Hoarding Vs Time Management Vs Problem Solving Management Skills

How big is the problem that you are trying to solve? How physical is the need for your time in managing that problem or those problems that you are trying to solve?

Who is in control of your time?

If you are a parent of multiple children with high intensity physical energy levels where you are dragged from one task to another from one appointment to another where in the day is the time for personal management of your home’s overall organisation?

Let’s put this another way.

Has anyone asked you as the parents of multiple children with special needs how much money that you have spent on your children’s disability AND health care needs since they were born?

When you decided on the house that you originally bought. Did you have an idea of how long you would be there for or was it only a starting point? So when you wanted to look at moving house as your children started to outgrow the floor plan layout were you able to move or not? Why not? Was it the fact that ALL of the additional money that would normally be saved as a family has HAD TO go into therapy services, has HAD TO go into disability specific equipment, has HAD TO go into petrol to travel between all of the different appointments and care taking trips each week? So when people start looking at the house that you were never planning on staying in long for, as it was designed for smaller children, there becomes an issue. Because the money that normally would have been planned for buying a different house has gone into other things, yet the need for the bigger house hasn’t changed.. So what was a house that was purchased for small children or a family that would soon be born is now for teenagers or for young adults who struggle to all be around each other well. So rooms that used to just contain the family now are required to be used differently with different zones set up for different people so that they can be separated.

 

Example issues to consider:

Wardrobes that were designed for a small amount of clothes that when you made a decision to buy the house suited a small child, yet don’t fit your now teenager.

The children’s / family bathroom that was ok for small kids because you needed the bath tub now doesn’t work because you need to do toilet training for your teenager and there is only a separate toilet without enough room for a carer to stand inside so that the door can be closed to maintain privacy whilst allowing for physical separation from the child so that they can attempt to move around more themselves with the least amount of support possible.

How many nappies / pull ups does your child / teenager / adult go through per day? Is there any consistency in how many they need per day? If no, then how many bulk boxes do you buy so that you never run out and don’t need to constantly go to the shops all of the time or constantly be online remembering order? Next question – where do you put them all!

How many loads of washing do you do per week? How many spare sets of sheets do you need to keep so that in the middle of the night you can quickly change the sheets and try to go back to sleep? Where do you keep them all? How many linen closets are there in your home? How many stacks of sheet sets fit on each of the shelves? How many changes of bed clothing do you go through before the next load of washing? Sorry. Thats only for one person. What about the storage and washing needs for the rest of the family?

Personal storage issues: playrooms. How old are your children? How many years or grade levels separate them? If you have one in high school and one in primary school do they have the same social or hobbies? Now think that through differently when one child can be high functioning and the other can be have high support needs.  How do you fit normal things like sensory equipment AND computer systems AND couches AND all the normal toy areas like room to make toy train layouts etc in the home’s only living room.

What happens when the houses don’t fit the families???

Extreme Makeover Home Edition S06E12