Close the doors

About this visual support

Doors left ajar are rarely noticed until something happens. The cat slips into the bedroom and curls up on the clean duvet, steam from the shower drifts into the hallway, or a younger sibling wakes up to noise from the bathroom. Closing two doors takes a few seconds, yet the step is easy to forget because it does not feel like a task of its own. Your child is already thinking about the next thing on the way out of the room.

A picture card showing both doors makes the step visible. Your child sees exactly which doors count and can check for themselves that both are shut before moving on. The card works as the end of the round, much like switching off the light, and when it hangs in the same place every day it turns into a habit that needs no reminders.

A practical tip: put the card at your child's eye level on the wall between the two doors, where it is seen at the very moment they walk past. In the Routined app you can add closed doors as the final step of the evening or morning routine, so it gets ticked off with everything else. You can try the app for 14 days without paying.