Laundry Is My Nemesis

The piles are everywhere...

So far, this newsletter has offered deep dives into research on different ADHD topics: diagnosing adult ADHD, RSD and emotional dysregulation, and hyperfocus.

This week, I wanted to experiment with a more personal post about executive functioning and everyday tasks. If you’re here for the research, don’t worry, I’ll be back with more citations next week. :)

I want to do something about one of my most intractable executive functioning challenges…LAUNDRY.

The piles and piles of dirty clothes. The piles and piles of clean, wrinkled clothes. The pile of dirty, hand-wash-only clothes that just never gets touched. The pile of clothes that I wore once and might not actually need to wash and should put back in the closet but instead they’re in a pile.

I feel like my life will feel a little bit better if I figure out a way to make laundry suck less.

Before I met my husband, I lived in a very, very tiny studio apartment with no closets and no washer or dryer. Every other Saturday morning, I stuffed all my laundry into two Ikea bags and headed to the laundromat. 

I did my two loads at the same time, and I did work while I waited for the wash and dry cycles to finish. I folded the laundry right away before I left the laundromat. The whole process took about 2 hours. It was annoying, sure, but it didn’t enrage me the way laundry seems to do these days.

Not actually me. (Photo from JumpStory.)

Because I lived in a very, very tiny studio apartment with no closets, I was pretty ruthless about minimalism back then. I followed the prescriptions of Marie Kondo’s Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up with meticulous zeal. I kept only those few items that managed to “spark joy.” I folded each item of clothing in strict accordance with the Konmari method.

Later, I was living with my husband in an apartment with an in-unit washer and dryer, and we were both working from home during pandemic lockdowns. Laundry became a loose, ungovernable thing; loads were tossed in throughout the week, abandoned to wrinkle in the dryer for days at a time. 

And, then, we had a baby. Suddenly, there was a lot more laundry. Also, my executive functioning crumpled in the face of severe postpartum depression.

While I was slowly putting my mental health back together, I stumbled across KC Davis’s book How to Keep House While Drowning. It was the much-needed antidote to the Kondo-mania that had taken hold of me through the 2010s. 

Davis, a former therapist who was diagnosed with ADHD in adulthood, taught me that laundry is morally neutral — there is no reason to feel guilty or like I’m a bad person because I’m struggling with laundry! This was an enormous relief and source of self-compassion during a time when I really needed it.

Davis writes about her own postpartum experience with laundry:

“I looked down at the baby onesie I was folding and asked myself a shocking question. 

‘Why am I folding baby onesies?’

I had no answer. They didn’t really wrinkle and even if they did it’s not like anyone cares if a baby is wearing a wrinkled onesie….

“These…don’t…need to be folded.”

…I looked around the piles I was sitting in. Fleece pajamas, sweat pants, underwear, gym shorts.

“...Almost none of this needs to be folded.”

This. Rocked. My. World.

After reading Davis’s book, I quit folding about 80% of our laundry, and things got notably better.¹

Yet, despite being liberated from folding in 2021, I remain angry enough about laundry that I’m writing a whole newsletter post about it in 2024.

My current “plan” is that every day, I do one load of laundry. The idea is to toss it in before I start work in the morning, move it to the dryer at lunchtime, grab it and put it away during an afternoon break.

But the problem is, this isn’t happening. The loads never go in, or they do and get forgotten along the way, languishing in the washer, the dryer, or a pile somewhere. And I end up feeling frustrated and cranky about the whole thing.

Desperately Seeking Laundry Advice

This kind of challenge – how do I, as an individual with my specific circumstances and mental health conditions, have a more chill relationship with laundry – is very difficult to answer with formal scientific research.

I did try to see if I could find any studies about laundry and executive functioning challenges in general, or laundry and ADHD.² I didn’t find much. (If you know of good studies about executive dysfunction and chores, please share them in the comments!)

The most relevant studies popped up in occupational therapy journals,³ like this one that analyzed interviews with 12 people with ADHD in Sweden about things that helped them perform everyday activities, including laundry. It’s a very small study, but thoughtfully done, and I think the findings are worth reflecting on.

Here’s a list of what helped participants do daily activities, plus my thoughts on how each applies to my laundry dilemma:

• Activities are fun and demanding. (Laundry is boooooring.)

• Activities have clear goals. (I guess laundry has a goal of clean, put-away clothes? Yawn.)

• Other people are also engaged with the activity. (Nope, I’m working from home alone when I do laundry.)

• There are tools to help with the activity. (I use my reminders app to tell me to move the laundry, and then proceed to ignore it entirely.)

• The activity is part of clear structures or routines. (My supposed routine isn’t happening, and I’m not sure “I do it sometimes when I remember and always feel behind” counts as a routine.)

• There is a sense of togetherness with other people. (Nope.)

• They feel needed by others. (Sometimes, like when I’m doing my daughter’s laundry.)

Next, I turned to some popular self-help books with executive functioning advice, including Dani Donovan’s Anti-Planner, Jessica McCabe’s How to ADHD, and my old favorite, KC Davis’s How to Keep House While Drowning. They gave me a few more things to think about:

• Simplify systems. McCabe gives the example of a coatrack (1 step: hang coat) vs. a coat closet (4 steps: open door, find hanger, hang coat, close door). (Hmm..what steps can I cut from my laundry routine?)

• Pay someone else to do it. (Not right now, but maybe someday.)

• Look back at what strategies have worked before. (My old laundromat day did work pretty well.)

• Design your environment to make things easier on yourself. (I could use a bigger hamper.)

• Question any preconceived notions you have about the right way to do laundry. (Maybe ‘one load every day’ just isn’t the right routine for me right now?)

The Great Laundry Day Experiment of 2024

Somewhere along the line, I got the idea in my head that it’s best to do one load a day.

But that just isn’t working for me. It probably works for a lot of people! But this is a situation where I don’t need the “best” strategy or the one that works for the most people. I need a strategy that works specifically for me, right now.

In her book Tend to It, productivity coach

Dr. Kate Henry

suggests a method of gentle experimentation when adopting new productivity strategies. After reflecting on a goal or problem, she recommends selecting an approach to try for a predetermined amount of time and reflecting on the experience afterwards.

After all of my laundry-centered research and reflection, the new approach I want to try is:

1. Do the whole week’s laundry on one day of the week. The same day each week. Probably Friday.

2. Use an alarm, not the reminders app, to tell me to move the laundry.

3. Cut back on sorting – for example, keep pajamas, workout clothes, and layering basics in the same place.

4. Buy a bigger hamper for my bedroom so it isn’t always overflowing.

5. Put hooks anywhere that sweatshirts and jackets end up on the floor.

I’m going to try this out for a month and see if it makes a difference. Hopefully I will be less grumpy about laundry, and life will be just a tiny bit more pleasant. I will let you know!

Coda: My Husband’s Super Chill ADHD Laundry System

My husband, who has diagnosed ADHD, has a simple system that works great for him:

1. Put dirty clothes in the hamper. 

2. Do laundry when the hamper is full.

3. Put clean clothes in the laundry basket next to the hamper. 

4. Repeat.

He ignores our dresser and closets. Nothing gets folded, and somehow his clothes don’t ever seem to get wrinkled. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Thank you for joining me for ADHD Unpacked! I had a lot of fun ranting about laundry this week. Next week, I’ll be back with a more research-focused post.

In the meantime, I’d love to hear from you! What everyday task is your current nemesis? Do you have a laundry system that works for you? How have you adapted everyday tasks to meet your unique circumstances and needs?

Stay curious,

Dr. Taylor Allbright

1. Of course, unfolded laundry takes up a lot more space than folded laundry. Davis’s personal laundry system involves a dedicated laundry room with an en-suite laundry closet—a luxury I can barely wrap my mind around from my vantage point in a high-cost-of-living city. To make this work in an apartment, I got rid of a bunch of clothes, reorganized our dressers, and bought a storage bench for our bedroom.

2. I don’t have diagnosed ADHD, but I do have executive functioning challenges related to depression, anxiety, and stress. Many ADHD strategies help me tremendously.

3. I am so intrigued by the idea of occupational therapy as a treatment for ADHD. I’ve seen recommendations for pharmacology, psychotherapy, and coaching, but not occupational therapy. I am curious to learn more; if you have any experience in this area, please share in the comments!