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Hi, welcome to ADHD Friendly. I am Patty. I am an ADHD and executive functions coach and here to help you struggle less and thrive more. If you're looking for more support than I can provide on this YouTube channel and podcast, check out my website, ADHD Friendly.com for lots of resources and information on the ADHD Friendly membership where adders get more things done. All right, this is episode 238 and I'm going to kick it off with a celebration related to my yard. Some things I got done, then I'm going to update a little bit of spending this week which ties into my celebration. And then our main topic is an ADHD friendly guide to house hunting. Let's jump in. All right, so it's that time of year. Lots of things going on in the spring having to do with the outdoors. So we're gonna start with my celebration related to my yard. It was finally warm enough to warm enough and cool enough. I need it to be that that Goldilocks level of temperature outside to pull me out to get me working in the yard. And I had urgency for some of the work I did because my community does a spring branch pickup for free. But you have to have all of your branches stacked in a very specific way out by the curb by a specific date. So it creates the urgency for me. And I like the structure that they give me and it lets me get all of the branches that have been accumulating throughout the winter that we've just been kind of dragging to different places in the yard waiting for this all pulled out and by the street. And it took me about four hours this past weekend, but I got everything out. And yesterday they came and picked it up and took it, they turned it into mulch and move along. And it was just so satisfying to get all that out there. And as I say this, I'm remember I'm realizing I didn't take a picture of it. Oh, well, it still feels really good. I love to get pictures of things that I've completed and that's an opportunity missed. I'll make a note for next time. And then my other yard win is I got my summer vegetables planted. I'm a little bit early than I typically am at planting them. Supposed to wait until after Mother's Day here in the Chicago area to avoid a frost, but I was looking at the extended forecast because I planted them last week and looks pretty good. So I got them planted. I'm super excited to have those in the ground and that's what I purchased this week. I spent $64 on some veggies and trellises and I planted the little baby seedlings that I've sprouted from back end of January, beginning of February. We'll see if any of those really do grow and produce anything. But I bought some established plants as well just in case because I need that reward to kick in and have some actual things growing. So. So that's it. No product of the week this week. Just some exciting wins. All right, now for my tip for this week and this is related to my main topic, which is an ADHD friendly guide to house hunting. This kind of was what inspired that topic. It's from my 365 Life Hacks calendar. first when I read this tip it was a little overwhelming to me, but maybe your bandwidth is more than mine. I'm not good at direction, so when I read this I was like, oh my gosh. If I tried to factor that in to my priorities when I was house hunting, I think I'd go crazy. But here's the tip and as with everything I share, take what works for you. Leave the rest behind. But this tip is if you can avoid it, don't live due west to where you work. If you're driving, the sun will be in your eyes during the morning and evening commutes. So I've had this happen and I agree it's really annoying, especially if you're driving for any length of time with the sun coming right at you. So it might be something to consider when you are looking at where you're going to be living or if you're going to be doing a lot of carpooling with kids to school, maybe not living due west of where their school is located. This is interesting and sparkly to me as something that would be great if it happened to work out, but I don't do well with direction. So for me to try to do the mental effort of figuring out where I am and how many minutes or times would I be on a road driving west to get to where I need to go. That just is beyond my bandwidth. But I'm sharing it in case it's not and it would be helpful to you. All right, that takes us to our main topic and that is really creating an ADHD friendly guide to finding your next home. So if you have an ADHD brain and you have ever gone house hunting, you know that experience of how the details of houses start to blend. For me, it's usually after the third house when I'm starting to get ready to go To a fourth house. I'm like, all of those things that felt so concrete to me start getting a little muddled and I'm starting to blend. Did that house have the funky layout upstairs or was that the house with the basement that smelled? So it can get really hard to keep up with all of those details and to hold on to our priorities. I have moved across, you know, just like one state to a neighboring state twice, and I've moved across the country with four kids three times. So I know how easy it is to lose those details for all of my across the country moves. I had to fly to the place that we were moving and find a house in one or two weekends because it was part of my husband getting relocated. And they're like, well, fly. You're there twice. So and so it was a very high pressured experience to find the house I was looking for. So I had to create structure to make sure that I didn't lose track of what was the most important thing for us and our family and keep them in sight so that the home that we chose was more likely to check the boxes that were most important to us than get forgotten. All right, so how do you support yourself to make sure that if you're in a place where you're going to be house hunting, especially if it's a high pressured place where there's a lot of competition, what's the deal breaker for you? What, what's the most important thing? That if it's not there, it really doesn't matter if it's a good deal, it's not the home for you. So here are some tips to support yourself with ADHD brain wiring to navigate a house hunt that's also ADHD friendly. So the first is to decide what are your top three non negotiables. Pick these first. Before you ever go look at anything, just what are the three things that if it doesn't have this, I don't even want to look at it. I don't want to waste my time. I don't waste the agent's time. It's not going to be the house for us. So it might be things like the location, like how far is it from work or is it in a specific school district? So you're looking for a very specific area that needs to fall in. This boundary might be price. If it's above this, it's not going to happen. So I don't want to see anything above this price. Or it might be something like the number of bedrooms. If you have like, you know, I did. I had four kids. I couldn't look at anything less than a three bedroom house, period. Wasn't going to happen. So it didn't matter if they were like, oh well, it's two bedrooms and it has a little nook that you could. And like no, no, no, not with four kids. I, that was a deal breaker. So choose the three things that are deal breakers, not everything. I. Even when I'm not moving, I like to go onto those house hunting sites like Zillow or redfin or realtor.com and look for houses in different areas and I'll put in certain parameters and depending on where the area is, those parameters will result in no properties that fit my description. So that might be because of the price or what, because I put in, I want a garage or I want a first floor main primary bedroom. Really think about what your priorities are so that when you're searching, you're getting what you absolutely know you have to have. Step or tip number two is to create a simple tracking system. This was the game changer for me. I have shared how limited my working memory is. I have no capacity to hold on to details. Once I hit, you know, more than three, it's just gone. And I needed a way to remember details when we were hunting over a very compressed amount of time, like a weekend. And I was looking at, you know, seven to ten houses a day literally. And I needed to make sure I could remember not just the important things like how many bedrooms and where it was or what the cost was, but what I quickly learned were details specific to the area that I was looking in. So I had my must have list and then I had a quick rating like a 1 to 5 scale where I would put, you know, like bedroom sizes. I would give it an overall rating for each of the bedrooms. So I had a spreadsheet and I would print it out. I had one page for each house we went in and I had a place to write, the address at the top. And then I had the priorities by how important they were to me. And then they were like located inside the house. What the outside of the house. What would I rate the outside of the house's appearance or the yard or proximity to neighbors, neighborhood amenities, if there was a pool in the neighborhood or if there were sidewalks, whatever things I wanted to remember. So if I was looking at two or three houses that I absolutely loved, I had some really concrete data to remind myself. This one was walking distance to some shops, but still felt like it was secluded and private, or this One had neighbors outside that looked like, you know, kids were playing. And there were kids around my kids ages. Just little details that I would write in the spaces I allowed on my spreadsheet to remind myself what I liked or didn't like about a house. So for me, I had my must haves, I had my quick ratings, and I had a place for notes and gut feelings. And my must haves were, like I said, like the. The number of bedrooms. But then I would put little. I had, like, a space for each bedroom to write down. If it had a window that was, you know, large enough to let in enough light or if it was a decent size. If I wanted to put two kids in a bedroom together, if it had a decent sized closet, you know, just like little details that I wanted to keep in mind. If there was a garage, I wanted to be able to check that off so I could look easily and say, okay, these houses are similar, but this one had a garage, this one didn't. So, again, the things that are important to you are what you really want to have. Have a system to capture, and I want to encourage you, have a system that you can keep up with immediately, whether it's, you know, a note on a. On your phone that you're just going to walk in and take pictures and. And maybe mark it up with details. For me, it was a physical sheet because that helped me to process at the end of the day and put them in order of my favorite so we could schedule ones we wanted to go back and see again before we flew back home. It prevents them blending together and it helps them stand out later. And then I would attach it. Two, I literally brought little paper clips with me, and I attach it to the sale sheet that the realtor had printed out for us. So I had the sales sheet with the pictures and the spreadsheet list that I printed out to help me remember those details. And it just worked so nicely for me to support my brain when house hunting. My third tip is to identify any deal breakers for you. So for me, it was. If I arrived at a house, it may have said it was, you know, a third of an acre. But the way the property was situated that you couldn't tell from pictures was you were right on top of your neighbors. And I always like a little bit of breathing space. That's just a me thing. There were houses that were in our price range that we didn't realize until we went to look at the house that it was in our price range because its backyard was the highway. Like it literally backed up to a highway. And of course, that wasn't shown on the pictures or when we moved to the Chicago area, there were a lot of homes in our range that we quickly figured out they were in our range because the taxes were so unbelievably high. So we look at this house in our range and we're like, this house is amazing. Why? Like, what's wrong? What are we missing? And it was that the property taxes were like $24,000 a year, which that was a complete deal breaker. So we learned to start looking for the things that we were noticing were more likely an issue if it was in our price range and it looked like it was too good to be true. And then my final tip is consider adding a fun details column or to look for anything that stands out. We looked at one house that we ended up calling the Harry Potter house because it had really cool details painted in one of the bedrooms that were Harry Potter inspired. And we thought it was super cool. Or, you know, I had a little secret cubby behind a bookcase or something. And we want every to remember that. I always look at the local library for the different towns that we're looking at living in because I want to see what. We spend a lot of time in libraries. I want to see what the library looks like. So I might put a new. If I like the house enough to remind me to go check out the library if we're seriously considering moving there. Because for me, that's a fun detail. So keeping in mind, what are the fun details for your column? What would be interesting for your brain to remember that you want to hold on to remember? Our brain will hold on to sticky details. Not a lot of similar things that all swirl together. So not vague notes like, oh, like four good sized bedrooms. Maybe it's four good sized bedrooms with huge windows, bright light, or maybe dark paint, you know, to remind you that you're going to have to repaint whatever it is. The same is true if you're, if you're looking for a new condo or a new apartment. If you're looking for a new home, it's. How do you keep in mind? Especially I know when we've gone apartment hunting, there's different amenities, there's different, you know, I literally look at the resistance I have for trash. I'm like, what is the trash situation? How far away do I have to go to take the trash? If I'm taking it myself or if there's a service, what does that look like? How reliable is it? You know, whatever it is that's most important to you. I have, you know, my own sensitivity. So I'm, you know, kind of looking at. I'd rather be on the top floor because I have no toleration for people walking above me. I hear everything. So I'd rather go up the stairs and then know once I get into my apartment, I'm probably not going to hear anything than be on a lower floor with less stairs. But the whole time I'm in my apartment, I'm sensitive to anybody that's walking around above me. So what are your priorities for your dream home? Clarify them before you start looking so that it helps you to filter through anything that's distracting to you. Right. So it's like, oh my gosh, they're laminate counter, countertops. And that's a bummer if you were hoping for granite or soapstone or something. But oh my gosh, if your main goals are all checked off, it helps you to not get distracted by the little like, oh, it's carpet here. And that carpet would have to be replaced. Yeah, but it has everything else. It's in our price range, the taxes are reasonable, the neighborhood's great. I can deal with the carpets or I can deal with, you know, whatever it is because the priorities are all being met here. So identify what they are. Keep a tool like pick something that helps you to hold on to the differences between different apartments, homes, properties so that you're supporting your brain to make a decision that supports you and is ADHD friendly for you and your family now. Oh, and happy home hunting. It's very exciting. All right, now for our book of the week. So this is a book that is coming out on June 16, so it's available for pre order. I got a an advanced copy of Liberty street by Heather Marshall from NetGalley and the publisher, who I want to thank very much. I loved this book. I gave it a 4 out of 5 stars. A quick summary is it's inspired by true events and it weaves back and forth through time to shine a light on mental health, incarceration and various. I'm gonna put this in air quotes. Prisons that hold women captive. So really, really interesting story. Highly recommend this. I got lost in it, was so excited, couldn't put it down. Highly recommend it again. Available for pre order. Comes out June 16, 2026. If this is something that interests you, or maybe you can see if your library has pre ordered it and get on the wait list. That's what I like to do too. All right. Now for my quote of the week. And this is from James Clear. James always has such great quotes that work for our brains. He says the problem with keeping your options open is that every option requires energy to hold on to. And a shelf full of maybes is often heavier than a hand holding one. Yes, Put something down. So again, if we think about this through the lens of house hunting, it's how do you put something down while remembering what the top options are that align with what you most want for you and your family? So I just love that because the more that it's like, oh, well, well, this one had this, this one had. And I like this, I like this. Even if she's a restaurant's go to or vases for your flowers, whatever it is, more options isn't always a great thing for us. So I like the idea of put something down so that you're not holding on to as much to make the decision a little bit easier to make. All right, that's it for this episode. 1 or 2:38. Until next time, tell you how.