Welcome to our Household Chores Series, where we will be exploring an important component of independent living by identifying some of the most common important household chores an independently living adult might want to know, some strategies on how to prioritize them, how to teach those skills to someone else, and how to teach them to yourself!

While there is no shortage of potential chores you could undertake if you are looking to have the squeakiest clean living area in existence, but for those of us who just want a reasonably clean living space without spending a disproportionate amount of time on it, there are several key chores that are important to learn and incorporate into your routine. So let’s take a closer look at some important ones!

Unless you want to perpetually buy brand new paper plates for every meal, you eventually have to wash your dishes if you want to eat nice meals at home. The skills you need to clean the dishes can vary depending on what equipment is available to you. 

People with dishwashers might find they mostly rinse off their dishes before letting the dishwasher do the rest of the work. People in that kind of living situation might focus more on how to arrange dirty dishes in a dishwasher for optimal cleaning. People who rely on hand-washing dishes might instead want to focus on when to soak dirty dishes and clean all the dirty residue.

Laundry is another one of those chores that you can get away with for a while but will eventually catch up with you if you let it go too long! 

Most of us do laundry in a standard washer and dryer, and the way we do it might depend on what clothes we own, how much we want to protect our clothes, and how much time we want to invest in the process. At minimum, it is important to learn which clothes can be washed versus which need dry cleaning and to use a cold cycle if combining white clothes and colorful clothes.

This is the type of chore that’s all too easy to forget about even though it can be beneficial to wipe down heavily used surfaces every day! It’s important to know what types of cleaners work with what surfaces and to build a consistent routine around cleaning surfaces that leads to them being clean at the times you need to use them.

If it’s easy to forget to clean countertops regularly, it’s even easier to forget mirrors and windows until the issue becomes noticeable! Cleaning mirrors and glass requires its own spray, and a cloth rag can be much more effective at avoiding streaks than paper towels.

Cleaning the floor can be a tricky process as the way we clean the floor depends on the surface and many of us have multiple types of surfaces in our living space! People with more hardwood floors might want to focus on sweeping and swiffering, whereas people with tile might be more focused on mopping. 

People with carpets are more likely to be using a vacuum. Whatever material your floors are made of, letting them go too long without a good cleaning leads to dust and dirt buildup and without cleaning will eventually be too dirty to walk on barefoot!

Some readers might debate with us as to whether this particular chore is necessary, and those who don’t feel a need to do it should keep doing their thing! Those of us who do benefit from a made be need to learn the ins and outs of fitting on different types of sheets, blankets, and pillowcases. 

Making the bed can be one of the easiest and most difficult chores to work into a routine because there is the opportunity to do it every day the moment you wake up but it can also be tough to do a chore right after you get out of bed!

Bathrooms contain a variety of different surfaces that are cleaned in different ways, the common theme between all of them being that they will get buildup if they are not cleaned regularly! 

People interested in learning about household chores would want to learn how to bleach and scrub a toilet, how to clean the sink, how to clean the bathroom tiles, and how to clean the bath/shower area.

Taking out the trash is somewhat unique on the list of chores in that there’s not much to remember regarding how to do it, we just have to remember to do it on time so that the garbage truck can collect our waste! While it may not require any practice, in particular, building a good routine around taking out the trash is an important component of independent living.

We hope this refresher has served as a helpful starting point for establishing which common household chores you or a person you are supporting needs to work on as part of meeting your or their independent living goals. 

Next week, we will be taking a closer look at how we might choose to prioritize our chores and which chore-related skills are most important to learn and practice. 

Until next week if there’s a household chore-related topic you’d like to see us cover or want to share your experience then we would love to hear from you! Just drop us a line at hello@autismgrownup.com and we will be back next week with part 2.