Laundry has been my #1 Nemesis for my entire adult life.

Okay, that might be overstating it. Or at the very least, understating a lot of my other problems. But it sounds good and dramatic.

Being able to get laundry done in a single cycle is hardly breakthrough stuff in the grand scheme of life, but when it has been an ordeal for so long, it’s a pretty big deal when you can finally do it consistently.

That is the kind of thing that medication has done for me and it may not seem huge to anyone who doesn’t have ADHD, but for me these little bits of progress are a life-changing relief.

Medication means that my life isn’t consumed by impossible, hair-pulling, eye-gouging, gut-wrenching, physically painful frustration.

Medication allows me a number of hours in the day where I can think straight, make coherent plans and follow an idea to completion – these hours of cognitive clarity are a window on adult life that I’ve never had before and it is gradually transforming a life of constant frustration and struggle into an existence that I can actually begin to enjoy.

Before, life meant waking up every morning feeling like this – today – is the day that everything falls into place; I have a head full of plans, I know what I need to do and now is the time that it’s all going to happen… except that it never did… and I went to bed every night feeling the full weight of failure and uselessness. But oh, so optimistic about tomorrow!

Rinse and repeat.

Medication means that my life isn’t consumed by impossible, hair-pulling, eye-gouging, gut-wrenching, physically painful frustration. Medication lets me get on with simple tasks more efficiently and have down-time where I’m not stressed out about what I’m trying to do/should be doing/haven’t done.

So I can’t even express how pleased I was when I realised that I hadn’t had to re-run a load for over a month after I started taking medication. I have since progressed to even being able to put the drying rack away between loads. This is huge.

I used to run every load at least twice, emptied the rack only when I needed to dry the next batch, never folded/hung anything and lived out of a mountain of crumpled clothes – all of which would be fine if I didn’t care… but I did… and it made me miserable.

Now I have a protocol and it helps me even on days when I forget my meds because I just follow the system.

Pro tip #1: use ONLY the very shortest programme on your machine. DO NOT be fooled into thinking that you’re an adult and should really find out what the ‘Cottons’ setting is for. That is not for you to know.

My shortest cycle is 27 minutes. +2 minutes for the door to unlock.

So maybe I’m not a fully-fledged adult human yet, because I can’t just stick on a load on my way out the door and trust myself to come home and deal with it…

I have a red plastic basket, which lives upstairs in a cupboard, to carry dirty clothes from upstairs to the machine – this was an important facilitator. I have had this basket for about 5 years – it was previously ‘home’ to spare towels, sheets, vacuum cleaner parts, forgotten shampoos, odd socks… even using this basket for its intended purpose was significant progress.

I do a load when I know I have half an hour so that I can’t ignore it when it beeps at me to empty it. I use those 29 minutes to wash dishes, clean kitchen surfaces, take out compost/trash, collect ‘upstairs stuff’ from downstairs areas. This means that not only is laundry happening, but cleaning is happening almost by accident. Crazy stuff, guys – effective multitasking, who knew?

Pro tip #2: Treat yourself. I’ve always been frugal, but have come to realise that some things are worth spending more than the bare minimum on. If the end result of the horror that is ‘Doing Laundry’ is clothes and sheets that smell good? Way more worth my time and effort = more likely to get done = less repeated cycles = overall less waste = justified expense.

Wet laundry goes from the machine, into the plastic basket, carried to the living room and sorted. I hang everything in a specific order so that I can fold it immediately as it comes off the drying rack into piles organised by where it all has to go away. Folded dry clothes… in the plastic basket.

Seriously, if I ever get cocky and think I can surely do it without the basket… the whole system goes to hell and I end up walking past piles of clothes on chairs for a week.

Pro tip #3: A while ago, I emptied all our t-shirt drawers and started over. I fold everything one extra time and stand them upright, rather than piled on top of each other. I’ve come across others since then who do this too, so I might be crazy but at least I’m not alone. ^_^

This makes it easy to see what’s in the drawers and means that the search for ‘that one shirt’ doesn’t end in a tangled mess of shirts which gradually unfold to their native conformation and migrate across the floor.

Folded clothes go away. Basket either goes away or re-enters circulation.

I guess there are people out there who would read all this and just think I’m nuts, because this stuff should be intuitive. It should be intuitive, and I wish I could feel what it’s like to be that person, but it doesn’t come naturally if you have ADHD – it’s taken me 18+ months with medication to establish this routine.

Between the strict adherence to the step-by-step basket system and the nutty folding regime, it’s obvious that my system revolves around structure and control – two things that I have been utterly unable to grasp for most of my life.

Did I mention that I couldn’t have done any of this without medication?