How to Decide What to Wear When You Have ADHDDeciding what to wear in the morning can be hard. However, it can be extra painful when you have ADHD for these reasons.

  1. Decision making is challenging: big and small.
  2.  Mornings aren’t your best time; you might not feel awake for 3 or 4 hours after you get dressed.
  3.  Social rules are a bit of a mystery, so you aren’t sure if  there is a dress code you don’t know about.You aren’t confident about ‘what goes together’.
  4. Keeping on top of laundry is a challenge; you don’t always have the items that work together that are clean at the same time.
  5. Sensitive to texture which means some clothes make you itch or are very uncomfortable to wear.

If you went to a school that had a uniform, you know it was very easy to get ready each morning. No thought was required. All you had to do was put on the standard shirts and skirts / trousers.

Even though you might not have an official uniform to wear now, why not create your own?

Create a uniform

It takes the brain work out of getting dressed every day and it means you always look good, feel confident and comfortable

If you are male, it is slightly easier for 2 reasons: You have the option to wear a suit (which is like a uniform), and society doesn’t pay such close attention to what men wear.

Think of Will and Kate. The press pays very close attention to what Kate wears and whole blogs are dedicated to her wardrobe. Yet, we rarely hear a whisper about which designer made William’s suit.

news anchor proved that people weren’t paying attention to what he wore by wearing the same suit for a whole year.

Real world examples

It is possible to wear the same thing every day if you are female too.

In an article that went viral, Matilda Kahl explains her decision to wear the same thing every day. She has been doing it for 3 years.

Alice Gregory has a uniform of black long-sleeve shirt and stylish jeans. In an article for J Crew, Alice explains that having a uniform means that your personal style becomes memorable in people’s minds, even iconic.

She points out that characters in children’s books always wear the same clothes so they are easy to recognize and that adults, like children, love familiarity and continuity.

Steve Jobs wore a black turtleneck, Mark Zuckerberg wears a grey T-shirt and Anna Winter is known for her sharp bobbed haircut and shades.

In a world of fashion bloggers and outfit of the day hashtags (#OOTD), we tend to equate being successful, stylish and fashionable with wearing different outfits every day.

So it might require a mindset shift to believe that you can be all of those things AND make life easy for yourself by having a uniform that you become known for.

Another plus, because uniforms tend to be made up of classic items, when you look back at photos of yourself in a few decades time, you won’t think, ‘What was I wearing?!’

Ready to create your own?

Creating your own uniform doesn’t mean you have to wear the exact same thing every day. You can create a formula that works for you, then interchange clothes within that formula.

Let’s say you like ballet pumps and have a brand you get on well with.

Buy a couple of pairs in different colours.

If you like a certain style of trousers (and they fit nicely and don’t itch), buy them in black and linen.

Next, pick out a few tops you love and there you go!

You have created a stylish work uniform that looks great, takes all the brain work out of mornings.

Now it might sound trivial to talk about something as basic as socks….but a time saving tip is to pick one brand of socks and one colour, e.g., navy blue.

Then you never leave the house with mismatching socks because all your socks match each other. It makes doing the laundry easier too, because every sock can be paired together. Plus, if one gets a hole, just throw that one away and keep the other in reserve.

 

What helps you decide what to wear in the mornings?

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