Drop the laundry in the basket

#laundry#laundry basket#clothes#tidy up#helping out

The shirt lands half a metre from the laundry basket, and the missing step takes less than three seconds. The trouble is that nothing happens when it gets done, and the visual support below gives that invisible move a place of its own in the evening.

A girl lets an armful of dirty clothes fall into a red laundry basket.

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Dropping clothes in the basket

A girl lets an armful of dirty clothes fall into a red laundry basket.

About this visual support

The action takes two seconds and costs nothing, and still it gets skipped every evening. Dropping the laundry in the basket produces no visible result: the floor looks much the same, nobody comments, and the next thing is already pulling. What is missing is not ability but a reason that registers in the moment.

Visual support helps here because it turns the action into a step of its own with a beginning and an end, instead of a detail that disappears at the tail of getting undressed. The child sees the picture, makes the movement, and the step counts. One tip that usually decides the matter is where the basket stands: put it where clothes actually come off, not where it looks tidiest. A couple of extra metres is enough for the step to vanish again. An open basket also beats a handsome lidded one, since a single extra movement is enough to lose the step.

In Routined the action can sit last in the evening routine with a picture of its own, giving it the same weight as brushing teeth and pyjamas.