A Personal Note from Dr. Mary Ann
November 24, 2020
Dear Pen Pal,
December 8, 2020
This week's blog post comes from Guest Author and Springer alumni parent Lisa Woodruff, founder and CEO of Organize 365®.
You can empower your kids with ADHD to take ownership of their bedrooms, learn the skill of organizing, and create a foundation for organizing routines that WORK!
With the long winter days of the pandemic ahead, we are being given the opportunity to focus on our students’ home organization skills and empower them to take ownership of and responsibility for their bedrooms. In our online presentation on December 9th, I will share how to and teach your student the skill of organizing in a fun and meaningful way.
Did you know that organization was a learnable skill? Well, it is! Here are the 4 steps I use to help students of any age get their bedrooms organized.
Step 1: Rebrand your student’s bedroom as their mini apartment.
Renaming this space immediately gives your student, and you, a whole new way of looking at their room. Once we view a student’s bedroom as multifunctional, we can incorporate better organizational strategies to set them up for long-term success.
As your student ages, the zones in their room will become more complex. By the time your student is ready to leave home, most of the functions of their new apartment, dorm room, or condo will be present in their childhood bedroom: school zone, sleep area, snacking & entertainment zone, clothing storage, passion project items, and personal hygiene supplies.
Step 2: Use checklists.
Just like you have a checklist for grocery shopping, weekly cleaning, and monthly maintenance, your student will need to develop lists to keep their mini apartment organized.
Routine tasks are boring, and without a written list to move through quickly, they can feel like they last forever! Tune into our LIVE presentation for the tools to teach your student how much time they can save with a list!
Step 3: Clean your room EVERY Saturday.
This is non-negotiable. You and I both know that little messes become unmanageable overnight. In my experience, if your student misses a week of cleaning and organizing their room, the task becomes too overwhelming and the whole family suffers.
Weekly room cleaning should be a lifelong habit. Just like brushing our teeth and doing laundry, we must practice regular maintenance of our rooms.
Step 4: Create an organization routine.
I know you want your student to be successful in cleaning and organizing their space. Wouldn’t it be amazing if they could do that task without your help?
I remember when I invested in teaching both of my students how to clean and organize their mini apartments. It wasn’t fast or easy, but it did work!
Today, my kids regularly clean and organize their real apartments because I took the time to teach them the skills and create a room organizing ritual that reduces the use of executive functions, or brainpower, needed to get the task done.
Lisa Woodruff is the founder and CEO of Organize 365®, a company that helps women take back their homes and paper in one year with functional organizing systems that work. You can learn more about her organizational solutions for students here. On December 9, Lisa will be presenting An Evening for Moms with ADHD: Small Steps Toward a More Peaceful Home, a program through Springer's Center that will be hosted on Zoom. Click here for more information and to register.
Blogger Lisa Bruns, M.Ed., Special Education, shares her expertise of students with learning disabilities. As a special educator, she has expert knowledge of interventions and accommodations that students may need to succeed in and out of the classroom. If you have questions, please contact Center Director Lisa Bruns at .
