A home routine for us neurodivergent adults is essential to maintain psychological equilibrium and improve our executive function. It’s essential for simplifying our home. Here are eight steps to creating such a routine.
The story.
Usually, watching a movie is enough to quell my anxiety and experience a semblance of calm.
Not that evening. As my husband sat next to me on the bed, riveted to the scene on the computer, I bit my thumb. Then rocked a bit against the pillow. Then shoved my hand inside the small bag containing synthetic down filling and squeezed the oh-so-soft material between my fingers.
But nothing was working. Due to multiple injuries to my lower back, left glute (butt muscle), and knees, I was down for a very long count. Completely out of my routine.
And I just knew I was going to go crazy before I was up on my feet again.
A sturdy home routine: the neurodivergent woman’s best friend.
While I did not completely “lose it” during my long healing and longer recovery time, I got a serious revelation.
For the neurodivergent brain, having a consistent daily routine is not an option. It’s vital. Whatever label you want to give it, we need structure so we can alleviate our anxiety from the excess inputs our brains refuse to filter out. And so we can feel some semblance of control in the midst of a world that often seems confusing, hypocritical, and illogical.
If you feel like you’ve been flailing because life at home is more random than you’d like, read on. I’m going to provide eight steps to help you build your own home routine, unique for your specific personality, traits, and needs.
Step 1: Sandwich your day with gentle routines.
The most energy-friendly routines you can establish are those at the beginning and end of the day. The right activities help you to ease your way into the day, then prepare you for a good night’s sleep.
I’ve discussed how to build these routines in my series about self-care for neurodivergent women, here.
Step 2: Assess your time.
If you have a job, most of your home routine for neurodivergent adults will occur on the weekend. If you don’t have to work for an income, or work part-time from home, your home routine will have a lot more wiggle room.
Either way, for best results you’ll want to craft your routine based on your known energy fluctuations. I realize they’re not always consistent. For example, I’m sensitive to the weather and that can cause at least half of my day to be thrown completely off course.
If you’re a woman over the age of forty-five, hormones might whack you sideways some days.
But I’m guessing you know generally what time of day you have the most energy and when you have the least. Jot those times down, as well as the periods during the day when your energy is in between.
Step 3 in setting up a home routine for neurodivergent adults: List the main activity categories.
These activities include:
- Meals.
- Social time.
- Leisure time (you can lump it with social, if you want).
- Hobbies and special interests.
- Family time, if relevant.
- Personal hygiene.
- Chores and administrative tasks.
- Fitness.
Write them down below your notes about your daily energy rhythms. If you tend toward autistic traits, you likely already have set meal times that not even a natural disaster could keep you from. If you tend more toward ADHD, you may need to discipline yourself to stick to two or three set mealtimes to ensure that your hyperfocus doesn’t cause you to get malnourished.
Step 4 in setting up a home routine for neurodivergent adults: Match routine categories with your energy.
Look at the categories of activities other than meals. Ask yourself the following questions:
- Which type of activity do I need to do during my high energy period?
- Which can I leave for my low energy periods?
- Which categories are perfect for my moderate energy times?
As you examine these questions, think carefully about your experiences thus far. Be honest with yourself. If you’ve consumed content that discusses productivity and routines, don’t just go with those experts’ advice. What works for them won’t necessarily work for you.
Common sense dictates that one does chores during moderate or high energy periods. Some days that works for me. Other days, my creativity is busting at the seam and I want to use all my high and moderate energy on my writing, music, and other special interests. On those days, I slog through my chores when my energy is in the basement. But I don’t care. I don’t need brain power – or that much muscle power – to accomplish household work.
You may need to do your administrative tasks when your energy is high because you’re otherwise not motivated to do so. Another person might relegate them to a moderate energy period, keeping their high energy for leisure and hobby times.
Fitness is probably the only category that should never be left to a low-energy period. Forcing yourself to exercise when you don’t feel like it causes you to create a negative association with it. Your body also won’t respond as well to your efforts.
Step 5 in building a home routine for neurodivergent adults: Draft a loose schedule.
Now that you’ve got a rough idea with which segment of your home routine works best with which energy period, write it all out. Include a few lines about your morning and evening routines at the beginning and end, too, just to have them visible.
If you work, create a schedule for both workdays and for your days off.
Remember: this isn’t a schedule of specific activities, just an overview of a home routine that will fit your energy levels.
Which brings us to…
Step 6 in a home routine for neurodivergent adults: make it flexible.
As I hinted earlier, sometimes the weather turns me into a sloth for half the day. Sometimes you get an unexpected phone call. Sometimes things break, or run out.
In other words, life happens.
I know it’s easier said than done for those of us who are autistic, but learning to be at least a little flexible is an essential skill of life.
Step 7: Build in transitions.
We neurodivergent women have a hard time jumping from one activity to the next. In between, spend five to ten minutes in your favorite chair with a good book. Or take a short walk. Or do some gentle stretching or breathing. Such transitional activities help our brains settle from the last segment of our routine, and our bodies work up some energy for the next.
Step 8 to build an effective home routine for neurodivergent adults: Organize accordingly.
It’s a lot easier to transition from one part of your routine to another if you don’t have to spend time ferreting out materials. Or walking all the way down the hall, then to the garage, then back, for what you need.
Instead, organize materials according to general categories – cleaning, office, hobby, etc. – and store them together.
I discuss neurodivergent home organization in detail here.
Optional step 9: Create a weekly routine.
Especially if you’re working, you might want to set up an old-fashioned weekly routine. That’s when you take five to six days of the week, and allocate certain chores to each day.
For example, I do laundry Mondays, Thursdays, and Saturdays (if I had a washing machine I’d do it less often). I sweep Tuesdays and Fridays. Wednesday is dusting day. Sunday is grocery-shopping day.
You may want to set one day apart to run errands. Or to make obligatory family calls. And so on.
If this idea sits well, jot a schedule down on the same paper with your home routine.
Energy-friendly routines: gotta have ‘em!
For our touchy neurological systems and glitchy executive function, we neurodivergent women need to go with our energy flow.
And should we have a day when that energy is playing hide-and-seek, we need to be okay with that, and adjust.
I hope this post has helped you to structure your day in a way that fits you well. Feel free to tell us about it, or your own home routine hacks, in the comments!
