Rearranging the furniture

On behalf of Elaine Langford, Guest Blogger. 

As a ministry household, we’ve moved house a dozen times in 35 years. Despite honing our strategies to make each move smoother, we occasionally get caught out, like when a large wardrobe didn’t make it up a narrow stairway. It’s also common that a few months on we’ll get the urge to move rooms around as the furniture just doesn’t feel in the right place. On the plus side, we have become very efficient in moving six bookcases from one room to another in under an hour.

One reason behind the need to rearrange things is my ADHD brain. When faced with decisions or organising things, my brain is like a popcorn machine, hotly cracking open kernels of thoughts until the noise stops. Then I ditch the duds and evaluate the options to see which help most or make life more efficient. This is great when organising a room or optimising a complicated process but not so great when you’re a writer. While this neurodiverse feature creates a panful of ideas from one prompt, it leaves me sifting through them to work out which are suitable for the current project, and how to structure them. I refer to this as, ‘all the right thoughts but not necessarily in the right order’.

Before you think I’ve lost the plot organising popcorn, I’ll flip the analogy back to moving furniture in a minute. Meanwhile, one risk of managing this pan of thoughts is occasionally the lid blows off and I become so overwhelmed that I just give up or get distracted by the extra ideas generated. I know some will say, ‘just don’t overthink it’. However, an ADHD brain doesn’t ‘overthink’, it simply processes until a satisfactory conclusion. Until that is obvious, it keeps going. Now back to furniture.

One of our moving strategies involves listing our furniture, grouped by current rooms, and map where each will go in the new house. A tool I find helpful to avoid the overwhelm of my popping thoughts is a mind map, where I note each down and group into themes or topics. Relevant thoughts can then be highlighted for the project. After expanding a few and a shape is formed, I review the phrasing to trim off the fat, or multiple analogies, to fit within the word count.

When I realise that I’m no longer thinking about moving furniture it usually means things are in the best place. It’s the same with writing. When the words are in the right order, the piece feels smoother, and my ADHD brain settles. I won’t tell you how many times I’ve re-organised this blog but taking regular breaks helped, as did a tight deadline. Of course, the more opportunities I take to write, the more efficient this process will become, like my moves. I’m also grateful for God, who is known for creating order out of chaos.

Perhaps you’d like to share what makes you feel settled in your writing, or any moving tips.

As a guest blogger, Elaine Langford is a sporadic writer in between moving house and organising popcorn. In a time long ago, before an energy-limiting condition, she spent time as a freelance writer generating news stories, compiling crosswords, performing stand-up comedy and being surprised to win two prizes for writing hymns. She now focuses on blogging and poetry, with aspirations to release a TikTok video on the most efficient way to move a bookcase.