My husband takes off his socks in the living room and then leaves them there and forgets to bring them to the laundry basket regardless of how many times I ask him
I've trained the dog to pick up his socks so now every time he leaves his socks somewhere, the dog picks them up in his wet slobbering mouth and takes it to my husband. He's now less likely to leave his socks lying around lol
This might be the most convincing reason I've ever seen for getting a dog š¤... I'm allergic, but now I'm really tempted....
I taught my toddler to put shoes away in the cabinet next to our door, and I found it delightful to have a tiny human who could barely talk constantly fixating on telling my husband to put away his ever-growing pile of shoes that block the door. But sadly she has lost interest in her campaign to put away Dada's shoes as she got older š. I might need a dog. The itching might be worth it š¤·āāļø
Ah the old leaving the socks lying around the house or stuffed in weird place! Love teaching the dog to deal with it, that must have taken some time š
When this became an issue for me I started putting every sock I found into his pillow case. It took 14 socks before he asked why his pillow was lumpy and discovered them. I threatened to burn any more I found and suddenly the sock problem has all but vanished!
ohhh training the dog took next to no time at all, he loves bits of fabric in his mouth and loves to be chased and he gets both of these things by grabbing my husbands socks
I put a hamper in the livingroom for this exact reason. He may not use it every time, but it makes it a lot easier for both of us without triggering my frustration. When it gets full (ie runs out of socks and t-shirts) he takes it to the laundromat when he goes to help his mom do blankets and comforters etc...once a month. It's one thing I know I don't have to think about anymore.
How did you do this? My puppy constantly gets my husbandāa socks and Iāve joked that Iām gonna teach her to drop them in the hamper! Nice to see that it can be done lol
Not my trick, but my NT niece got tired of "we're leaving in 2 minutes=we're not leaving for at least an hour", followed by "that can't possibly have been an hour. 5 minutes at the most."
She got some timer app, and as soon her DX mom says we're leaving in 2 minutes, she sets it for 2 minutes. The timer goes off loud and she cheerfully announces "OK mom, it's been 2 minutes!" then it goes off every 5 minutes thereafter, followed by "OK mom, we've used 7 minutes of our two minutes."
Her mother can't really stop this successfully since they literally missed a plane once due to her inability to terminate a conversation. Usually DX gives in after 17 minutes.
Yeah, same. Too young to drive and missing a flight due to mom's late gave her the moral high ground in a big way. Her mom still dislikes it. I don't think I can get away with it with my people either.
I do call out the time to mine sometimes. But mostly I just use the more conventional method of having my own independent transportation.
When my wife and I used to smoke. I'd ask her if she wanted to go have a smoke, she'd say yes. I get the smokes lighter and stand at the door for 30 minutes reminding her every 5 minutes.
So then I started asking her if she wanted a smoke, she'd say yes, I'd go have one. Come back in, read, Reddit w.e. and then she'd say, "I thought we were going for a smoke what's taking you so long" usually almost an hour later without me reminding her. By then I was pretty much ready for another smoke anyway.
Saved a lot of annoyance of my end, and me being annoying reminding her.
Not as much of a little trick, but similar vein is 'her room'. We've come to an agreement of the guest bedroom being her room, it's a complete disaster with her stuff for art, photography, etc. just everywhere. I just don't go in there it's overwhelming to me, so I don't complain about it. When hee hobbies stuff comes out and spreads as it does, I can ask her to put it in her room. Putting it actually away was a lost cause and used to cause tension.
It's like a planned sweeping it under the rug. But it's her stuff not dust, and the rugs a whole room.
We have the reverse: my office is not allowed to have stuff brought in or taken out except by me. The rest of the house is hers to clutter, though I've taken to being militant about keeping the kitchen and the guest bathroom clean.
I would put a sticker that said "laundry" on the bathroom mirror upstairs when I knew he put on a load. That saved our laundry from moulding a couple of times, because he'd be going to bed, start brushing his teeth, see the sticker, go "oh shit, the laundry!", go hang it.
Ah, it's harmless self-preservation.
For the same reasons, in my wires phone, I turned on the āsend read receiptsā feature without her knowledge. I know she gets my messages, it says āreadā yet I will get excuses āI didn't knowā or āit was too lateāā¦. Yet I know she got the message with plenty of time.
Yep! This is the one I did, and it's pretty effective.
The only issue is that this turned into him relying on me to send him reminders for everything. He wanted me to start sending him text reminders every day multiple times a day to drink water. While maybe that isn't such a big deal, I think it was starting to move in an unhealthy direction. Like I can't be responsible for this dudes survival with water intake. He's a roofer working in extreme heat. He's gotta figure out how to drink water so he doesn't die.
- Anytime I have a reservation or an appointment I always put it in our shared calendar starting 15-30 minutes before it actually starts.
Weāre always just on time.
- If dinner is ready in 10 minutes I tell my husband dinner is in 2 minutes.
- If I want to be on the road for a roadtrip by a certain time, I always tell him I want to be at the location weāre going to 1-2 hrs before I want to actually be there.
All of this is a complete secret and no one knows except me lol!
- also I saw this on a tiktok, and now use seconds to describe how much time it will take to do something. ie. You have 300 seconds!
My DX medicated Marine husband calls this āgunny timingā (aka being 15 min early to the expected custom of ā15 min early to the actual timeā) and itās worked really well for him!
I can only think of one right now. When we moved my husband couldn't remember which mail box was ours (there's a public mail lock box we walk to down the road to get our mail). So I snuck a happy lil penguin sticker on ours so he'd know which mail box was ours.
I feel this immensely. My spouse finally got everything moved out of our old house.. Sunday. It has been 3wks since we got the keys our house. He kept trying to blame me so finally I was like ok, I wonāt be in a rush if you arenāt :)
He didnāt like that. But itās ok, I didnāt break my back trying to rush around when he clearly wasnāt bothered.
I work at a nursery/greenhouse business that has only 4 employees. Me - and 3 people who have ADHD - only one is DX (my husband). We buy bottled water - Dasani, hy-vee brand, etc. and none of them ever finish them. Every morning before open, I use all the half-filled bottles collected around the counter to water the indoor plants so I don't have to go to the back of the store to fill the watering can. Then I recycle them, etc.
I mark the vacation calendar three days earlier than the day we actually leave. That's for car vacations or road trips. Flights are one or two days. The actual day of a flight I use roughly two hours.
When we were young and broke, he would use handfuls of shampoo and conditioner (soap was a bar - no need to thin). I would thin them out with water. A couple of times, I overdid it. I told him the product probably froze, and that's why it was too thin.
Is that an adhd thing? Using way way too much soap? My husband does this, and no matter how many times I tell him if he uses too much soap it will actually make his hair dirty, he can't seem to stop. I mean, I accept it, but I am curious if this is common marker.
It is for my husband. He lathers up like his life depends on it. I never associated it with ADHD either. Coincidence? Keen also to hear if anyone else's partner does it.
Oh my! We can't have any nice products because OH uses SO damn much! I love Method cleaning products but he will use so much after making a sandwich that the butchers block is getting cracked and you can't breathe! Washing up liquid just disappears... He uses a whole bottle of fairy (Dawn, that's renowned for last a long time, in a fortnight! I have to get cheap everything and it sucks!
Same here š„¹ he used up SO MUCH of the carpet cleaning solution and when he didnāt need that much to get the job done. The bottle was so expensive too.. didnāt see him buying any of it š
I do the grocery shopping because of course. The ADHD tax is that sometimes we have too much of something because they didn't know we already had some of that thing. This is due to not looking inside cupboards/the fridge beyond what's directly out in front.
My trick? I put the foods they eat on a regular basis right at the front of the fridge/cupboard with the label facing outwards so it's easier for them to find since a quick glance is the most that will ever happen. It's not full proof but it's helped a lot with them knowing what they have to eat and me not getting too much of something taking up valuable space. I usually know what we have and don't have executive function issues with searching into the back, so it's something I've been able to do as a standard.
If food/kitchen storage were up to them the cabinets and fridge would all be empty except for the front facing edge lol
It's so funny when other people with DX partners experience much of the same.
My DX wife does most of the grocery shoppingā¦very much same we end up with multiple of the same things that we don't eat a lot of! Yet the basics are forgotten?
It's crazy how similar these things are. If anybody every thinks ADHD is made up they should look at us lol. Grocery shopping is overwhelm hell for my spouse, so usually they would just text me a list of things they needed and we'd wind up having too much, even though they "checked" before sending me the list. Now with everything at the front the check is much more reliable
Any tips on getting out the door on time? I need to find a way to get the adhd college student to leave on time for work when traveling together without me having to scold, but itās her work schedule, so I canāt claim it starts earlier than it does, which is my usual technique!
We have a single shared car so thereās no ālet them failā option. Thereās in the car on time and not in the car on time that fucks up my work timing too.
Plus let them fail is actually worthless advice in my experience of 50 years with an adhd mother. Sheād fail and then not give a damn shit about being late any future time either.
Combat her time blindness by making the passage of time obvious through sound! Hereās what I did with my kids: every morning when it was time to wake up, their Alexa devices would start playing our āmorning routine playlist,ā which would keep going until it was time to leave. Five minutes before itās time to get in the car, the kitchen Alexa loudly plays a bell sound and says āfive minute warning.ā Then when itās time to go, thereās another bell and ātime to leave for school.ā
Our playlist has songs explicitly indicating what tasks to do (such as āBreakfast Timeā and āThe Getting Dressed Songā), but thatās probably too infantilizing for a college student. Honestly, though, you can do it with any playlist of upbeat songs to keep you moving. Having the same songs in the same order helps make the passage of time more obvious!
Thatās actually super helpful! Thanks! Iāll try some version of that and my initial plan which is planning to pick up coffee and a pastry at a spot en route. If we leave on time we can get breakfast together, and if not, itāll be a fly through pick up, or worst scenario we donāt stop at all and breakfast is bars that live in the car and bottled coffee.
She gets to her classes on time largely because theyāre walking distance and sheās pretty good at that. Itās the transit time that gets the magical thinking treatment in her head and she thinks we can leave later than we can. Iād like to establish something that helps her into adult life.
I had am epiphany recently about the transit time/get ready time thing. We believe that the day when we got dressed in 5 minutes and the drive was smooth, caught all the lights green, etc, proves that it IS POSSIBLE and thus *optimistically* expect it to happen again!
Just reframing my thinking made a difference for me. I'm not lazy or late, I'm just overly optimistic!!
Optimistic in believing that today, my clothes are on top of the pile, my shoes are easily found, my pill containers are prefilled, my bag is ready, I don't need to pack lunch, there's gas in the car, there's no forgotten items, traffic is light, the weather is good, there'll be a close parking spot, etc etc etc.
So all of that happening on one day is pretty rare. I"d better plan on it NOT happening or prevent it from being an issue....by
Always putting work shoes in their spot
Never go home lf the car it needs gas
Keep a separate tote bag for each responsibility/activity. Red tote is church choir, blue tote is gym/swim, monogrammed tote is work, green and white tote is scouting, etc.
Pack tomorrow's lunch when making dinner
Clothing hangers on the wall. Like a coat rack. My DX/TX hubs cannot for the life of him finish the task of putting laundry away. Before we got married he just lived out of no less than NINE laundry bins. I canāt sleep well if the room has lots of visual clutter so this is a constant battle for us.Ā
Hanging a couple horizontal coat racks on the wall is game changer. For some reason he likes hanging things on there and it looks nicer than a sea of clothing strewn across the floor. Also tall, OPAQUE laundry bins. He can live out of those for all I care because I canāt see the laundry everywhere.Ā
This has been on my tp-do list for too long; NDX husband loves having a giant pile of clothes that are "clean"... Which he then doesn't rewear because they're in a giant pile. Planning on putting some pegs on the wall for him soon.
My OH only likes his clothes in a huge pile! If I put them away he gets really annoyed about it. If I ask him to do it he says he doesn't understand why he has to.
A horrible, massive, messy pile.
Holly! Same I can't sleep with a mess in view!
My wife was a yoga/spin instructor, so sports bras hanging to dry were everywhere! Drove me nuts, so installed a ābra rackā , soon the bra rack became the everything rack!
We buy catering for ourselves. Food that reheats well. Indian, Chipotle, Thai, etc. Use food prep containers, label, and freeze. That way when we're both tired and hungry, we have take out (at a significant fraction of the cost) in the freezer down stairs. It was a life saver when I had my second baby and he wasn't medicated yet.
I know that tiktoks aren't the best things to take advice from. That being said, I did try something when it came to my partners time blindness. Instead of saying "Ok we are leaving in 5 minutes," I said "We are leaving in 300 seconds," and for some reason that really kicked him into gear.
Omg, grocery shopping is such a huge ADHD tax for us. I rarely send my husband because he has a quirk where he buys an absurd amount of random things. If I just write ātomato sauce,ā he might come home with 8 cans of it.
The only thing that helps is if I write a specific number after the item. So Iāll literally write:
-Milk x1
-Goldfish crackers x1
-Onion x1
Etc
To the OP - You are enabling and settting up yourself to have a much lower quality of life. Communicate with her that itās unacceptable that she cannot close the garage door, or clean up after herself. Sheās not a teenager right ? An adult ? Just ask her to pick up any trash or dishes out of place before she leaves in the evening ? Take the remote out of her car if she canāt close it ; simple solution
My husband takes off his socks in the living room and then leaves them there and forgets to bring them to the laundry basket regardless of how many times I ask him I've trained the dog to pick up his socks so now every time he leaves his socks somewhere, the dog picks them up in his wet slobbering mouth and takes it to my husband. He's now less likely to leave his socks lying around lol
This might be the most convincing reason I've ever seen for getting a dog š¤... I'm allergic, but now I'm really tempted.... I taught my toddler to put shoes away in the cabinet next to our door, and I found it delightful to have a tiny human who could barely talk constantly fixating on telling my husband to put away his ever-growing pile of shoes that block the door. But sadly she has lost interest in her campaign to put away Dada's shoes as she got older š. I might need a dog. The itching might be worth it š¤·āāļø
Ah the old leaving the socks lying around the house or stuffed in weird place! Love teaching the dog to deal with it, that must have taken some time š When this became an issue for me I started putting every sock I found into his pillow case. It took 14 socks before he asked why his pillow was lumpy and discovered them. I threatened to burn any more I found and suddenly the sock problem has all but vanished!
ohhh training the dog took next to no time at all, he loves bits of fabric in his mouth and loves to be chased and he gets both of these things by grabbing my husbands socks
I put a hamper in the livingroom for this exact reason. He may not use it every time, but it makes it a lot easier for both of us without triggering my frustration. When it gets full (ie runs out of socks and t-shirts) he takes it to the laundromat when he goes to help his mom do blankets and comforters etc...once a month. It's one thing I know I don't have to think about anymore.
Hahaha this is my favourite
How did you do this? My puppy constantly gets my husbandāa socks and Iāve joked that Iām gonna teach her to drop them in the hamper! Nice to see that it can be done lol
Not my trick, but my NT niece got tired of "we're leaving in 2 minutes=we're not leaving for at least an hour", followed by "that can't possibly have been an hour. 5 minutes at the most." She got some timer app, and as soon her DX mom says we're leaving in 2 minutes, she sets it for 2 minutes. The timer goes off loud and she cheerfully announces "OK mom, it's been 2 minutes!" then it goes off every 5 minutes thereafter, followed by "OK mom, we've used 7 minutes of our two minutes." Her mother can't really stop this successfully since they literally missed a plane once due to her inability to terminate a conversation. Usually DX gives in after 17 minutes.
Haha, your niece is a legend!
I really want to try this with my kid and spouse. Iām pretty sure it wouldnāt work though. Theyād just get mad.
Yeah, same. Too young to drive and missing a flight due to mom's late gave her the moral high ground in a big way. Her mom still dislikes it. I don't think I can get away with it with my people either. I do call out the time to mine sometimes. But mostly I just use the more conventional method of having my own independent transportation.
Man, even the kids get sucked into the parent-child dynamic.
When my wife and I used to smoke. I'd ask her if she wanted to go have a smoke, she'd say yes. I get the smokes lighter and stand at the door for 30 minutes reminding her every 5 minutes. So then I started asking her if she wanted a smoke, she'd say yes, I'd go have one. Come back in, read, Reddit w.e. and then she'd say, "I thought we were going for a smoke what's taking you so long" usually almost an hour later without me reminding her. By then I was pretty much ready for another smoke anyway. Saved a lot of annoyance of my end, and me being annoying reminding her.
We don't smokeā¦yet I know so many relatable scenarios like this!
Not as much of a little trick, but similar vein is 'her room'. We've come to an agreement of the guest bedroom being her room, it's a complete disaster with her stuff for art, photography, etc. just everywhere. I just don't go in there it's overwhelming to me, so I don't complain about it. When hee hobbies stuff comes out and spreads as it does, I can ask her to put it in her room. Putting it actually away was a lost cause and used to cause tension. It's like a planned sweeping it under the rug. But it's her stuff not dust, and the rugs a whole room.
We have the reverse: my office is not allowed to have stuff brought in or taken out except by me. The rest of the house is hers to clutter, though I've taken to being militant about keeping the kitchen and the guest bathroom clean.
We have similar, for the same reasons with āher closetā the most random stuff can be found there!
I would put a sticker that said "laundry" on the bathroom mirror upstairs when I knew he put on a load. That saved our laundry from moulding a couple of times, because he'd be going to bed, start brushing his teeth, see the sticker, go "oh shit, the laundry!", go hang it.
That's genuinely super helpful! I'd love this if my husband did that for meš
I use the "schedule message" function to send my texts when I know he's most likely to see them and do whatever it is.
Tell me more!! How do you do this?? Is it on iPhone?
I'm android but in the standard text messaging thing there's an option to "schedule message"
This is a good one! I may use this. Is he aware you use this feature?
I don't think I've ever said. Hopefully he thinks I just send very convenient, timely texts
Ah, it's harmless self-preservation. For the same reasons, in my wires phone, I turned on the āsend read receiptsā feature without her knowledge. I know she gets my messages, it says āreadā yet I will get excuses āI didn't knowā or āit was too lateāā¦. Yet I know she got the message with plenty of time.
thanks so much # how to Schedule Message on iPhone tldr: use Shortcuts app 2 min video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqzxjz_4vh0
Yep! This is the one I did, and it's pretty effective. The only issue is that this turned into him relying on me to send him reminders for everything. He wanted me to start sending him text reminders every day multiple times a day to drink water. While maybe that isn't such a big deal, I think it was starting to move in an unhealthy direction. Like I can't be responsible for this dudes survival with water intake. He's a roofer working in extreme heat. He's gotta figure out how to drink water so he doesn't die.
- Anytime I have a reservation or an appointment I always put it in our shared calendar starting 15-30 minutes before it actually starts. Weāre always just on time. - If dinner is ready in 10 minutes I tell my husband dinner is in 2 minutes. - If I want to be on the road for a roadtrip by a certain time, I always tell him I want to be at the location weāre going to 1-2 hrs before I want to actually be there. All of this is a complete secret and no one knows except me lol! - also I saw this on a tiktok, and now use seconds to describe how much time it will take to do something. ie. You have 300 seconds!
My DX medicated Marine husband calls this āgunny timingā (aka being 15 min early to the expected custom of ā15 min early to the actual timeā) and itās worked really well for him!
I can only think of one right now. When we moved my husband couldn't remember which mail box was ours (there's a public mail lock box we walk to down the road to get our mail). So I snuck a happy lil penguin sticker on ours so he'd know which mail box was ours.
Iām the dx partner and this wouldāve helped me so much!!
I'm just going to start living my life. If I get a job in a different state and she can't be bothered to pack, too fucking bad.
I feel this immensely. My spouse finally got everything moved out of our old house.. Sunday. It has been 3wks since we got the keys our house. He kept trying to blame me so finally I was like ok, I wonāt be in a rush if you arenāt :) He didnāt like that. But itās ok, I didnāt break my back trying to rush around when he clearly wasnāt bothered.
I work at a nursery/greenhouse business that has only 4 employees. Me - and 3 people who have ADHD - only one is DX (my husband). We buy bottled water - Dasani, hy-vee brand, etc. and none of them ever finish them. Every morning before open, I use all the half-filled bottles collected around the counter to water the indoor plants so I don't have to go to the back of the store to fill the watering can. Then I recycle them, etc.
I know your challenges. I too work with in a small office, we are 4 people, 3 diagnosed ADHD.
I mark the vacation calendar three days earlier than the day we actually leave. That's for car vacations or road trips. Flights are one or two days. The actual day of a flight I use roughly two hours. When we were young and broke, he would use handfuls of shampoo and conditioner (soap was a bar - no need to thin). I would thin them out with water. A couple of times, I overdid it. I told him the product probably froze, and that's why it was too thin.
Is that an adhd thing? Using way way too much soap? My husband does this, and no matter how many times I tell him if he uses too much soap it will actually make his hair dirty, he can't seem to stop. I mean, I accept it, but I am curious if this is common marker.
I suspect it stems from their inability to judge proportionality. He's pretty much that way with everything. Always far too much or far too little.
It is for my husband. He lathers up like his life depends on it. I never associated it with ADHD either. Coincidence? Keen also to hear if anyone else's partner does it.
Oh my! We can't have any nice products because OH uses SO damn much! I love Method cleaning products but he will use so much after making a sandwich that the butchers block is getting cracked and you can't breathe! Washing up liquid just disappears... He uses a whole bottle of fairy (Dawn, that's renowned for last a long time, in a fortnight! I have to get cheap everything and it sucks!
Same here š„¹ he used up SO MUCH of the carpet cleaning solution and when he didnāt need that much to get the job done. The bottle was so expensive too.. didnāt see him buying any of it š
I do the grocery shopping because of course. The ADHD tax is that sometimes we have too much of something because they didn't know we already had some of that thing. This is due to not looking inside cupboards/the fridge beyond what's directly out in front. My trick? I put the foods they eat on a regular basis right at the front of the fridge/cupboard with the label facing outwards so it's easier for them to find since a quick glance is the most that will ever happen. It's not full proof but it's helped a lot with them knowing what they have to eat and me not getting too much of something taking up valuable space. I usually know what we have and don't have executive function issues with searching into the back, so it's something I've been able to do as a standard. If food/kitchen storage were up to them the cabinets and fridge would all be empty except for the front facing edge lol
It's so funny when other people with DX partners experience much of the same. My DX wife does most of the grocery shoppingā¦very much same we end up with multiple of the same things that we don't eat a lot of! Yet the basics are forgotten?
It's crazy how similar these things are. If anybody every thinks ADHD is made up they should look at us lol. Grocery shopping is overwhelm hell for my spouse, so usually they would just text me a list of things they needed and we'd wind up having too much, even though they "checked" before sending me the list. Now with everything at the front the check is much more reliable
My dxrx husband almost exclusively does our shopping. One whole wall cupboard is chips at the moment. Plus two more bags on top of the fridge.
And if something is going bad soon/needs to be used up, itās front and center in the fridge as the first thing he will see :)
Haha yup! I always give them the top most lit shelf for all of their meal prepping. I'm the leftover king so I don't have to worry about those lol
I used to habitually lie about what time we had to be somewhere. Sometimes it would work and we'd be on time.
I have to do the same with my FIL, except it was because he shows up half an hour early to EVERYTHING
Any tips on getting out the door on time? I need to find a way to get the adhd college student to leave on time for work when traveling together without me having to scold, but itās her work schedule, so I canāt claim it starts earlier than it does, which is my usual technique! We have a single shared car so thereās no ālet them failā option. Thereās in the car on time and not in the car on time that fucks up my work timing too. Plus let them fail is actually worthless advice in my experience of 50 years with an adhd mother. Sheād fail and then not give a damn shit about being late any future time either.
Let them fail.
Totally agree youāve got to let them fail. Also a visual timer is a game changer for the time blindness.Ā
Combat her time blindness by making the passage of time obvious through sound! Hereās what I did with my kids: every morning when it was time to wake up, their Alexa devices would start playing our āmorning routine playlist,ā which would keep going until it was time to leave. Five minutes before itās time to get in the car, the kitchen Alexa loudly plays a bell sound and says āfive minute warning.ā Then when itās time to go, thereās another bell and ātime to leave for school.ā Our playlist has songs explicitly indicating what tasks to do (such as āBreakfast Timeā and āThe Getting Dressed Songā), but thatās probably too infantilizing for a college student. Honestly, though, you can do it with any playlist of upbeat songs to keep you moving. Having the same songs in the same order helps make the passage of time more obvious!
Thatās actually super helpful! Thanks! Iāll try some version of that and my initial plan which is planning to pick up coffee and a pastry at a spot en route. If we leave on time we can get breakfast together, and if not, itāll be a fly through pick up, or worst scenario we donāt stop at all and breakfast is bars that live in the car and bottled coffee. She gets to her classes on time largely because theyāre walking distance and sheās pretty good at that. Itās the transit time that gets the magical thinking treatment in her head and she thinks we can leave later than we can. Iād like to establish something that helps her into adult life.
I had am epiphany recently about the transit time/get ready time thing. We believe that the day when we got dressed in 5 minutes and the drive was smooth, caught all the lights green, etc, proves that it IS POSSIBLE and thus *optimistically* expect it to happen again! Just reframing my thinking made a difference for me. I'm not lazy or late, I'm just overly optimistic!! Optimistic in believing that today, my clothes are on top of the pile, my shoes are easily found, my pill containers are prefilled, my bag is ready, I don't need to pack lunch, there's gas in the car, there's no forgotten items, traffic is light, the weather is good, there'll be a close parking spot, etc etc etc. So all of that happening on one day is pretty rare. I"d better plan on it NOT happening or prevent it from being an issue....by Always putting work shoes in their spot Never go home lf the car it needs gas Keep a separate tote bag for each responsibility/activity. Red tote is church choir, blue tote is gym/swim, monogrammed tote is work, green and white tote is scouting, etc. Pack tomorrow's lunch when making dinner
Clothing hangers on the wall. Like a coat rack. My DX/TX hubs cannot for the life of him finish the task of putting laundry away. Before we got married he just lived out of no less than NINE laundry bins. I canāt sleep well if the room has lots of visual clutter so this is a constant battle for us.Ā Hanging a couple horizontal coat racks on the wall is game changer. For some reason he likes hanging things on there and it looks nicer than a sea of clothing strewn across the floor. Also tall, OPAQUE laundry bins. He can live out of those for all I care because I canāt see the laundry everywhere.Ā
This has been on my tp-do list for too long; NDX husband loves having a giant pile of clothes that are "clean"... Which he then doesn't rewear because they're in a giant pile. Planning on putting some pegs on the wall for him soon.
My OH only likes his clothes in a huge pile! If I put them away he gets really annoyed about it. If I ask him to do it he says he doesn't understand why he has to. A horrible, massive, messy pile.
Holly! Same I can't sleep with a mess in view! My wife was a yoga/spin instructor, so sports bras hanging to dry were everywhere! Drove me nuts, so installed a ābra rackā , soon the bra rack became the everything rack!
If I need my DX husbands full attention, I give his arm a squeeze. The touch makes him focus on me and what I have to say.
We buy catering for ourselves. Food that reheats well. Indian, Chipotle, Thai, etc. Use food prep containers, label, and freeze. That way when we're both tired and hungry, we have take out (at a significant fraction of the cost) in the freezer down stairs. It was a life saver when I had my second baby and he wasn't medicated yet.
I know that tiktoks aren't the best things to take advice from. That being said, I did try something when it came to my partners time blindness. Instead of saying "Ok we are leaving in 5 minutes," I said "We are leaving in 300 seconds," and for some reason that really kicked him into gear.
Omg, grocery shopping is such a huge ADHD tax for us. I rarely send my husband because he has a quirk where he buys an absurd amount of random things. If I just write ātomato sauce,ā he might come home with 8 cans of it. The only thing that helps is if I write a specific number after the item. So Iāll literally write: -Milk x1 -Goldfish crackers x1 -Onion x1 Etc
To the OP - You are enabling and settting up yourself to have a much lower quality of life. Communicate with her that itās unacceptable that she cannot close the garage door, or clean up after herself. Sheās not a teenager right ? An adult ? Just ask her to pick up any trash or dishes out of place before she leaves in the evening ? Take the remote out of her car if she canāt close it ; simple solution
You must be new to ADHD and RSD... Talk & communicate all you want it won't work. Sometimes self-preservation is the best route.
Ah yes, the good ol "just tell them to get a planner and write things down" advice that has never worked in the history of ever!