It’s the wonderful time of the year we all look forward to, spring cleaning. When the winter turns into spring makes us think of renewal and starting over. As a result of this yearly renewal, we also want to revamp our interiors and shake out the dust a little. Hence, the great yearly purge in life that I call spring cleaning. For a woman with ADHD, spring cleaning can come as a mixed blessing. You might want to have a clean home, but you might find yourself feeling overwhelmed by all that needs to happen, this type of cleaning doesn’t have to be done in one week or a day, it can break down. If you find yourself in this situation or something similar, then this post is for you. In this week’s blog, I wanted to provide some fail-proof 5 strategies for spring cleaning with ADHD.
Create A Spring-Cleaning List for Each Room- Approaching your house room by room is the most effective way to deep clean it. Create cleaning lists for each room to help you get organized and to remind you of the areas that need extra attention. Feel free to skip the areas that have been cleaned recently, and focus on the parts of your home that were largely neglected over the winter
Break It Down into Small Steps -Once you have written out your spring-cleaning list for each room it’s helpful to break down all of the little tasks needed to complete your lists at hand. This helps with both time management and executive functioning skill building.
What Time Do You Have Available? Now that we have gone through writing the list and breaking it down into smaller steps it is time to get realistic and to look at the time you have available. If you don’t have a weekly plan, then now may be a good time to write one out. Once you have written this out, you will be able to see what days and times you have available to do your household tasks. You will find that some days you will be able to fit in more than other days, but that is the way that most of our lives tend to go.
Spread the Cleaning Out- The next tip for spring cleaning women with ADHD is to spread the cleaning out. What I mean by that is once we have written our list and broken the cleaning tasks down, we have all the energy in the world and want to accomplish everything all at once. Once spring hits and the weather changes for the better, we feel like we can conquer anything and in no amount of time. The issue that women with ADHD run into is that we don’t have the energy and time to do everything all at once. No matter how much you may want to get your spring cleaning all accomplished in a weekend or two, you shouldn’t try it. Instead of finding success, you more than likely will run into discouragement. Most of us simply can’t finish all of our spring cleaning in a short amount of time. Again, if you try, you might introduce unnecessary stresses into your spring, which complicates your ADHD symptoms. Instead, you need to look at spring cleaning as a longer process over a month or two. You can even take a few weeks or weekends off. After all, your home is always going to be there to follow up with and do more cleaning later.
Reward Yourself – When it comes to spring cleaning and as a woman with ADHD, you have to remember to reward yourself for all the hard work you do. This can be particularly important as many times our spring cleaning happens on the weekend, days when we normally would relax. If you work during the week and then clean and work on projects over the weekend, you won’t ever have an opportunity to rest both your mind and body. As you put together your list and schedule of chores set aside specific time for doing something you enjoy. For instance, for each area of your home that you finish working on, you can reward yourself with a meal out or a night with friends. Alternatively, for each workday you plan, you can set a schedule of only working to a certain time. After that time, give yourself the rest of the day off and do something just to relax. Rewards help you keep moving toward your overall objective. They help remind you of why you want to finish the projects in the first place.