own tidying technique but with a twist, writing, “So...Marie Kondo’s ‘Does this spark joy?’ made more visceral? Love it.”
And in a viral post viewed more than 5 million times, Cooper Ownbey, an archival researcher and scriptwriter, wrote on X, formerly called Twitter, that Kondo’s method never worked for her but that “an adhd tiktoker just changed my entire life by introducing ‘the poop rule.’”
the marie kondo “does this spark joy?” method of decluttering never worked for me, but an adhd tiktoker just changed my entire life by introducing “the poop rule: if this object had poop on it, would you wash it off, or throw it away?”
— Cooper💫 (@cooperownbey) August 23, 2024
Krista Carvin, a therapist specializing in adult ADHD based in Ontario, Canada, told HuffPost she’s familiar with the poop rule.
“I am always on the lookout for memorable and easy-to-implement tips that can potentially help my clients,” she said. “I think that for the right ADHDer, the poop rule has just the right amount of humor to help this tip be a memorable one.”
Why This Rule Might Work For You
People with ADHD may struggle with organization and maintaining their home due to something called executive dysfunction, which is a core symptom of the condition.
“Many folks with ADHD have challenges consistently using our executive function skills — the brain-based skills that help us translate complex task-oriented thoughts into goal-directed actions that help us ‘execute’ a behavior,” Carvin said.
Executive function skills help you do things like remember to complete certain tasks and the steps necessary to get them done, to keep track of information and items needed to do tasks, to plan and prioritize while also responding to changes in demands, and to manage your attention, time and emotions while executing a task without losing interest or motivation, Carvin explained.
If you have a hard time with executive dysfunction, organizing and tidying your home can be hard to do “especially without getting distracted, tired or bored,” Carvin said.
Carvin said she would recommend the poop rule as a decluttering tip “for the right client with the right sense of humor” because it “helps to simplify the complex decision-making process around decluttering that ADHDers might struggle with because of executive dysfunction.”
“The strategy addresses the decision to keep an item or not in a clever, concrete and clear way that could work well for the right client,” she added.
You don’t need to have ADHD to benefit from the poop rule. If you find it useful, you can employ it to help make those tricky decisions about which items are important enough to hold onto and which ones you’d be better off donating or getting rid of during your next decluttering effort.
