A common pain for women with ADHD is doing laundry. This is due to laundry is the never completely household chore we all love to hate and doing this task rarely rewards with a sense of completion or accomplishment. This is why many women with ADHD put doing laundry until all of the clean underwear is gone. So how can a women with ADHD deal better with this unfavorable chore? Here are 14 simple tricks I share with my coaching clients who complain about doing laundry.
-Have an laundry area where you keep everything. The machine, dryer, laundry detergent, stain remover, etc.
-Have laundry hampers for different colors. One for whites and one for darks and one for gym clothes (for example). Keep the hampers in the room where you get undressed, (bathroom, bedroom), so you don’t have piles of dirty clothes on the floor. By having separate hampers, you have completely removed the ‘sorting’ part of the laundry process. You are doing it continually every time you get undressed.
-Pick up one hamper and go to your laundry area. Put a load of laundry in the machine.
-Set a timer to go off when the laundry load is finished. If you aren’t sure how long yours takes, time it. It will probably be in the range of 20-40 minutes.
-Carry the timer with you, so you will hear it when it goes off.
-Now you have X number of minutes to fill. Don’t do an activity your hyper focus on, as it will be very hard to tear yourself away. Do something that keeps you on your feet. Maybe food prep, exercise or housework
-When the timer goes off, go straight to the washing machine and move everything to the dryer.
-Set your timer to go off when the tumble dry has finished. Usually, it’s between 40 minutes to 1 hour. Time yours, so you know for the future.
-If you are doing another load of washing, have a second timer to let you know when that is done.
-When the tumble drier is finished, get your clothes and carry them to your bedroom.
-Set your timer for 10 minutes. If you move swiftly, you will be able to put away all your laundry by the time the timer rings.
-Hang the shirts up (as you might not need to iron them if you do this straight away) and put them in your wardrobe.
-Folder or hang everything else.
-Match your socks up and put them away.
How often you do a load of laundry depends on how much washing you generate. Having a particular day that you always do laundry is a great idea. Because then, you know you will always have clean clothes. Some people like to do one load of laundry a few times a week. Other people like to do all the washing on one day. Try both methods and see which is easier for you.