How I Manage My Home + Family as a Mom with ADHD
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I've been creating on Instagram for several years now and my favorite part is the writing part. If you follow me there, you know that the gold is really in my comments.
I've also created a ton of resources to help moms with ADHD and layered in as many tips and tricks as possible, but I've meaning to sit down and write this blog post for basically forever.
I'm done gatekeeping my systems and truly want to help as many people as possible to find structure and sanity in their daily life.
For me, having my third child was a major breaking point and executive functioning became a daily struggle. I was diagnosed as a child and medicated most of my life and managed to do pretty well until I hit this breaking point.
The mental load of my daily life became too much for me to handle and I needed better systems for managing all of things around my home and family.
I went on a crazy bender reading books about ADHD and trying to implement ADHD friendly strategies to how I was living my life and designing my days.
I created HUNDREDS of templates and charts and lists and most of them only lasted for a few days. But I kept at it and kept making tweaks and finally found a system that I could actually stick to for the long haul.
Here's the major takeaways that I learned.
I needed to start on the basic daily tasks of managing our home first and then move out to the weekly, monthly and then beyond.
ADHD brains have a propensity for the novel and interesting random projects of life. The mundane daily things are very boring. I needed to make the mundane things simpler and easier. I started with 3 daily tasks and focused first on making those consistent before adding more to my plate. Here's my daily three which I usually do in the morning while the kids eat breakfast.
- Start one load of laundry and move it to the dryer. Put the clean laundry in my big hamper.
- Unload the dishwasher and load it. I let the dishes pile up and deal with once a day because this is do-able for me.
- Make breakfast and lunches and have a plan for dinner.
I focused on self care and stimulation
In addition to those three basic daily tasks, I focused on getting the self care that I need to thrive. For me, that means getting good sleep (at least 7 hours but ideally 8), hard exercise, connecting with a friend and spending time in prayer. There are additional habits that help me but these basic four self care tasks improve my mood and give me so much more energy. I also became even more consistent with making time for my business and other big ideas. For me, having deep work at my computer is the most energizing thing that I can do and making that a consistent part of my life has been incredibly helpful for my interest driven brain.
I rewarded myself and made down time normal.
To be clear, I'm a doer and really like being productive. Sitting still is very hard for me. I've always found my worth in my accomplishments and have never been good at idle or down time. But as I've come to understand my brain, I've realized that not only do I need rewards but I also need time where I can just shut down and recharge. My brain is able to accomplish a lot in a little amount of time. It also needs a good amount of down time. I've really embraced that as a way of life and I allow myself to spend a good amount of time doing things that are enjoyable. I probably ready for at least 3 hours a day and have several hobbies in my rotation. And yet, I'm overall way more productive and less stressed than I've ever been in my whole life.
I created personalized tools.
Having key visuals is so helpful for me. I started with simple checklists and then my system evolved over time to this personalized planner sheet. It's all of my life in one simple document but it took me awhile to get here. I created so many versions before I got to this one but this one simple tool helps my brain immensely.. I used vistaprint to create a personalized planner pad from my PDF that I created on Canva. Get all of my Canva Templates Here
I then focused on the weekly + monthly tasks.
Once my daily energy became more consistent, and the 3 daily tasks became really manageable, I added 2 weekly tasks and 1 monthly task. The idea is that on normal energy days, I'd be able to accomplish 6-7 boring tasks. I got this insight from reading Your Brain is Not Broken by Dr. Tamara Rosier and ran with it. I decided that on low energy days, I'd still try and do my daily 3 and then on normal energy days I'd try and do the 6-7 things. This required me editing down all of my ongoing tasks so that they fit in to the weekly + monthly lists. I have 14 weekly tasks. I have 20 monthly tasks.
I focused on what works for me + let go of everything else.
I've gotten extremely strategic about what I expect of myself and based those lists of what works for me and my family. I plan for low energy days and know that they are inevitable. I don't try and make up those days that get missed and have found a cadence to my weekly and monthly tasks that even if days are missed, our home feels calm and peaceful and clean enough. My goal isn't perfection but finding a rhythm that feels good to use.
I then shifted to the clutter and long term projects.
One of my weekly tasks is to declutter and deep clean one thing. I usually do that on Saturdays. I think far too many people try and start with the clutter or tackle one major project but then they forget that they still need to eat dinner and need clean socks for work. For me, focusing small on the daily basics and then moving out has enabled me to make real progress and build a lifestyle that I can actually maintain.
I didn't try and chance everything at once.
Understanding my brain helped me to give myself time to find what works for me. I let go of the time table and started focusing on small areas of my life at a time. That's enabled me to see massive transformation over all because I've focused on a few small tweaks at a time and allowed myself to take a curious posture understanding that I'll always be tweaking, learning and growing because that's just how my brain is wired.
I embraced redundancy.
Setting up the system was just the first part! Learning to apply this to my life meant pulling in every tool that I could find. I've created loads of templates and checklists that help me so much. Having a paper system that you can check off is key and really helps with that quick dopamine hit. I also have everything loaded to my electronic calendar, my apple watch and my skylight calendar. I tweak and move things around so that I don't get bored but I have lots of accountability built in to help me maintain this system. But honestly, this system has freed up so much mental energy for me that I love it and want to stick with it. I've put an enormous amount of time and intentionality in to this system and having so many things automated makes my life so much easier.
Here's a little glimpse at my command center! This is over changing and evolving but having these visuals ready to go is key for me. I update the mom admin a few times a year and try and do one of those things each week. Each season I make a few tweaks and improvements but man do these visuals help me and my kids. Go here to get access to all of my templates. You can put my system to work for your family and personalize everything using Canva.
For detailed step by step help in creating a system for managing your home and family, you're going to want to join Master the Mundane. That's my program where I help you do this and then provide ongoing coaching and accountability to help you live it out. You'll learn how to manage your energy to minimize low energy days and the mindset shifts that really helped me live this out.
Reach out on instagram to let me know if this helped you in some way!
