Empty dishwasher
Plates stacking up, glasses wobbling, cutlery scattered across the counter. When each category has its own place in a set order, the child can keep up without dropping things. The visual support below shows the steps.
♂Empty dishwasher
An illustration of a man emptying a dishwasher, taking out a plate.
♀Empty dishwasher
A woman is emptying the dishwasher. She is taking out clean plates and forks, placing them on the counter next to it.
About this visual support
Emptying the dishwasher is really several small sorting tasks lined up after each other. Plates need balancing, glasses need to be carried without knocking together, and cutlery has to land in the right slots of the drawer. When all of it happens at once, things slip from hands or the child freezes mid-task without knowing where the next item belongs.
With the images, each group of items gets its own point in the sequence: plates first, then glasses, then cutlery. The child finishes one category before the next begins, which keeps the arms from being overloaded and the fine motor control intact. The visual support acts like a checklist moved through one block at a time.
One concrete tip: put a slightly chipped plastic cup at the top of the drawer as a reminder of why glasses get their own turn. It anchors the sequence in something the child can actually see. In the Routined app you can save the steps as a recurring chore with a time estimate, so the child knows roughly how long the task takes.