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How to get the whole family involved in keeping the home tidy with an autistic child to build shared responsibility (and reduce your workload) Autism-Friendly Home Organization Strategies for Overwhelmed Parents Part 5 #152

• Caroline Thor - Professional Organizer - KonMari® Consultant

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Autism-Friendly Home Organization Strategies for Overwhelmed Parents – World Autism Acceptance Month 2025

If you’re the one carrying the full mental load of managing your home, caring for your autistic child, and trying to keep everything tidy — you are not alone. And you’re not meant to do it all.

In this episode, I’m diving into how to get the whole family involved in keeping the home organized — including partners, siblings, and yes, even your autistic child (when and where it’s appropriate). Because building a home that supports your child and your wellbeing starts with shared responsibility.

You’ll hear real-life examples from my own family of five (plus six pets!), and we’ll explore how empathy, expectations, and letting go of perfection can make a massive difference — not just in your environment, but in your stress levels too.

Inside this episode, you’ll learn:

  • How to delegate and share household tasks without rigid chore charts
  • Why teaching empathy helps siblings better support their autistic brother or sister
  • Creative and neurodivergent-friendly ways to make tidying up more doable (and even fun)
  • Why “good enough is enough” and how to let go of unrealistic expectations
  • What to do on the hard days when you just don’t have capacity — and how to bounce back with grace

Whether your home feels out of control or you’re just tired of doing it all alone, this episode is packed with practical ideas to help your family work as a team — with room for everyone’s differences.

Mentioned in this episode:
🎁 Grab your free guide: The Frustrated Parents Guide – How to Get Your Kids to Tidy Up Without Them Really Realizing It
Includes gentle strategies for kids with autism, ADHD, and other neurodivergent needs.

Tomorrow, I’ll be back with a special bonus episode all about organizing IEPs and autism paperwork — a must-listen if you’re drowning in forms and reports.

I would LOVE to hear from you. Text Message me here.

Thanks for listening! For more organizational motivation, support and free resources:
Join my online membership Clutter Free Collective
Join my podcast Facebook group Living Clutter Free Forever Podcast: KonMari® Inspired Organizing | Facebook
Visit my website www.caroline-thor.com
Come and say 'hi' on Instagram @caro.thor
Follow me on Facebook @carolineorganizer

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Autism Friendly Home Organization Strategies for Overwhelmed Parents a special mini -series with me, caroline, for World Autism Acceptance Month in 2025. This year's theme for World Autism Month is Celebrate Differences, and I could not love that more. I'm a mum of a child with autism and PDA, so I know firsthand how unpredictable life can feel. Flexibility isn't just helpful in my world, it's essential, and while our home is far from perfect, having it organized in a way that supports us has made all the difference. I created this series to share practical, realistic strategies that help you create a calm, clutter-free environment, one that works for your child, your needs and your energy. Even if you're not raising an autistic child, these tips can help any family, because building a home that supports your real life and celebrates what makes you unique benefits everyone. Let's get into it. Welcome to day five of my special mini series, and today we're talking about how to get the whole family on board with decluttering and organizing and tidying up your space, because I believe so passionately that decluttering and routines and organization should not fall on one person in the home, and getting partners and siblings involved is going to help everyone and, as a mom, is going to help reduce your own stress, and that is gold. So how on earth do you do this? How do you get partners and siblings of your autistic child, or even your autistic child, involved in keeping the house tidy? The first thing you can do is make it a team effort. Make it really clear that your home is a space that everyone lives in and therefore it's everyone's job to keep it nice so that we all enjoy being in it. You can assign specific small tasks to people. You can ask for help when you're doing things, and this is how I do it. We don't actually have like a chore list in our house. We have specific tasks that the kids are responsible for, but we don't refer to them as chores because they're things that we need to have happening in order to keep things running.

Speaker 1:

So we have in our home six pets. We have two cats, two rabbits and two dogs. So one of my daughters is responsible solely for looking after the rabbits. It's her job to feed them. It's her job to clean them out. It's her job to check on them every day and make sure they're healthy and play with them. That all takes quite a bit of time for her and she does an amazing job at it, my other daughter I have two daughters. She's responsible for the cats. So she's responsible for cleaning out the cat litter every day, making sure they get fed in the evening, that their water's clean every day, that they are getting checked, that they're getting brushed All of that sort of stuff comes down to her. The dogs are mine and my husband's responsibility, and one of our dogs is a therapy dog for our autistic child, but we can't expect him to be taking on the responsibilities. So we are doing the dog walking and making sure that everything for the dogs is organized.

Speaker 1:

So for us, just doing the pets alone takes up quite a bit of our day. And then we have other jobs, like the usual, you know the emptying the dishwasher, the filling the dishwasher, the setting the table for dinner, the cooking the meals. We all take it in turns with those things. And I have no problem shouting up to the kids can someone come and help me empty the dishwasher? And someone will always come and do that, because ever since they were young, this is what the expectation has been, and they're now 17, 16 and 12. And apart from my kid with PDA, the other two are more than happy to help. My 17 year old now, will very often take over cooking dinner as well, just because she enjoys cooking and finds it fun. And, quite frankly, after all these years of having to think every day what I'm cooking for everyone, I'm super happy when someone else wants to take it over. What I'm cooking for everyone, I'm super happy when someone else wants to take it over. So make it a team effort. Use gamification. This works really well with everybody, especially with younger kids.

Speaker 1:

You could do a race to tidy up. We used to have a tidy up time when they were little. Every day at the same time. We would all put music on and we would all tidy at the same time. I have families that I work with where they have a small little basket for each child, and each child has to go around at the end of each day, collect up anything from the ground floor living space that belongs to them, put it in their little basket and take it up to their bedroom and put it away up there, and then, when their parents say goodnight to them, they collect up the baskets, bring them back downstairs and they're ready to go for the next day. So changing it into fun things rather than it being oh, we have to tidy up, it's going to make all the difference you can do who can go and find five things that need putting away, and everyone has to find five things. And if you do it for just 10 to 15 minutes every day, your home will stay tidied up if you've already done the decluttering and tidying in the first place, because everything will have a home to go back to. Everyone knows where everything goes to go back to, and that then means that you can stay on top of things.

Speaker 1:

Another thing that I think is really important when it comes to getting everyone involved is teaching empathy. Siblings can help by respecting sensory needs of their autistic brother or sister. My girls have had to learn that we have different expectations for them than for my son, and when they were younger that used to really annoy them that he wouldn't necessarily be asked to come and take part in tidying up because, as someone with PDA, that demand made life really difficult for him. But as they've got older they have developed this empathy and understanding about what he needs and they will actually offer to support him if his room is looking messy. We even had the situation that we went away in the summer and my eldest daughter stayed at home on her own for the first time, and the first thing she did the first day we were gone was she cleaned his bedroom and tidied it within an inch of its life. I mean, it was just amazing. So that when we got home, his room was absolutely spotless and beautiful, and I was so proud of her for having done that, because she knew that for him, having that done when he's there is really difficult, and it is hard to get in and clean his bedroom and he spends most of his time in his bedroom. So for her to think ahead and do that without being asked was amazing. And another thing that I think we can't underestimate as mums of kids with autism is when we try to do it all ourselves, as well as being a safe nervous system for our child, as well as all the other organisation things that we have to put into our day, as well as our jobs that we perhaps do.

Speaker 1:

We are going to be avoiding burnout if we accept the following two statements. The first one is good enough is enough, and this is something that I have really had to learn. Good enough is enough. We're not aiming for perfection here. Anyone that came into my home would probably, if they went into certain rooms, question whether I am actually a professional organizer and KonMari consultant. I have decided that my ground floor area is the space that I would like to keep really tidy and clean, because it helps me feel calm about my home. It means that if guests arrive, I can open the front door and I can welcome them and not feel embarrassed about the state of my house, which case the rest of it. It's good enough, it's clean. Is it super tidy? No, my kids' bedrooms sometimes look like something's exploded up there, but that's fine. I am not going to drive myself crazy trying to aim for some Instagram perfect house which actually in reality doesn't exist. So good enough is enough.

Speaker 1:

And then the other one that I love is self-care is not selfish. Taking breaks actually helps you be a better parent. If on one day you really just don't feel like you've got the capacity, you're too tired, you've been triggered by your child that day, then don't worry if the place is looking untidy. Catch up the next day. Take breaks. It is going to help you in the long run, be able to cope with things so much better. And, let's face it, all of us that live with a child with autism know that some days are really, really taxing and that the more emotional capacity we have to deal with these situations and to be able to stay calm and take it in our stride, the easier it is for our kids. So self-care is not selfish and good enough is enough, and one thing that I'm always saying to people in my online membership, clutter Free Collective, is small changes, equal big impact. Every small change you make will eventually add up. You do not have to get your house looking amazing in one weekend. You can spend years doing it, because good enough is enough, and the small changes you're making will have a big impact on you and your family, and you are doing amazingly.

Speaker 1:

Now I have something that you might find really useful the Frustrated Parents Guide how to get your kids to tidy up without them really realising it.

Speaker 1:

In this free guide, I'm sharing my top tips and tricks to get your kids wanting to tidy up, and there are loads of strategies baked into this free guide for kids with neurodiversity as well. So if you want to grab this, just go to the show notes, click the link and it's yours to have for free. Tomorrow, there is going to be a special bonus episode, which is all going to be about organising the paperwork that comes with having an autistic child. I hope you'll join me for that. Until next time, if you've enjoyed this episode, please send the link to a friend you know would appreciate it, subscribe and leave a review. I look forward to bringing you more organising tips next time, but if you can't wait until then, you can go to my website or find me on Instagram, at carothor, or on Facebook at Caroline Organiser. Thanks for listening and I look forward to guiding you on your journey to find your clutter-free ever after.