The 12 Days of Chaos 9: Simplifying Holiday Chaos with ADHD Hack – Loopholes

12 Days of Chaos, Day 9: Why It’s Never Too Late to Jump In (and 9 Toys a-Tidying)

Day nine of our 12 Days of Chaos series, our Christmas-themed spin on five-minute tidying tasks meant to keep the house somewhat on track while holiday chaos rolls on. No perfection required, just a few focused minutes a day.

A quick word on loopholes

Before today’s task, I want to talk about loopholes, because they’re a genuine gift to the all-or-nothing ADHD brain. If you’re stumbling onto this on day nine and thinking, well, this would’ve been fun if I’d started on day one, but now there’s no point catching up, that all-or-nothing thinking is exactly what keeps us from making any progress at all.

Here’s the loophole: nothing about this challenge requires consistency in the way something like daily push-ups would, where falling behind means an impossible pile-up. Most of these tasks are the kind you can compress. Day one takes five minutes, day two takes ten, day three takes fifteen, and suddenly you’ve banked three days of progress in thirty minutes. You likely have more than one bedroom to make, more than one bathroom to clean, more leftover kitchen tasks than five minutes could ever finish in one go. Catching up isn’t undoing and redoing the same task five times, it’s just applying the same task to more spaces than you got to the first time around.

This matters heading into a new year full of resolution energy too. Don’t build goals around perfect daily consistency. Build in loopholes on purpose, so a missed day never turns into an excuse to abandon the whole thing.

Today’s task: 9 Toys a-Tidying

Set a five-minute timer, enlist your kids if they’re around, and tidy up the toys. While you’re at it, keep a box handy. If new gifts are coming soon, this is a natural moment to ask your kids whether some toys could be cleared out and donated to kids who don’t have any, making room for what’s arriving.

The full song so far

For anyone catching up: nine toys a-tidying, eight dishes a-washing, seven things a-dusting, six floors a-sweeping, a five-minute tidy, four cleared surfaces, three scrubbed bathrooms, two fluffy pillows, and a “so” to set priorities. Go back and listen to as many as you’d like, or just start today and use your loophole.

Your practical, actionable step

Set a five-minute timer for toy tidying today, and if you’re expecting new gifts soon, use the moment to pull a box’s worth of toys for donation alongside it.

Until next time, continue to choose joy.