Welcome back to our Household Chores Series, where we have been discussing how to incorporate the wide variety of household chores that contribute to our independent day to day living. 

In Part 1 we discussed some of the most common household chores associated with independent living, in Part 2 we discussed some strategies for setting priorities on which chores to learn and practice, and in Part 3 we talked about ways parents and caregivers can teach independent living skills to the Autistic people they are supporting. 

Today we are focused on Autistic adults who want to learn some of these skills on their own and either prefer not to or don’t have access to a support network that can readily teach those skills.

If you are just starting out on practicing these skills it can feel like a daunting process. Not only is there a tremendous amount to learn, it can often feel like we were already supposed to know how to do all this stuff and make it that much harder to engage with it and seek out the help we need. 

But the reality is that most of us have our strengths and areas of improvement when it comes to chores, both what we prefer to do and what we know we need to learn about. The important part of learning new independent living skills is the way it can help you maintain an independent living space on your terms.

So let’s dive into some potential strategies for approaching the choice of which chores to prioritize first and how to incorporate it into your routine.

One of the tricky parts of learning how to do chores is the way it’s tied in with the image of “personal responsibility.” While it is of course a great thing to be responsible, sometimes the image of what a generally responsible person does might seem more important than addressing what is most important in our own situation. 

For example, many of us might feel a certain expectation that we need to be able to cook our own food to be truly independent, and if we spend too much on takeout we are not being responsible. 

It may be true that for some of us, avoiding takeout might be a helpful way to save money and make independent living easier, but for others cooking might be such a daunting process that it’s worth the extra money to avoid having to focus on it too much. 

While we must always be conscious of what is feasible for us to do given our available resources, the more we can focus on what we need rather than what we think we are supposed to be able to do, the better!

Once they have taken the time they need to observe and absorb the practical steps of completing the chore in question, a great next step is to work on it together, with an initial eye toward you taking the lead. 

If the person you are supporting is succeeding right away and you’re only slowing them down then feel free to make this a very brief step! 

The purpose of starting by leading is to make sure those gaps are filled and ensure that the environment feels safe and under control as they start practicing different components of the task. 

Over time you can take turns doing different parts of the task, or each do the whole task but sharing the workload. The important thing is getting practice and getting used to doing!

Once we have an idea of the skills we are working on we can take the time to practice! When we are just getting started learning a chore, more important than getting everything right immediately is getting comfortable with the steps, deciding what if any tools we might want to help with those steps, and figuring out any areas where we might need to seek out help or adjust our strategy. 

If you are reliant on a particular chore for your day to day living it is also OK to get help with completing that task while you are still mastering the basics. It is much more helpful to the learning process to consider a setup that will make it easiest for you to practice as much as you need!

One of the tricky parts of chores is that once we know how to do them we’ve only won half the battle! We also have to learn how to do it on a schedule that meets our needs and feels sustainable based on our energy level and other commitments. 

Once you feel comfortable doing a chore on your own, a great next step is to consider your daily living schedule and how often you must perform the task in question to meet your needs and determine where in your schedule that activity could fit. You may find initially that you underestimate how long it takes you to complete the task, or that a particular time is not as convenient for you as you once thought. 

The important thing is to consider how you will use your executive functioning skills make sure a given important chore remains a regular part of your daily, weekly, or monthly routine.

Once we identify a time on our schedule that feels realistic, the final important step is to consciously practice getting it done in the timeframe we have chosen. 

As much as we might be familiar with a given chore at this stage, doing it on a timeline can be a different experience and require getting used to, and for those of us who struggle to build up habits it might take considerable time and conscious effort to get used to doing a given chore on a schedule that meets our needs. 

While there are always ways we can refine and improve our skills and techniques, once a chore has become a regular part of our schedule we can safely say we have mastered it for our purposes!

We hope this series has offered some paths forward for identifying independent living skills worth practicing. 

While nobody is perfect when it comes to chores, we can all benefit from taking the time to evaluate what our priorities should be based on our needs and how we can pursue them based on the time and resources we have available. 

If you’d like to see us cover this topic again in the future we’d love to hear from you! Just drop us a line at hello@autismgrownup.com