My 6–7 Task Strategy: The ADHD-Friendly Way I Manage My Home Without Burning Out

Why doing less (on purpose) is the key to keeping my home steady and my brain calm.

I truly want to help as many people as possible to find structure and sanity in their daily life so today I’m spilling the tea on the strategy that has transformed my life and helped thousands of moms with ADHD get out of 24/7 chaos.

First, a little background.

For me, having my third child in my 30s was a major breaking point and executive functioning became a daily struggle. I was diagnosed as a child and medicated most of my life and that had been enough (or at least I thought) until that point. I was definitely dealing with unhealthy coping strategies and under achieving professionally, but I was getting through the days.

Once I hit that ADHD wall in my late 30s: the third child, perimenopause symptoms, father in law in hospice, oldest diagnosed with ASD, trying to homeschool….

Daily life became way, way too much. By about 4 pm every day I wanted to hide in my room with a bottle of wine and ignore my family. I was overwhelmed by the noise and the clutter and the needs.

So when I say I was struggling it wasn’t just that the laundry wasn’t getting done or that we were ordering pizza multiple times a week or the dishes were piling up or the toilet wasn’t getting cleaned.

I’m talking more about that the fact that I was really overwhelmed, emotionally volatile and feeling like a failure. Yes, the clutter and cleaning and meals was part of it. But even more so was how I was showing up and having the emotional energy to regulate myself and my kids.

I needed a strategy for managing my home and family, managing my ADHD, and supporting my neurodivergent kids.

How I was doing life wasn’t working and I needed a new strategy. I knew that I needed systems and structure but everything that I’d ever tried only worked for a few weeks and I needed something more all encompassing.

I started reading everything that I could get my hands on about ADHD and applying what I was learning to how I was running my home and family by creating different visual tools and checklists. You see, creating pretty checklists on Canva was fun and easy but finding tools that would actually help my family function was totally different story.

I found that so much of the ADHD resources were focused on information and not transformation. I needed a clear plan that I could implement and there was nothing out there. So, I got obsessed with creating my own.

I created HUNDREDS of templates and charts and lists and most of them only lasted for a few days. But I kept at it and kept making tweaks and finally found a system that I could actually stick to for the long haul. I’ve been using this strategy for over five years, have shared this with 10,000+ other families and it was the basis of my new book, Master the Mundane, How to Manage Your Life, Home and Family as a Mom with ADHD.

1. I embraced the need for behavior modification and accommodations as an essential part of managing my ADHD.

2. I let go of timelines and focused on creating sustainable change which meant starting small.

3. I prioritized self care and stimulation

4. I made time for my interests and for down time.

5. I created personalized tools and clear visuals.

6. I got good at the basic tasks of everyday life that are most helpful to me and my family.

7. I focused on what works for me and then let go of everything else.

8. I got a handle of the clutter in a way that works for me.

9. I stopped trying to change everything at once.

10. I stopped looking for one magic bullet and instead to embrace redundancy.

Keep reading to get the ten mindset shifts behind this strategy and for the link to my life changing daily planner sheet.

1. I embraced the need for behavior modification and accommodations as an essential part of managing ADHD.

As I read the ADHD literature, listened to webinars, and read the academic studies, it became clear that medicine is just one part of what it looks like to effectively manage ADHD. The academic resources all recommend a three prong approach: medication, education and behavior therapy or skills training. This kind of support and education didn’t exist when I was diagnosed with ADD in the mid 80s but it’s now clear that medicine alone isn’t enough.

If this is true for children with ADHD, wouldn’t it also be true for me as a mom? If things like positive reinforcement, rewards, clear expectations, and adjusting expectations help them, wouldn’t that also help me? And if I want them to feel empowered in advocating for their own needs wouldn’t it be imperative that I model for them what that looks like in my daily life?

I began to see that not only did I need to give myself freedom and flexibility in how I was managing myself but that by doing so that I’d be helping my children. I needed to reparent myself knowing what I now know about parenting children with ADHD.

2. I let go of timelines and focused on creating sustainable change which meant starting small.

ADHD brains have a propensity for the novel and interesting random projects of life. The mundane daily things are very boring. My tendency for many years was to create elaborate strategies or cleaning schedules where every possible thing got accomplished but then I struggled to ever implement those systems. Creating the complicated strategy was fun but the actual implementation of the boring tasks was hard and I couldn’t motivate my brain to do the necessary tasks.

I realized that I needed to let go of the perfect plan where everything gets done and instead focus on learning what I could actually maintain. Instead of solving every problem, I needed to start small with just the basic daily tasks that are the most necessary but also the most mundane.

I needed to make the mundane things easier starting with my daily tasks. I started with 3 daily tasks and focused first on making those consistent before adding more to my plate. Here’s my daily three which I usually do in the morning while the kids eat breakfast.

1. Start one load of laundry and move it to the dryer. Put the clean laundry in my big hamper.

2. Unload the dishwasher and load it. Wipe down the kitchen so that I have a clean sink and clean counters. (It doesn’t stay this way all day. This happens once and that’s good enough for me).

3. Make breakfast and lunches and make sure that I have a plan for dinner and everything that I’ll need.

Your daily three might be different but the key is to identify three tasks that are small and specific enough that even on a low energy day you could get them done and big enough that you’d feel accomplished when you get them done. The idea is that if you are doing these three daily tasks consistently that your biggest daily pain points will get addressed and your home and family will avoid feeling like a dumpster fire. The goal isn’t perfect. The goal here is feeling on top of the most important needs of your family and not getting derailed by the random non-urgent but more exciting random tasks.

3. I prioritized self care and stimulation

In addition to those three basic daily tasks, I focused on getting the self care that I need to thrive. I realized that managing my mental health is an important part of the equation and if I wanted to get more productive and have the emotional and mental energy to regulate my emotions and be a kind and present mom, this part matters. I also realized that I had a lot of guilt around this and it took me time to really integrate this belief in to how I was living.

For me, this looks like getting good sleep (at least 7 hours but ideally 8 or 9), hard exercise, spending time in prayer before the kids wake up and having downtime in the afternoon. There are additional habits that help me but these basic four self care tasks improve my mood and give me so much more energy. I also became even more consistent with making time for my business and other big ideas. For me, having deep work at my computer is the most energizing thing that I can do and making that a consistent part of my life has been incredibly helpful for my interest driven brain.

4. I made time for my interests and for down time.

To be clear, I’m a doer and really like being productive. Sitting still is very hard for me. I’ve always found my worth in my accomplishments and have never been good at idle or down time. But as I’ve come to understand my brain, I’ve realized that not only do I need rewards but I also need time where I can just shut down and recharge. My brain is able to accomplish a lot in a little amount of time. It also needs a good amount of down time. I’ve really embraced that as a way of life and I allow myself to spend a good amount of time doing things that are enjoyable. I probably read for at least 2 hours on most days and have several hobbies in rotation. And yet, I’m overall way more productive and less stressed than I’ve ever been in my whole life.

Having a clear plan for what was a priority was key to me giving myself permission to rest. In time, I’ve found a pace of life that really works for me and learned that my nervous system does best with a good bit of down time. At first, it was really hard to feel like I deserved it. But seeing the fun things (like reading my fun book) as a reward for doing my 6-7 boring tasks motivated me to get them done quickly. Instead of wasting time procrastinating or avoiding, I’ve gotten good at doing the boring things and then getting guilt-free down time.

5. I created personalized tools and clear visuals.

Having clear visuals is so helpful for me. I realized that sitting down to plan out my day from scratch each day was a huge waste of time and energy. I was using all of my mental energy to plan my day and then didn’t have any energy to actually execute the plan. I was really good at creating long, complicated to do lists but I needed to start my day with a plan that I could focus on executing.

I’m also very visual and struggle with processing auditory information. Clear visuals help me to understand information, my capacity and my limits. Whenever I’m overwhelmed, visual tools help me to break down information and goals in to actionable steps.

I started with simple checklists and then my system evolved over time to this personalized planner sheet. It’s all of my life in one simple document but it took me awhile to get here. I update this every few months as the needs of my family change.

Notice that there are a few empty boxes for me to address one or two urgent needs that pop up but this plan has meant that I already know what tasks are the highest priority for me and my family on an ongoing basis. The fewer black boxes there are means less thinking, prioritizing and decision making.

6. I got good at the basic tasks of everyday life that are most helpful to me and my family.

Once my daily energy became more consistent, and the 3 daily tasks became really manageable, I added 2 weekly tasks and 1 monthly task. The idea is that on normal energy days, I’d be able to accomplish 6-7 boring tasks. On low energy days, I still try and do my daily 3 and don’t worry about the weekly and monthly tasks.

I edited down all of my ongoing tasks so that they fit in to the weekly + monthly lists. I have 14 ongoing weekly tasks and 21 monthly tasks. The hardest and most critical part was narrowing down what makes the cut and it required me to let a lot of things go and to strategically lower my expectations of myself in many areas. I focused not on how much time these tasks take but on how hard they are for me. Everything that doesn’t fit on my lists was either eliminated, delegated or outsourced.

Every new season, I revisit and tweak these lists as needed as our needs and resources change and to create variety if it’s needed.

7. I focused on what works for me and then let go of everything else.

I’ve gotten extremely strategic about what I expect of myself and what works for me and my family. I plan for low energy days and know that they are inevitable. I don’t try and make up those days that get missed and have found a cadence to my weekly and monthly tasks that even if days are missed, our home feels calm and peaceful and clean enough. My goal isn’t perfection but finding a rhythm that feels good to us and that I can actually maintain.

I learned to let go of the fear or what others might think about my personal expectations and embraced what is good enough for me. If the folded laundry sitting in the basket for two days doesn’t bother me or my children, than that standard works for me. I let go of what might be the “right way” and found the expectations that I want to meet.

8. I got a handle of the clutter in a way that works for me.

One of my weekly tasks is to declutter and deep clean one thing. I usually do that on Saturdays. I think far too many people try and start with the clutter or tackle one major project but then they forget that they still need to eat dinner and need clean socks for work. It’s hard to go gangbusters in one area without neglecting the necessary tasks of everyday life.

For me, focusing first on the daily basics and then moving on to tackle the clutter has enabled me to make real progress and build a lifestyle that I can actually maintain. I let clutter and organization being an ongoing thing. My goal isn’t perfection but making continual progress to make my home more functional. Sometimes I declutter a drawer and sometimes I clean out a closet. I let that be flexible and focus on making incremental progress.

9. I stopped trying to change everything at once.

Understanding my brain helped me to give myself time to find what works for me. I let go of the time table and started focusing on specific areas of my life at a time. That’s enabled me to see massive transformation over all because I’ve focused on a few small tweaks at a time and allowed myself to take a curious posture understanding that I’ll always be tweaking, learning and growing because that’s just how my brain is wired.

Creating the weekly and monthly tasks didn’t mean that I figured out how to do all of those tasks right away. There was still a learning curve in finding my own way to accomplish those tasks. In time, I’ve created systems and strategies for many of those tasks to make them much easier for me. I gave myself time to figure out how to actually do these tasks. Having a focus list of ongoing priorities allowed me to do that.

10. I stopped looking for one magic bullet and instead to embrace redundancy.

Setting up the system was just the first part! Learning to apply this to my life meant pulling in every tool that I could find. I’ve created loads of templates and checklists that help me so much. Having a paper system that you can check off is key and really helps with that quick dopamine hit.

I also have everything loaded to my electronic calendar, my apple watch and the skylight calendar. I tweak and move things around so that I don’t get bored but I have lots of accountability built in to help me maintain this system. If something isn’t working or I’m struggling to follow through I get curious about how I might tweak it or how I might create more accountability for myself.

Get the Templates | The Chalkboard | Magnetic Clips

Here’s a little glimpse at my command center! This is always changing and evolving but having these visuals ready to go is key for me. I update the mom admin a few times a year and try and do one of those things each week. Each season I make a few tweaks and improvements but man do these visuals help me and my kids. Over 10,000 other families have put these same templates to use in their families and they are helping immensely.

I go in to this strategy in much more detail in my book, Master the Mundane: How to Manage Your Life, Home and Family as a Mom with ADHD. It’s been such a joy to see the reviews coming in and many are finding it to be incredibly helpful.

Paid subscribers and MTM members get a copy of my beloved daily planner sheet. It’s a fillable PDF so you can use the link below to customize it for your family. Paid subscribers get access to this and all future tools that I share to help you thrive in motherhood. As a paid subscriber here, you can expect templates such as this one on a regular basis from me.