Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) can make average home cleaning feel overwhelming and difficult. This is due to ADHD’s effect on the parts of the brain responsible for flexible thinking, memory, task initiation, planning, organization, and impulse control. An impaired sense of organization and focus associated with the condition can cause clutter to build up easily, all over your home, car, or office.
However, there are solutions to make cleaning with ADHD more manageable. In this article, we explain seven of the top ADHD cleaning tips.
If you suffer from ADHD symptoms like disorganization and chronic procrastination, Klarity can help you find the care you need. Book an online appointment with an experienced psychiatric healthcare provider today.
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1. Choose a Technique for Accountability
Accountability for those with ADHD is an effective way to ensure your chores get done. Chores and clutter can feel overwhelming, but when cleaning is part of your daily routine, it forces you to complete the task. There are methods to keep yourself accountable, such as having a physical chart that outlines your daily chores, creating a checklist, or sandwiching the cleaning between important tasks in your morning or night routine.
Chore Scheduling
Those with ADHD can struggle with time management, so making a plan and setting precise times for cleaning can help you get it done. Making a daily, weekly, and even monthly routine to follow will build good cleaning habits that you can sustain long-term.
Cleaning Chart
A great way to keep track of your home cleaning tasks is by creating a cleaning chart. At the beginning of the week, you can write down chores you need to complete, like laundry, cleaning the bathroom, or vacuuming. With a physical reminder to complete these tasks, scheduling your cleaning takes away the guesswork. With a list, you’ll be able to cross off completed tasks as you complete them, which gives a feeling of accomplishment.
2. Declutter Daily
ADHD can make activities like organization difficult due to the fast-paced nature of the brain. This can lead to clutter build-up in the home, which can quickly feel overwhelming and out of hand. However, when completed in small chunks, decluttering can be more achievable.
Daily decluttering can break apart the task of cleaning and make it more manageable for someone with ADHD, rather than trying to get everything done at once. Start by cleaning one room of your house each day for as little as 15 minutes. Setting a simple task to accomplish, like cleaning up the bathroom for 10 minutes, reduces the overwhelming sensation of clutter and gets your house clean
3. Add Stimulating Activities to Make Cleaning Less Boring
Chores don’t have to be a boring activity. By including more enjoyable activities, like listening to music, talking to a friend, or having a cleaning competition with a spouse or friend, you can make your cleaning feel more fun, almost like a game. In addition, when cleaning with another person, you can split the work and end up cleaning more than if you worked alone. By making cleaning feel less like a chore and more like a fun activity, it’ll be easier for you to stay on track.
4. Organize With Labels and Bins
If you have a habit of building up a lot of clutter in your home, labeled bins can be an effective solution to keep your home clean. This method works by grouping similar clutter together, like mail, chargers, or even clothing items like hats.
Instead of dropping your mail on a table, a bin will put the eventual clutter into a designated place, and once it’s filled, you can sort through the clutter and determine what goes where. Important mail may be filed away, and spam can be thrown out.
5. Use the 80/20 Rule
The 80/20 rule is based on the idea that 80% of the time, we use 20% of what’s stored away. This means the more stuff we have packed away or out of sight, the less likely we are to use it. You should make a point to go through the stored clutter in your home; this can mean anything from old clothes you don’t wear, things you don’t need or plan to use, or things you save for the sake of saving.
This, in addition to some of the other ADHD cleaning techniques, will keep your home from feeling too busy, crowded, or cluttered. Clearing out your clutter will be cathartic for you and bring some much-needed clarity and order to your day-to-day life.
6. Make Cleaning a Team Effort
For those living with a friend or spouse, dividing cleaning responsibilities evenly can take a bit of stress off your shoulders. Breaking up your duties into smaller chunks makes it easier for you to accomplish them, and the extra help means there is less individual work for you to do.
7. Get Help From a Professional
Now more than ever, there are various outlets for you to seek assistance for your ADHD. Finding a professional to help you through your ADHD symptoms, whether in-person or online via telehealth, will provide you with the tools you need to work through your ADHD and accomplish difficult tasks like consistent cleaning.
At Klarity, we offer solutions for online ADHD treatment and can help you get the care and services you need. Click here to take a free 2min self-evaluation to see how we can help you.
