How to Do Housework with ADHD

In a working day I can build a complex strategy. I can give a presentation, I can juggle a packed calendar.

Then I come home and cannot wash the dishes.

For a long time I could not explain this contradiction to anyone, because I knew what I would hear when I did: "so you don't want to." And as long as I did not explain, I made the same sentence in my own head.

Yet housework has three structural features, and all three press on the places where ADHD struggles most. When you see them, the matter stops being a test of willpower.

Three structural problems

It has no end. The report gets finished, the dishes do not. It will happen again tomorrow. The feeling of finishing is one of the most important fuels for a system that struggles with tasks whose reward is far away, and housework never gives it. That small "done" feeling I get when I finish a job, I can never get at home.

Its steps are unclear. "Tidy the house" sounds like the name of a task, but inside it there are thirty separate tasks. Unclear tasks are typical tasks that trigger task paralysis.

It is invisible. When it is done nobody notices; when it is not done everybody notices. Feedback comes only in the negative direction. Its name in the glossary is invisible work. I dealt with how this load gets even heavier on women in the article on women with ADHD and the load of the home.

Housework is not done because it is hard. It cannot be started because it has no reward.

Approaches that work

Narrowing the area. "The kitchen counter" instead of "the house." "Pick up everything on the floor" instead of "tidy up." A reduced area makes the task finishable and produces the feeling of finishing. For me wiping a single counter always does more than setting out to tidy the whole kitchen.

Setting a timer, finishing the time, not the task. Working for fifteen minutes, stopping when the time is up. How much of the task got done does not matter. This adds an artificial finish line to an endless task, and when I reach that line I really have completed something. Turning an unfinishable task into a finishable length of time is the move I repeat most.

Collecting by category. Collecting all the glasses, then all the papers. While trying to fix a room, going to another room to put an item in its place and then being caught by another task there happens to me very often. The category method cuts this wandering.

Tying the intention to a moment beforehand. The meta-analysis by Gollwitzer and Sheeran (2006) shows that intentions set up in the form "in this situation I will do this" markedly increase the likelihood of reaching a goal. Its everyday equivalent is this: instead of "I'll wash the dishes sometime," "when I get up from dinner I'll wipe the counter."

Attaching a reward to the task. A podcast or a music list that you listen to only while doing housework. One of the most reported methods for hard tasks, and one of the minority that really works for me.

Lowering the threshold. Unfolded but clean laundry is better than laundry never washed. Its equivalent in the glossary is good enough. It took me years to learn to say this sentence to myself, because the standard in my head was a magazine page.

Having someone else in the same room. Body doubling works in housework too. Washing dishes while talking on the phone counts.

Reducing friction

Whether a task is done or not is often determined not by its difficulty but by the cost of reaching it.

• If the laundry basket stands where you undress, the laundry goes into the basket.
• If the cleaning cloth is under the counter, the counter gets wiped.
• If the rubbish bags are at the bottom of the bin, a new bag gets put in.

These arrangements look small. The difference is between the task being done and not done. For a period I gathered the cleaning supplies into a single cupboard "so that they would be tidy," and from that month on I did not wipe anywhere. An order that is messy but within reach of my hand does more than an order that is neat but far away.

Put what is in your hand where it belongs. When you pick something up, put it not on an intermediate surface but where it is going. Intermediate stops produce piles, and each pile becomes a separate task. This single rule visibly reduces the amount of work to be done later.

What to do with piles

A ban on piles does not work. The pile keeps being there, and the only difference is that it now produces guilt too.

What works is giving the pile a place: a box, a basket, a shelf. Everything goes in there, and it is emptied once a week. Its name in the glossary is the box method.

This confines the mess to a limited place, and the rest of the house is saved. For me the real benefit of this was psychological: once the mess had an address, the house stopped being "messy" and became "one box full."

The three hardest tasks and what works for me

General principles are nice, but the places where I got stuck were always the same three tasks. Let me write them separately.

Dishes. The difficulty is not the amount but the start. Starting with a single glass opens the door for me; once my hand touches the water, I carry on. When the pile has grown, I start without looking at the pile: I clear only one half of the counter and count that much as finished.

Laundry. Washing is easy, putting away is hard. The number of steps in between is large: it gets washed, dried, folded, goes to the wardrobe. I removed the folding step. Clean laundry stays in a basket and is worn from there. It does not follow the rule; it works.

Papers. Bills, envelopes, documents to be read. These sit at the center of the pile for me, because each one asks for a decision. All I did was throw everything into a box and finish that box in one sitting on one day a month. Paperwork has a logic of its own and is not suited to being done one by one at all.

I noticed something these three have in common: each had a hidden decision step inside. When I removed the decision, the task became doable.

Bad weeks

The system does not work the same every week. When illness, busyness or successive interruptions come, the house falls apart quickly and tidying up is needed exactly when you are weak.

It helps to set a minimum list beforehand for these weeks. Mine is this: rubbish, dishes, one clean item of clothing. The rest can wait. When the minimum list has been written in advance, you do not have to decide in a bad week; because you are not in a state to decide anyway, that week becomes a bad week.

The kitchen's own order is a separate subject; I dealt with it in the article on food and kitchen order. The system of making the place of things visible is in the article on the visible place system.

What I accepted

Housework had turned into a test of character for me. Every unwashed glass said something about me.

Seeing that what needed solving was technical changed this: drawing a finish line for an endless task, dividing an unclear task into steps and lowering the cost of reaching it.

My home is still not like the ones in magazines. But the first thing I feel when I walk in in the evening is no longer debt, and for me that is the measure.

I had also written in my diary about why the home is not only the place where you rest: Home Sweet Home.