Dani Donovan: ADHD Comics • Piles for Miles #1: Laundry & The Shame Closet

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Piles for Miles, Episode 1 transcript. Thanks for tuning in to a new type of productivity content for procrastinators!

Piles for Miles: Laundry (Why ADHD Makes It So Hard, and What Actually Helps)

Welcome to another episode of Piles for Miles, where I show you the piles of shit in my house and tell you how they got there. And we find some relatable content on the way.

This episode is about laundry, and it’s ADHD Understanding Month, so I really want to make sure we talk about this. This is a real pile. You can’t even see the whole thing. There’s so much stuff in our little teeny laundry room.

Why this video is unedited

This is a one-shot, no cuts, no editing film. Don’t overthink it, don’t even watch it, just upload it. I haven’t been uploading to YouTube because I get perfectionistic about the editing and about wanting to make it high quality production.

I’m hoping people respond well to this very casual, very human talk. We live in a world that’s so much content, and highly produced stuff, and spending money on video editors. I watched a video of Alex Hormozi, clearly on a webcam, and the content was good. He said that if what you’re making resonates with people, they’ll pay attention. There are some people you’ll lose, sure, but the ideas you’re portraying matter more than the packaging. You could have the best editing ever, but if the content’s not there, it doesn’t matter.

I have a lot to learn about working through perfectionism, and it’s the same thing with laundry. Sometimes it’s “if I can’t do this perfectly, I don’t want to do it at all,” whether I’m conscious of it or not.

I’m also putting myself in these scenarios so I have a reminder of what topic I’m talking about. My ideas each have another idea attached, and I start explaining those until the structure collapses on itself, freezes, and has to force quit and restart. That’s gonna happen, but we are talking about laundry.

How long the pile has been here (and a note on who this is for)

This pile has been here for a month, maybe. Not everybody with ADHD struggles with laundry. If you have ADHD and you don’t, this video might not be for you. I’m still gonna try to make it entertaining, and maybe you’ll watch it and feel lucky. But other people will get it, I hope.

We’ve been getting behind on laundry. With the release of the new interactive Anti-Planner, we’re able to start having a laundry service come help, where they pick up the clothes and drop them off folded. That’s a super privileged thing to be able to do. We used to do it and it was too expensive, and we’re trying it again because my husband and I both have ADHD and we’re working crazy hours. Between entrepreneurship, executive dysfunction, and how much energy I’ve got left at the end of the day, it’s a lot.

Why laundry is so hard with ADHD

It doesn’t take some people mental energy to do laundry. For us it takes a lot, because it requires:

Working memory: remembering what you were doing.
Sequencing: having to come back and do a task in a certain order.
Activation energy: getting started on a task we associate with a bunch of bad feelings (more on that below).

And laundry can stall out at every single point:

You wash the clothes, and sometimes that’s it. They sit there, get mildewy, and you have to wash them again and hope it doesn’t happen again.
They make it to the dryer and sit there and get all wrinkled. You fluff them and they get wrinkly again.
They go in a hamper, where they get even more wrinkly.
They get folded, and then sit in the laundry basket folded and never get put away.

I have seen laundry stall out at every single point in the process. I know exactly what a load of stupid crinkly laundry looks like. I’m not gonna iron it. I don’t even own an iron. I think I bought one for arts and crafts projects.

I lose clothes, and I don’t trust myself with them

I can’t buy clothes nice enough that I’m not willing to lose them. I lose clothes a lot. I don’t know where my hoodies go. Do you ever see a picture from a while ago and you’re like, where did that shirt go? I swear to god I don’t remember getting rid of a lot of this stuff.

I also used to separate darks and whites. I did that before I met my husband, and my husband just throws everything into the washer all at once. He was the one actually doing the laundry, so I was not about to argue. We’ve gone years and years without incident. The only incident was when you dry clothes again and they shrink, so we buy large.

And then I got this red shirt at a little shop in a town close to Atlanta. It’s a very light, long hooded cardigan with some moon stuff on the back. I don’t usually buy red stuff, but this is a dark crimson. My dad would call it a hippy dippy store. It’s scratchy, I don’t like it very much, but I brought it home and it got thrown in the wash. You gotta wash new red things on their own. This must have been dyed, dyed, because all of our stuff that was white is now pink. That’s attention to detail for you. This is why we can’t have nice things.

Executive dysfunction and the layers of shame

I hope there are people out here with ADHD who relate to some of this. And even if you don’t have ADHD, executive dysfunction is a bitch.

Getting myself to do laundry is hard because I associate it with taking too long, missing a step, feeling bad about myself, kicking myself, and then ignoring it. If I set alarms, I’ll go “one more minute, let me finish this thing I’m working on,” and I forget to come back. Or it goes off, I totally could go back, and I just don’t. I snooze. Sometimes it’s not even “I’ll do that in a sec.” I just can’t get myself to do it. My brain is screaming, “Oh my god, just do it, it won’t be that bad.”

Part of the reason is that you get a little layer of shame every time you’re supposed to do something and you don’t:

I should do that laundry that’s overflowing.
I should pick up that floor that’s full of clothes.
I should move that laundry from the washer to the dryer.

Every time you don’t do a should, it’s a micro layer of shame, a little hit. All of those hits stack up until the task feels so unpleasant it fills us with dread. We dread it because look at this giant stack of evidence that this task sucks and makes me feel bad. I don’t like feeling bad, so I don’t wanna do it.

When the piles become invisible

Sometimes my brain deals with that by making the pile disappear, and it just becomes background noise. It’s like when you’re watching a movie and they’re focusing on the characters. You’re not paying attention to the people walking around in the background. They’re totally there, and if you focused on them they’d be easy to watch, but your brain has decided they’re not important. That’s how the piles start to feel. They become invisible.

Part of that is to shield myself from future layers of shame. If I see it and don’t actually see it, I don’t think “wow, I’m such a piece of shit for not doing that.” That’s not true, but that’s the little back-of-the-mind thing I get, whether it’s conscious or not. A lot of times we don’t even have the inner monologue thought. Just seeing it and walking past it gives us a low-key, tiny layer of emotion.

Some people look at this and go, “How do you live like this?” ADHD and OCD have a lot of crossover. Just because you’re super clean doesn’t mean you have OCD, but I’ve found it can manifest in different ways, with different things that really, really bother you. And none of this stuff is harmful. Sometimes things in the hallway do become safety hazards, because I can’t get myself to put away suitcases and I have to walk around them. It’s like a self-made obstacle course.

Things that work sometimes

So that’s why it’s hard. I want to tell you what does work. There’s something cathartic about talking and complaining, and I’m not saying every problem must be solved, so if you don’t want tips, that’s fine. But I’ve found certain strategies.

If the thing you tried worked, you’d be doing it. But you’re inevitably going to quit a lot of things. It’s very hard to change core behaviors, especially when your brain is set up in a way that makes those behaviors especially hard. You’re playing adulting on hard mode, without the reward circuitry that makes executive functioning tasks more rewarding.

So: things that work sometimes. And sometimes is better than no times. Even if you find something that works for a few weeks and then drop it, and you think “oh, I quit another thing,” what if we look at the fact that you tried something, made it a while, and got stuff done that was hard for you? That is commendable. That’s a W. Then you can analyze it:

What worked about this?
What didn’t?
What can I change to make it better?
Do I want to try it again, or shove it away?

The shame closet

There’s this thing I think of as the shame closet. You can also call it the “fuck it bucket.” It’s where we keep all of the things we’ve tried to make our lives easier that didn’t work long term and that we quit. When we quit them, they go in the shame closet, which is nothing but a bunch of evidence we pile up to use as justification for our own self-judgment. I am the judge, here’s the evidence.

The evidence feels like it shows me that:

I’m not someone who can stick to things
I don’t do what I say I’m gonna do
Nothing ever works for me, why do I even try?

It’s a little voice that convinces us we’ve failed before we start, because look at this big pile of failures.

There was a point where I just stopped buying planners. I’d start off strong, then quit, then try again, do it for less time, then quit, and then I’d often just buy something and not even use it at all and go, “that’s the last time I’m trying this.” That entire category of stuff gets chucked into the shame closet, and you don’t wanna open it because all your stuff’s gonna fall on you.

If we’re aware of how to approach our shame closet, it makes for a much easier time:

Forgive ourselves.
Try things again, so we don’t have to keep coming up with new stuff.

Strategies, products, and books we’ve started and stopped are a lot easier to find and access when they’re organized. The Anti-Planner is broken up into emotional sections and subsections. It’s “I’m feeling stuck,” and then “what kind of stuck?” Difficulty getting started, indecisive, perfectionistic, distracted. You go to the perfectionistic section and there are activities, strategies, and games for that internal mental resistance. If you’ve tried one in the past and haven’t used it for a while, it’s like, “Oh right, I can try this again. I’ve got permission to try this again. That’s what this book is for.”

I also made a strategy toolbox PDF that says, “When I’m stuck, here are things that work for me.” It’s just a fillable PDF. If people want that, comment and let me know.

Organize it for free

I’m not doing a paid ad in the middle of this. I’m just telling you about something relevant. We’re starting a community, Struggle Busters. It has a community toolbox of strategies, tools, life hacks, and ADHD hacks from social media. I see tons of ADHD hacks on TikTok, Reels, and Threads, and it’s easy to forget about them, so I’ve organized a bunch into sections. You can say “I’m feeling disorganized,” go to the disorganized tab, and there are videos and ideas for different ways to get stuff done.

Here’s the way to do this for free:

If you have ADHD life hacks on your feeds, great. If you don’t, search for them and your algorithm will go, “okay, they want more content like this.”
Make saved collections. I have collections that say “overwhelmed,” “stuck,” and “disorganized,” and when I’m feeling that way, I go to that collection.
That way you can save strategies you haven’t tried and check out the ones that exist.

Brain dump everything you’ve ever tried

You don’t even have to put things into categories. Something I did once that helped a lot was to brain dump everything I’ve ever tried: bullet journaling, dated planners, day planners, weekly planners, annual planners, to-do lists, snarky to-do lists, digital planners, a getting-shit-done class, the five-second rule, Getting Things Done, kanban boards, speed runs. Making that list will show you how much stuff you have tried.

Then go through it and:

Put little hearts next to the ones you actually enjoyed or that worked pretty well.
Note under what conditions you’re more likely to succeed at each one.
Note how often you cycle it back. Some things I use every three to four weeks, some are good between six and twelve months, and some are every three years, and I can bust them back out.

For me, kanban boards work really well for contained projects, not ongoing work. I learned that from how many times I did one for a project, then tried to keep it up after the project and it didn’t work, and I quit.

Kanban boards are where you have a column for to do, in progress, on hold, and done. I like writing on Post-it notes with Sharpies, the best feeling, and moving them physically from column to column so you actually get to see and feel things progress. But if it’s not somewhere very clearly visible, it becomes background noise. So I analyzed it and started doing it on my computer monitor:

To-dos line up along the bottom edge.
When I start one, it moves to the right side for in progress.
If it’s on hold, it goes on the left.
If it’s done, it goes upside down on the top.

That means I can’t miss it, because it’s right in front of my face all the time. It also stops me from putting too many to-dos on my plate, because I think only seven fit on my monitor. If I need to add something, I have to take something off.

Some things on your list will be ones you just don’t wanna touch because they didn’t work. Dated things are harder, because you can buy one, not do it, and it goes bad at the end of the year. But undated things, notebooks, or classes you bought and haven’t done can come back. I really like Getting Things Done Like a Boss, the “double your productivity in 21 days” course by Tiago Forte. It’s essentially a condensed version of Getting Things Done by David Allen, made for the digital age and in videos instead of a book. I own David Allen’s book, but I started it and just couldn’t. That’s a difficult thing for my brain to process compared to watching a video. When my system starts to fall apart, I go rewatch the online class. Same with bullet journaling. I pull that out every so often.

Your list size might vary, but it’s helpful to look at your shame closet and say: “This is evidence of how much I’m trying. This is not evidence of how much of a failure I am.”

Okay, but what about the laundry?

This all started because I wanted to tell you the laundry hack that works for me sometimes. You got like another 20 minutes out of that. Here are the actual laundry tricks.

For washing and drying: the Jolly Rancher jar

Having a washer and dryer at home, I thought this was gonna be amazing, but it somehow made it harder in some ways. At the laundromat you can’t leave it in there, you have to get it all through, so I never had the mildew problem.

So we got a clear cookie jar and filled it with Jolly Ranchers so we can see what’s in it. I put it on the dryer first, and they got hot and kind of melted on the bottom, so we did not do that anymore. Learn, analyze, adjust. I moved it, and then:

Putting a load in the washer: a Jolly Rancher.
Moving it from the washer to the dryer: a Jolly Rancher.
Moving it from the dryer to a hamper: a Jolly Rancher.

So there were three opportunities. I’m not necessarily saying this is the best way to do it, but my brain does respond to “oh, piece of candy.” The reason I picked Jolly Ranchers is important. I don’t get the urge to go sit on the couch and eat 50 of them. M&Ms would melt, but also I’d just sit there and grab M&Ms and eat M&Ms. It’s a candy I like, but I have binge eating disorder, so I don’t want something I’m gonna sit there and not even notice I’m eating. Maybe I’ll do a thing on that sometime. Let me know in the comments.

That worked for probably two and a half, three months. I’ve put it back where I can see it instead of way up there, because I have to see it to remember it.

I’ll put the post where I asked for your top laundry hacks in the description: [link]. I’ve also got a comic about laundry and how each hurdle feels more difficult than the last.

For folding: get a T-shirt folder

I got one of those foldy T-shirt folder things. I used to have one and have no idea where it went. It took me forever to realize I should get another one, and it made it easier, because you just go wap wap wap, and now you’ve got a folded shirt.

Pre-sort before you fold

I used to fold stuff and then sort it, so I’d pick up a T-shirt, fold it, and put it with the T-shirts. If instead I very quickly go through the whole pile, bam bam bam, and make pre-sorted piles in advance, all the pants, all the shirts, then I just have to fold each pile and I’m doing the same motion over and over. That’s really helpful with the T-shirt folder, because I’m not switching motions. Plenty of people probably do this, but it took me a long time to stumble into it.

Roleplay

Someone commented about roleplay, and I find roleplay very helpful. It makes it easier to be someone else, so I don’t have to be me, who hates laundry. I got the idea to pretend I was folding laundry for a rich dude who was about to be home, and I was running behind. I was worried I’d get fired, or just the idea of someone being mad at me is such motivation. So I folded really, really fast and put it away, and it was so fast.

One of the things I hate about folding and putting away is that it takes me forever, but that’s because I’m taking my time and listening to a podcast. If I’m hauling ass, it helps. It’s its own type of adrenaline, a bit of a rush from the urgency, and the roleplay is the novelty. That worked for me about a month ago.

Laundry Relay

The month before that, I did a thing I wrote down called Laundry Relay. I haven’t talked about this anywhere. I love lettering, so I wrote “Laundry Relay” in fancy handwriting at the top of a page. Then:

Start a stopwatch on your phone and sort clothes into piles. Stop the timer when you’re done, and write down how long it took.
Start it again and fold your T-shirts. Stop, write it down.
Do the same for each person’s T-shirts (mine, then Josh’s).
Fold and put away together, so you’re putting it away as you finish and it’s not two separate tasks.

At the end I could see how long it actually took me to do laundry. I had three or four loads of clothing. That has worked for me too.

TL;DR: why ADHD makes laundry so hard

Sequencing: a bunch of things in a specific order, spread out over time, which is hard with working memory and focus issues.
Activation energy: getting started on a task we associate with a bunch of layers of shame.
Background blindness: the stuff blends into the background.
Feeling like a bad adult who can’t get their shit together.
Internal bargaining: I get my stepson’s stuff clean, but for our stuff it’s like, “we have more clothes than what’s here, so this is optional, we just won’t wear these for a while.” That happens a lot, between me and the five-year-old who runs half my brain.

What helps: I work well with laundry when I can make it interesting, novel, challenging, or urgent. Make it urgent, make it a competition, make it fun and novel, or make it interest-based. Another thing that works is having a TV show or podcast that you only watch or listen to when you’re doing laundry.

It’s boring. Some people don’t have a hard time with it. If that’s you, awesome. I’m genuinely, no sarcasm, super happy for you and jealous.

Your turn!

I would love to know what other people struggle with when it comes to laundry. Hopefully you related to some of this. If you made it this far, I want to assume you did. There’s something about sitting among this mess that makes me feel pretty confident that after I stop filming this, I’m going to do a load of laundry, which is exciting. I don’t know how to end blog posts. Okay, byeeee!