junk journaling for my adult adhd & inner child

one man's trash is another girl's dopamine

Created with Shuffles

My first journal was quintessentially Y2K, crafted from denim with a pink high heel on the cover. It didn’t have a secure lock (it would be a few years before I acquired the coveted Girl Tech password journal, the envy of eldest daughters everywhere), but it did have a little button you could snap for the guise of secrecy. Inside were pages of colorful doodles, hastily torn magazine pages, and more precise cut-outs reserved for my favorite things (like Zac Efron’s face). 

My journal was my childhood canvas, back when everything was interesting, and nothing was self-censored in the name of embarrassment. I didn’t have rules or expectations for how I journaled. I just collected anything that intrigued me and created my little collages.

Unfortunately, my first journal is long lost in some moving box or trash compactor, but my love for chaotically collecting and creating remains. So when videos of junk journaling started popping up on my For You Page, I knew the algorithm was working. As an adult, I’ve tried several journaling methods with little success: The Five Minute Journal, bullet journaling, dream journaling. But junk journaling? That came naturally to me as a curious kid. So, I picked it back up a couple of months ago. 

I figured it might heal my inner child, but I had no idea how much it would help my adult ADHD.

---

All of the ADHD women in my life (of which there are many since we always find each other) have a graveyard of untouched but beloved stationery. Despite our complicated on-again, off-again relationships with various organization tools, we share a deep love for journals, planners, notecards, and the Back to School section of Target. Many holidays, birthdays, and other special occasions have brought gifts of bullet journals and sticky notes, all of which we love but little of which we use. 

While we can attribute some of this journaling writer’s block to impulsive ADHD spending (Did I really need another journal?), I also think it could have something to do with unspoken yet internalized rules for journaling. With the rise of day-in-the-life and morning routine vlogs, there’s been an emphasis on the daily ritual of journaling. Wake up at 6 and write about gratitude by 7, pair your nightly Sleepytime tea and restorative yoga with some reflective prose, and throw in some weekly and monthly reset prompts while you’re at it. While I agree that frequent journaling is beneficial (as plenty of research shows), I struggle to include it in a precise daily routine. Unfortunately, when I barely remember to brush my teeth every morning, I’m probably not going to pull out my journal, either.

Besides the subconscious routine of journaling, there’s also the question that plagues many of us here: What do I have to say that’s worth writing? I think it’s easy to feel this pressure, even when our only audience is ourselves. Maybe we worry that someone will discover our innermost secrets, or worse, that they’d be bored with what they would find. Maybe we fall into the trap of all-or-nothing thinking, convinced that we have nothing compelling to say if we aren’t prepared to write The Next Great American Novel. We edit ourselves out before we’ve even started drafting.

This is where the first benefit of junk journaling for ADHD comes in, in my opinion: it can remove the self-imposed rules and expectations often associated with journaling. Instead of including it in a daily ritual, I journal when the creative inspiration strikes. Find something cool on the ground? That could make a fun spread. Got some flyers on vacation? Those could be a fun way to remember the trip. Since the journaling process doesn’t have to be linear, I can also skip a day here and there and not feel guilty about it. Granted, this is true of any type of journaling, but there’s just something about the organized chaos of junk journaling that removes the guilt of rule-breaking. 

Junk journaling also isn’t pushy. If I’m frustrated at the blank page staring back at me, I don’t have to word-vomit my deepest, darkest thoughts in return. If I want, I can fill the page with banana produce stickers without even writing a word. I can pour out my thoughts visually without overthinking or wallowing because nothing super interesting happened that day. I can flip to a new page, start my own little mental DOOM pile (which, as we know, only has to make sense to us!), and call it a day. There are no self-imposed expectations or rules, just creativity.

---

Of course, the “junk” of junk journaling makes it unique. Stickers, receipts, dried flowers, envelopes, car air fresheners, flyers, wrappers. You name it, you can use it. Since realizing this, looking for scraps of paper has become one of my favorite activities, and being gifted candy wrappers has turned into one of my love languages. (My fiancé likes to hand me receipts or other items and say “For your journal.”)

It’s also made me reflect on all the other hobbies I’ve had that revolve around scavenging: shelling, geocaching, using the Dewey Decimal System to scrounge for resources in the library. Maybe I’m reaching, but I think junk journaling gives us an extra dopamine boost through the act of discovery. Or maybe that makes perfect sense—after all, research suggests that people with ADHD may have been better hunter-gatherers, which seems fitting.

There’s also the added dopamine of opening your journal to a visually appealing spread. As ADHDers, we tend to look for stimulation everywhere, even in things as mundane as the paper we write on. Why record my day in black-and-white cursive when I could do so in eclectic, screaming color? Pink perfume sample ads, polka-dotted birthday cards, yellow daisies. With junk journaling, we can have our bright little worlds at our fingertips. I may not be motivated to return to a journal with half-baked entries from months ago, but I look forward to flipping through the vibrant pages of my junk journal before starting a new entry.

---

Perhaps the most beneficial impact of junk journaling has been improving my memory. My inability to remember things—particularly momentary things like what I ate for breakfast in the morning or the name of the new coworker I met yesterday—is a constant source of embarrassment, frustration, and guilt. This is a common struggle for people with ADHD, especially when it comes to retaining working memory.

Junk journaling has given me an outlet to record these little, mundane moments creatively and visually. It’s the little things: my fiance’s order ingrained on a restaurant receipt, a parking pass memorializing a day downtown, a dated flyer recalling an event at the local bookstore. I get to collect the little pieces of my day and store them in a jar, saving the shards that would otherwise go forgotten. Adding these pieces to the journal also helps me to commit them to memory in the moment; it’s like the difference between typing and handwriting notes. 

It’s also gratifying to find a home for miscellaneous items that I might otherwise lose. For example, I now use the journal to store any cards from friends and family. Instead of envelopes getting stuck at the bottom of purses or in the crevices of bookshelves, they now have an organized home with all my other little treasures.

---

Lastly, junk journaling helps me connect with my creativity and curiosity, which my inner child and neurodivergent brain both appreciate. I’ve recently read several articles on the importance of play—something so enjoyable and natural to us in childhood that we often forget to nurture it in adulthood. No one used to tell us to ride our bikes, pick up ladybugs, or play hide-and-seek. We would just do it.

Junk journaling is a great way to encourage that sense of play. It gives me a reason to explore, whether I’m walking around the block or just walking to the mailbox to get a letter. This free sense of joy makes me wonder if junk journaling could help us decrease the ADHD tax; I’ve been on a budget recently, and I’ve genuinely felt like prioritizing the search for free “junk” in the wild has helped decrease my spending.

Saving money, creating, reflecting, and improving my memory at the same time? Junk journaling is just a grown-up version of the hobby I used to love so much, so it makes sense why I’ve been gravitating toward it. After all, one man’s trash…

---