As a neurodivergent homemaker, something I have always struggled with is keeping a tidy home. I’m fairly good at picking up toys, and loading and running the dishwasher at the end of the day, but anything more time consuming or involving more steps seems to fall by the wayside. Some of my bigger struggles: sweeping and mopping the kitchen floor on a schedule, wiping down any and all surfaces, vacuuming, dusting, watering plants, and sweeping or vacuuming off the rug on our back patio. Because we struggle getting them done regularly, we end up scrambling to get it all done the few hours before we’re expecting company and then because we’re in a rush it ends up being just a surface clean rather than a full, deep clean.
The last year has especially made all this much harder. We’ve added a baby to our family, I’ve dislocated my knee twice, and now I am recovering from MPFL Reconstruction Surgery. On top of all that, I’ve dealt with depression and my ADHD, but I’ve also increased or started medication for both my depression and my ADHD. Basically, a lot has happened that has completely changed our lives (for better and worse) and we haven’t been able to keep up.
Recently, I’ve decided I want this to change. My depression is manageable, my ADHD is medicated, my baby is now crawling and entertaining herself for small amounts of time, my 3 year old is good about entertaining herself for the most part, and I’m beginning to have more energy and more range of motion in my knee to allow me to do more chores around the house. However, when I looked around to see what needed done… I felt overwhelmed. There was so much we’ve been putting off. I realized we need to set up a chore rotation or schedule, but I’ve never been very good at those, so rather than jump in head first, I asked how other parents do it. A lot of them said they have a weekly schedule they follow or they have lists of chores that need done each day. One person said they use an app to track chores.
I decided to write a list of chores we’ve been putting off that need done, and share it with my husband to start. Then we can mark them off as we have time or energy to do them. I made each job small, something that could be done in ten minutes or less (preferably less than five). We can cross things off as we do them and add small jobs as we notice they need done. These jobs are things like cleaning windows or mirrors, wiping down surface areas, wiping down the shower, sweeping/mopping/vacuuming areas of the house, etc.
Ideally, we will do one of these jobs per day on top of our daily and weekly chores (but daily chores come first, then weekly, then this list). And some of these jobs will end up part of the weekly chores list eventually. I think starting slow is the way to go when you’ve been out of a habit like cleaning areas of your house.
How do you keep your home tidy? I’d love to hear in the comments, or on my instagram (neurodivergent.homemaker) or facebook page (Clarissa Enos Plagmann).
Stay tuned for an update on my clean home schedule and how it’s going!
The Neurodivergent Homemaker 