Empty laundry
A pile of laundry is really many small steps stacked on top of each other: sort, load the machine, hang and take out. The visual support below breaks it into an order your child can follow, so the pile stops feeling like one ungraspable lump.
♂Empty laundry
A person takes a yellow t-shirt out of a washing machine with a brown basket beside.
♀Empty laundry
A person stands beside a tipped-over laundry basket with socks and clothes falling out.
♀Empty laundry
A person points at an open washing machine with a thought bubble showing a crossed-out pile of clothes and an empty basket.
♀Empty laundry
A person gestures at a washing machine with t-shirts flying out and an empty basket beside.
♀Empty laundry
A person points at an empty white basket with a blue arrow from a stack of folded clothes.
About this visual support
A basket full of laundry looks like a single job, but it is really a whole chain: darks apart from lights, into the machine, out of the machine, up to dry. When your child sees only the lump and not the chain, it is hard to know where to even take hold.
Breaking the task into visible steps makes it graspable. For children with ADHD an unsorted pile can be especially hard to get into, because it is the planning and the order that take the most energy. With one picture per step, your child only has to do what the square shows right now, and the next step appears once the last one is done.
One concrete tip: put a clear sorting picture first, for example two heaps by colour, so the hardest choice is settled before the machine is even opened. Let your child press the button that starts the wash, it becomes a natural marker that the step is done. In the Routined app you can build the whole laundry chain and let your child move through it one step at a time.
Use this image in a schedule
Build your own visual schedule with this image and download it as a print-ready PDF. Completely free.
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