You all know the situation well. After a full day of work and play, there are messes everywhere and your house looks like the movie set for a zombie apocalypse. For families with an ASD child, the messes can be even more frequent. From consistent bathroom accidents to persistent spills and messes, keeping a house clean can be a real struggle for ASD families. If you’re reading this and you feel guilty about the chaotic state of your home, please remember to be gentle with yourself. Having an ASD child is emotionally challenging and your house does not need to be perfect in every sense of the way. As a mother of a very active ASD child, I often lack the strength for a daily deep clean. Here are some of my personal tips that I think can help your ASD households with cleanliness and organization.
Make your bed every morning
I know this sounds really silly, but the simple task of making your bed will help improve your headspace and motivate you to keep things organized. If your ASD child is able to make their bed (independently or with assistance), encourage this simple daily activity with praise and reward. There are so many benefits to making your bed including self-worth improvement and better productivity throughout the day. This is also a healthy habit that can help with restorative sleep quality and feelings of happiness.
Use bio-degradable paper plates and utensils
If you’re having a particularly busy week with dishes piling up, give yourself a break and use paper plates. A lot of parents may feel guilt over using paper plates, especially if they’re environmentally conscious. However, there are a lot of great products out there that are environmentally friendly and biodegradable. We can’t tell you how big of a difference this has made in our stress levels. Paper utensils and plates are not just for birthday parties! You can feel good about using them throughout the week and they’re easy to clean up.
Donate your bottles and ask for pick-up service
We recently discovered that a few organizations will pick up our recyclable bottles for free in exchange for a tax credit. We chose to go with a company that works with special needs adults who suffer from Down’s syndrome and ASD. Their driver comes once every two weeks to collect your bottles and you receive a tax credit by mail at the end of the year. The organization will typically provide you with a dedicated bin for your bottles and it becomes easier to put them away. Every time we get a reminder for the impending pick-up, our kids spend time looking around the house for empty cans and bottles. We love this service for two reasons: it supports an amazing cause and it helps us keep our recycling under control.
Invest in a robot vacuum
If your pockets are able to afford one, invest in a robot vacuum that can be pre-preprogrammed to clean while you are sleeping or out of the house. A robot vacuum can really help get the majority of the floor dust under control. It won’t help you if you get a surprise visit from your mother-in-law, but it will bring you a sense of tremendous satisfaction when you wake up to a clean floor. We decided to go for a Roomba that we lovingly named “Wall-E” after the popular Pixar movie. Wall-E spends most of his time in high traffic areas in our kitchen and living room. We’ve also heard from other ASD parents who found it incredibly helpful to have a robot vacuum that can also mop your floors. If you have deeper pockets, consider investing in the vacuum that have mopping capabilities.
Use a checklist
The power of a checklist is an undeniable strength for an ASD household. Checklists have been so helpful to keep us on track with our long-term cleaning goals. I highly recommend you start with a SHORT checklist. The internet offers resources for some great templates, including some for older kids. If you want to connect all family members to an app, consider the Microsoft To-Do App. You can also access printable checklist templates for kids by visiting this link:
Avoid fabric upholstery
One of our biggest challenges with our ASD son is keeping our furniture upholstery clean. No matter how much we tried to watch and supervise our son, he would inevitably send up spilling liquids on our couch or chairs. It’s often a mess that would trigger hundreds of google searches to figure out which product would remain those dirty stains. We realized that fabric upholstery was a bad choice for our family. As beautiful, soft, and comfy as fabric upholstery is, it’s just a major headache for our ASD household. We decided to invest in pleather couches and wood dining chairs. We also made it imperative to never invest in fabric furniture unless it involved a removable washable cover. If for any reason you can’t part from your fabric furniture, use the Scotchguard protector fabric and and rugs. I found this product to be extremely effective when dealing with hard stains. You would still have to wipe down the spill quickly, but this adds a layer of protection to your furniture.
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Keep everyone’s laundry separate
I recently got in touch with a fellow ASD mom who shared an invaluable tip in keeping her laundry organized. There are 6 members in her family and they all keep their laundry in separate hampers. She washes and folds each load separately and claimed it would be a huge time-saving ordeal. I decided to give her methods a shot for a week and was pleasantly surprised to find out she was absolutely right! Separate laundry made it much easier and quicker to organize my boys’ clothes. There was no need to rummage through piles of laundry to find one particular short or pair of socks. It also cut my folding time in half because my big boys too responsibility for their laundry and would fold their own clothes.
Here is a YouTube helpful video that I found from this amazing mom (Real Mom Real Solutions). She has a similar laundry system that helps everyone in her household organized.
Establish a reward system for bi-weekly cleaning
Nobody wants to spend their days off work cleaning! Frankly, it isn’t fun and we don’t look forward to it. I was discouraged at the idea of a weekly deep clean, so I decided to commit to a bi-weekly clean. Every two weeks, our entire family works on 5 “missions” that should be completed with 1 to 2 hours. We kept the number of missions low and manageable to avoid disappointment and keep our spirits up.
These missions are: Clean the bathrooms, vacuum the bedrooms, mop the main floor, wipe the cabinets, and change our bedsheets. Most of these tasks can successfully be completed by our teenage boys with cheerful music in the background. At the end of our cleaning project, one of our boys gets to decide what we’ll do for a reward. Ideas for fun family rewards range from Popcorn Movie Night to Take-out Dinners from our favourite Greek restaurant. These rewards have been a huge motivating factor in how we perceive our deep cleaning routines and we’ve observed a major difference in terms of positive attitudes. Be realistic with what you can achieve and don’t put too much on your plate. If 5 tasks are too much, or if a bi-weekly deep clean seems too overwhelming, start with a monthly commitment with no more than 2 tasks. Whatever you do, know that you’re always doing your best and be forgiving in terms of expectations.
