Hi all,
My name is Mike and I found this forum whilst trying to find workarounds to help me complete simple chores. I am undiagnosed, but believe myself to be AuDHD based on recognisable traits.
I have spent my entire life craving structure and routine, only to immediately go against it for stimulation.
Anyway, the main point that I hope anyone here has advice for; household chores. The annoying thing is that it is not a knowledge problem. I know exactly what I need to do, but the structured side demands efficiency. So before I can get started, my brain first runs a full critical path analysis on it. And every step I go through has prerequisites, which in turn have their own prerequisites and so on. By the 2nd or 3rd step, the 'project' has become more than I can handle and the whole thing collapses, leaving me doing nothing but doom-scrolling. So what should have been a 20-30 minute task becomes 4hrs of nothing and me left feeling 'less than' because once again I couldn't manage a simple task.
Take laundry as an example. Working backwards from actually putting my dirty clothes in the washer. First I need to clear the basket of the clean clothes from the last time I managed to actually get it done (it had taken 2 weeks from working myself up to putting it in the washer to finally removing it from the dryer). To do that I need to take the basket upstairs so I can unload it and put the clothes away. To unload it I first need to clear some space in my cabinet for the clean clothes to go... and at this point I pick up my phone and the day is wasted.
As mentioned, on the odd occasion that I have previously managed to get the dirty clothes into the washer, they might stay there for days, if not weeks, with me simply running refresh cycles in the washer to make sure they don't go mouldy before I finally build myself up to taking them out to the dryer.
Does anyone else get this? And, if so, has anyone found a way to either break this thought pattern, or better yet a way to permit yourself to avoid the 'order' altogether?
My name is Mike and I found this forum whilst trying to find workarounds to help me complete simple chores. I am undiagnosed, but believe myself to be AuDHD based on recognisable traits.
I have spent my entire life craving structure and routine, only to immediately go against it for stimulation.
Anyway, the main point that I hope anyone here has advice for; household chores. The annoying thing is that it is not a knowledge problem. I know exactly what I need to do, but the structured side demands efficiency. So before I can get started, my brain first runs a full critical path analysis on it. And every step I go through has prerequisites, which in turn have their own prerequisites and so on. By the 2nd or 3rd step, the 'project' has become more than I can handle and the whole thing collapses, leaving me doing nothing but doom-scrolling. So what should have been a 20-30 minute task becomes 4hrs of nothing and me left feeling 'less than' because once again I couldn't manage a simple task.
Take laundry as an example. Working backwards from actually putting my dirty clothes in the washer. First I need to clear the basket of the clean clothes from the last time I managed to actually get it done (it had taken 2 weeks from working myself up to putting it in the washer to finally removing it from the dryer). To do that I need to take the basket upstairs so I can unload it and put the clothes away. To unload it I first need to clear some space in my cabinet for the clean clothes to go... and at this point I pick up my phone and the day is wasted.
As mentioned, on the odd occasion that I have previously managed to get the dirty clothes into the washer, they might stay there for days, if not weeks, with me simply running refresh cycles in the washer to make sure they don't go mouldy before I finally build myself up to taking them out to the dryer.
Does anyone else get this? And, if so, has anyone found a way to either break this thought pattern, or better yet a way to permit yourself to avoid the 'order' altogether?
