Show notes
The answer to forgetting, losing things, laundry chaos, and food going mouldy in the fridge isn't to simply try harderIn this solo episode, Callie (a neuroinclusion specialist and coach) takes you inside the practical neurodivergent home systems her family uses to reduce cognitive load, support executive dysfunction, and make a multi-brained household easier to live in. You don’t need a perfectly organised, picture-perfect home, it’s about systemic changes in your environment so your brain doesn't have to work so hard.Drawing on her background in systems thinking, behavioural insights, and neurodivergence, Callie explains how small environmental tweaks can reduce your reliance on working memory, help with task initiation, and smooth out daily transitions.Enjoying the show? Please hit follow/subscribe and leave a review to help other AuDHD grownups find us! In This Episode:The Neurodivergent Fridge: Why fresh food is banned from the bottom drawersLaundry Hacks: And the ongoing mystery of SOCKMAGEDDONVisual Cues & Labels: Making the physical environment do the remembering for youThe Nike Rule: Managing clutter and visual load without getting overwhelmedSensory-Friendly Lighting: Designing spaces around activities and different sensory preferencesHousehold Infrastructure: Turning charging cables into permanent fixtures and creating functional transition and landing zonesThe Octo-pissoff-opus: An orange octopus with a very important jobExternalising Time: Strategies to combat time blindnessTakeaway: When a routine repeatedly fails, start asking whether the environment or system can be redesigned to better support the humans using it.Timestamps00:00 - Episode introduction: Callie flying solo00:40 - Inside a neurodivergent household07:00 - Identifying friction points and designing new systems10:02 - Making your environment do the remembering10:38 - Labels, storage, and giving items a home14:06 - Managing clutter, visual load, and disappearing Post-it notes18:03 - The three-minute Nike rule19:48 - Putting the solution exactly where the task happens20:03 - Laundry baskets, SOCKMAGEDDON, and natural consequences23:00 - The coat hanger hack for clothing management25:27 - The receipt drawer: Delaying decisions until they matter26:45 - Transition spots and attaching tasks to existing journeys27:52 - Out of sight, out of mind: The fridge drawer problem29:19 - Garage zones, storage categories, and dancing skeletons30:06 - Designing rooms around activities31:34 - Sensory lighting and Callie's controversial love of the big light33:12 - Meet the Octo-pissoff-opus34:20 - Charging cables as household infrastructure36:33 - Landing zones and handling systems that only partly work38:04 - Externalising time to manage executive dysfunction38:36 - Weekly planners, meal planning, and shared shopping lists40:54 - Annual planning and the bigger picture41:51 - Should Callie come back for Part 2?Share Your Systems With Us!Do you have a home system that genuinely changed your life, or a friction point you just can't seem to figure out? We want to hear about it!Email us: [email protected], TikTok, & YouTube: @AuDHDforGrownups_FThemFishCallie’s Website: https://executivefunctioning.com.au/Connect on LinkedIn: Callie Elward-Barrett: www.linkedin.com/in/callie-elward-barrett-263068142 Jayne Gurton: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayne-gurton- We talk about neurodivergence from our own lived and professional experiences. Neurodivergent people are not a monolith, a system that works brilliantly for one person might be useless for another. Use what helps, ignore what doesn't, and change the system when it stops serving you. We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the lands on which we live, work, and record, including the Ngunnawal, Wadawurrung, and Dja Dja Wurrung peoples. We pay our respects to Elders past and present and recognise that sovereignty was never ceded. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
