Putting Laundry Away For ADHD

May 14, 2024

Do you sleep with clothes on your bed? Do you get your clean and dirty clothes mixed up? Do you get frustrated because you can’t find your clothes when you’re trying to get ready? Putting laundry away is a major chore that many people struggle with. It’s fairly common for people to get overwhelmed with laundry and feel discouraged with their organizational capabilities. In this post, I’ll give you some of my favorite hacks for getting this task checked off your list.

Washing Clothes: For this post, I’m focusing more on getting your clothes PUT AWAY, but first I want to address getting your clothes laundered. I personally hate having my dirty clothes pile up. Do you get hung up on getting your clothes washed? I’ll write a more detailed post about this another time. But for now, just do your best at cycling your clothes through the wash before they start to pile up too much. A pile of clean clothes, even if they aren’t put away, is far better than a pile of dirty clothes.

Clean clothes getting mixed up with dirty clothes? You might not believe how common this problem is! Use two hampers. Dedicate one for dirty clothes and one for clean clothes. That way, if you don’t have time to put them all away the same day they were washed, you can still put your dirty clothes in a separate hamper.

Put away one category at a time. If you struggle putting your clothes away, try just focusing on one category at a time. Dump your clean clothes from the hamper onto your bed* and then either sort them into categories, or just start putting the bigger items away. Pants or sweatshirts are usually a good category to start with because they are so bulky and take up so much space in the hamper. So even if the rest of the clothes need to get put back into the clean hamper, the volume will be much smaller. I recommend putting away one category at a time because it’s a way to break it down into manageable chunks. It’s also efficient because clothes of the same category will also probably be stored together. *= I say “bed” because most of the time, your bed is a large flat surface that is close to where you store your clothes. However, if you don’t store your clothes in the same room as your bed, or you have a strong preference for sorting your laundry somewhere else, adjust this recommendation for what suits your situation the best.

Don’t fold unless you have to (or really love folding). I’m guessing if you really love folding, you don’t have the problem of putting your clothes away, and so aren’t reading this post. Marie Kondo popularized the file folding method, so you can see all of what you have. This method looks beautiful and surely makes sense from a visibility perspective. It also cultivates mindfulness, shows appreciation for your belongings, and often provides a sense of accomplishment. BUT… this level of organization may not be for everyone. Although it doesn’t usually take that much more time, holding yourself to this folding standard can be enough of a barrier that your clothes live in the laundry basket all the time. While there’s really nothing wrong with clothes living in the laundry basket (as long as they’re clean 😉), it makes it hard to find what you’re looking for. Clothes will fit better in drawers when they are folded, but if you aren’t overflowing with clothes, you will probably be just fine. You can also loosely fold clothes (like folding t-shirts in half and then in half again, and folding pants into thirds so they lay flat).

Wear easy care clothes that don’t wrinkle easily. There’s a theory that if you take your clothes immediately out of the dryer and then fold them and put them away, they won’t wrinkle. As someone with ADHD myself, I don’t think I’ve ever prioritized my time so that I could make that happen. There are way too many other things that I’d rather be doing than to “be available” to immediately put my clothes away when they’re dry. The reward of hoping that my clothes won’t get wrinkled is just not enough for me to arrange my schedule so that I know I will have the time and energy to put my clothes away when the dryer is done. Because of this, I choose to wear easy-care fabrics that don’t wrinkle easily as often as possible. For clothes that do wrinkle, I’ll use my handy clothes steamer, or put a quick iron to them before I wear them. But usually those are for things I wear on special occasions, or when I feel like putting the extra effort into looking cute. (Usually I just rely on a pair of earrings and a necklace to jazz up my look.)

Hang clothes that you don’t want to wrinkle. Sure, if they come out from the hamper wrinkled, hanging them will usually not magically un-wrinkle them. But it will prevent them from getting more wrinkled in drawers or bins. A tip from one ADHD’r to the next, contrary to what most other organizers might advise, I don’t use matching hangers!! I use hangers with clips for skirts. I use velvet hangers for most of my tops that like to slip off the hangers (like sleeveless, v-necks, or scoop necks. But for most of my crew neck t-shirts, I prefer using plastic hangers. I find that because the plastic hangers don’t have the drag that the velvet ones do (which makes the velvet hangers so great for grabbing on to slippery clothes), they are much easier for putting t-shirts away. This is a very minor thing, but I’ve noticed it makes me more willing to put my own clothes away.

Out of sight, out of mind: It’s common to forget what you can’t see. So if your clothes are stored in a closet with the door shut, or behind clothes drawers, you might forget what’s in there. I’m a fan of taking closet doors off. And although I do like using drawers, they need to be labeled. (More on that in my next tip). Another solution is to put your clothes in open bins or baskets (no lids, and ideally ones that dip down in the front) on open shelving. Pro tip- if you do go with bins, I recommend using white ones, or light colors. If you use black or dark colors, the optics make it really hard to see what’s in the bin.

Use labels. Whether you decide to store your clothes in open bins on shelves or in drawers, I highly recommend using labels. It just takes one mental process out of the equation (remembering where everything goes). If you’re really against the labels being on the outside of the drawers, you can put the label on the inside (top edge) of the drawer.

To hyper-categorize or keep things broad: I will say, I like to have a lot of different categories for clothes. But this is certainly not for everyone! If you struggle with just keeping tops and bottoms separated, start there. Then once you’ve mastered that, you can add sub-categories. Use drawer dividers, separate drawers, separate bins, or any other method you want to create boundaries between types of clothes. I have had good success with a series of small drawers to accompany my larger dresser. I used twelve small drawers for the following categories:

-ankle socks

-thick socks

-“other” socks (arch supports, leg warmers, novelty socks)

-workout tanks

-workout long sleeves

-leggings long

-leggings short

-sleep pants

-pajama tops

-workout shorts

-workout capris

-shorts

(My full length workout pants went in a much larger drawer since I have so many).

As you can see, this would be way too many categories to try to keep straight without labels! I especially loved having these labels when I was trying to get ready in a hurry.

Time yourself. Next time you put your clothes away, time yourself. It may sound silly, but knowing exactly how long it takes (probably around 5-10 minutes for a load, if they don’t need to be folded perfectly) can help you realize that the chore isn’t as big as it seems. It might seem like having all the different categories would make it take a lot longer to put clothes away, but it really doesn’t, especially since most of these categories don’t need to be folded too perfectly. The time and frustration savings I get when getting dressed is well worth the effort!

What about clothes you can re-wear? I’ll dedicate another post about this soon!