Clean desk
A cluttered desk pulls the eye in every direction, and every object whispers about some other task that also needs doing. The visual support below quiets the noise by handling one category at a time.
♂Clean desk
A person cleaning a desk. The person is wiping the desk with a cloth and putting items into a trash bin.
♀Clean desk
A hand sweeps clutter and items from a desk into a dustpan.
About this visual support
A messy desk is not messy from laziness, it is messy because it has become a field of view stuffed with small tasks. The note from Tuesday sits next to an eraser, which sits next to a receipt, which reminds you of an unsent email. For a child whose attention already moves fast, each object becomes a new hook that pulls focus away from whatever was picked up first.
This is exactly why visual support works well for the clean-desk job. The pictures fix an order from outside, breaking the loop where the eyes keep jumping. First pens, then papers, then electronics, then dust. None of this is hard on its own, but the order comes from the cards instead of from the child's already overloaded filter.
A practical tip: keep an empty box or shoebox next to the desk while you work. Things that do not belong on the desk, but that you do not want to decide about right now, land in the box and get handled later. That way the desk itself can actually be done today. Inside the Routined app you can save the steps as a routine the child launches whenever the motivation shows up.