Posted in Posts on January 19, 2015|
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My major chore in the home is dishes. I do them every night and after breakfast in the morning. Here is my sink with a pretty representative amount of morning dishes (theres only 2 of us). To me, this looks chaotic, not contained, and disorganized. It makes me want to clean it but it also makes me wonder where to start.

So, to begin, before I turn on any water at all, I always organize. Cups with cups, bowls with bowls, flat surfaced things with flat surface things.

Then I begin to tackle one category at a time. First comes the flats. I wash them in a basin of soapy water and then rinse them and put them on the dish rack.


One category down, two to go.

Then comes the bowls.

Lastly, the cups.

Nothing left on that messy counter.

All drying on the rack.

Except for the silverware. I hate doing silverware.

Luckily, my wife accepts this annoying eccentricity 🙂
Why am I showing you this? Well, because when we speak about kids with executive functioning challenges (many kids with autism and ADHD for example), we are told to help them “chunk” large tasks into manageable and more contained steps. Why? One, because it takes some of the chaos and disorienting feeling out of starting a task (“Where do I even begin? It’s too much. Oh, forget it”). Two, because it gives intermediate goals/steps/or chunks to achieve (“I’m done with the bowls, now i’ll do the cups”). It feels less all or nothing.
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