How To Ensure That Both Cleanliness and Godliness Are Maintained As An Autistic Individual

How To Ensure That Both Cleanliness and Godliness Are Maintained As An Autistic Individual by Kadin McElwain: As a college student, I have many things going on and tend to hyperfocus on my academics. Historically, this has resulted in me neglecting to clean the bathroom regularly, which has annoyed my parents. So they suggested that I do a quick wipe-up on the bathroom at least once a day and do a deep clean one day of the week, that day being Saturday. In the past, these problems have been more profound. But thanks to my making a proper routine, I now have a lot of this stuff under control. While cleaning regularly isn’t something anyone wants to be doing, it still has to be done. I’m not the only individual on the spectrum who has struggled with a regular cleaning schedule. A lot of autistic individuals struggle with cleaning their bodies or rooms, for one reason or another. In fact, one of the most common reasons for these struggles is due to sensitivities the individual might have to cleaning materials. But as the saying goes, “Cleanliness is close to Godliness”. There is a way to ensure you maintain a consistent cleaning schedule for your body and room without being uncomfortable. Here are three tips to make sure your cleanliness and Godliness are consistent. Tip One: Make A Cleaning Schedule: Autistic individuals tend not to have the best track record with schedules. This is mainly because they don’t want to be seen as weak. With that said, schedules don’t make the individual weak at all. If anything, having a plan in place to properly ensure you’re getting your cleaning tasks done can be a great way to prove your strengths. But how can autistic individuals slowly build confidence in making a schedule? My advice would be to start by making a schedule for a day. Whatever you need to get done for that particular day should be on the schedule. If the daily schedule works out well, make a schedule for the week with the things you need to get done. If the weekly schedule works, make a list of tasks for the month that need to be completed and so on. Getting adjusted to a schedule of obligations may take some time. But it’ll be worth it when you can say that you completed a cleaning task. Tip Two: Set Reminders On Your Favorite Calendar App: While a schedule can be a good start for getting your cleaning tasks in order, simply setting a schedule is not enough. Remembering the tasks you have to do for the day can be hard for not just individuals on the spectrum but for everyone. No one is a superhuman being that can remember everything that needs to be done for the year. The only problem is that not remembering everything can result in tasks not getting done, which could result in chaos. Not only that, but the individual’s friends and family can’t be on standby 24/7 to remind the individual that X, Y, and Z tasks need to be done, especially if the individual is an adult. This leads to my second tip: Set regular reminders on your favorite calendar application. Mostly everyone has a cellphone or device with a calendar feature. This app allows you to put in a regular reminder to help you remember to do your cleaning tasks, whether it be cleaning the toilet or making sure the dogs are brushed regularly. One of my favorite calendar apps to use is Google Calendar, which has a feature that allows you to set the reminders you set for yourself every day. That way, it pops up as soon as you wake up in the morning. With the reminders on your phone and the schedule you come up with for yourself, you’ll be able to conquer your cleaning tasks and not forget them in the process. However, there is one more thing an individual can do to ensure success in achieving cleanliness and Godliness. Tip Three: Ask For Help, But Don’t Expect People To Save You: Another thing that may be hard for some autistic individuals is asking for help when they need it. The reason it can be hard for some individuals on the spectrum, including me, is that we think that asking for help makes us weak. But my parents taught me that asking for help doesn’t make you weak. If anything, taking responsibility and realizing that you can’t do everything by yourself shows that you are strong. But there is one other thing you should remember when it comes to asking people for help: You can’t expect them to save you all the time. In life, autistic or not, you have to make a few mistakes and have a few failures to learn what to do better next time. If you have someone doing everything for you regularly and saving you whenever things get overwhelming, you won’t be able to learn from your mistakes. So my suggestion is to use the 30-minute rule when trying to solve a problem. Try to solve a problem on your own and if you aren’t able to after 30 minutes, then it’s a good time to ask for help. This assures that you try as hard as possible to get the task done, while also making sure you aren’t being lazy either. To conclude, cleaning can be hard for autistic individuals, or anyone for that matter, to remember to do at times. But the three tricks that can help in this aspect are asking for help, making a list, and setting reminders. When asking for help, you should also be sure to only do so after 30 minutes, so you don’t come across as lazy. Cleaning is a task that everyone hates. But if you remember these three tips, you can ensure that maintaining cleanliness and Godliness is easy, enjoyable, and stress-free.