171: Lessons in Caring for Your Home with ADHD that I learned from a Robot Vacuum

Ten Lessons from My Robot Vacuum, Part One

I own three robot vacuums, different brands, one on each floor of my house, and this isn’t sponsored by any of them. But watching how they operate has taught me ten genuinely useful lessons about how our scattered ADHD brains work, and I’ve got enough material to split it into two parts. Here are the first five.

Lesson one: getting started is truly the hardest part

With two dogs shedding constantly and my schedule getting busier between podcasting, in-person clients, virtual clients, and my membership group, I’d let my robot vacuums sit idle for close to two years after a power outage knocked them offline and I never bothered restarting them. My husband finally asked why they weren’t running, offered to get them going again, and it took him barely any time at all. The difference since has been wonderful, and I keep asking myself why I let something that easy sit untouched for so long. That’s the pattern: something starts working, a glitch throws it off, and momentum never returns simply because nobody takes the small amount of time needed to restart it.

Lesson two: a little bit regularly makes a real difference, even inconsistently

Our vacuums are set to run seven days a week now, though they used to only run on weekdays, and I can genuinely feel the difference on the days they skip, sometimes I’ll be on a call and have to shut one off mid-run. Even when it’s inconsistent, running some days and not others, the cumulative effect is noticeable compared to not running at all. If you feel like you’re constantly working but never seeing a difference, try stopping for two days and watch how quickly things fall apart. That contrast is proof the effort was doing something all along.

Lesson three: it’s genuinely okay to be scattered

This whole topic started because I noticed how utterly random my vacuum’s cleaning pattern looks, no back-and-forth pacing, just shooting off in a new direction every time it bumps into something. It reminds me exactly of the “give a mouse a cookie” way our brains jump from one thing to the next, each one reminding us of something else entirely. And yet, despite the total chaos of the pattern, the room still ends up clean. Scattered effort still counts.

Lesson four: reminders are genuinely helpful, not a crutch

I rely on hearing my vacuum’s start-up chime, triggered by a schedule my husband set, to know it’s actually running. I’ve started applying the same idea to my own life, setting up calendar reminders that text me thirty minutes, five minutes, and right at the start of virtual client meetings, because I know my own limitations well enough to know I’ll forget otherwise. Wanting to do something isn’t the same as remembering to do it. Use whatever reminder system, phone alerts, Alexa, calendar texts, actually gets your attention.

Lesson five: stopping mid-task can mark exactly where to pick back up

We’re often excellent at getting a project to ninety percent and leaving some piece undone. When my robot vacuum stops mid-floor instead of returning to its charging dock, which frustrates my husband since he assumes it should be fully automatic, I actually find it useful: finding it stopped there reminds me to empty its bin on the way to putting it back, which it needs in order to run again the next day. If it always returned home quietly on its own, I might forget that step entirely. Sometimes stopping somewhere visible, rather than tidily out of sight, is exactly what triggers you to pick the task back up.

Your practical, actionable step

Think of one thing you let go idle a while back, simply because a small glitch threw it off and nobody restarted it. Spend the small amount of time it actually takes to get it running again, and notice how much of a difference that restart makes.

Until next time, continue to choose joy.