Q&A: Accidentally Leaving the Freezer Door Open

Q.

"I feel like this makes me sound like a jerk, but does anyone else have to leave notes all over the house for their spouse? He has ADD, so I assume that's part of the issue. But I can nicely ask him to do something or not do something 10+ times over a few weeks/months and he'll still say "sorry, I didn't know" the 12th time. I've been asking him probably twice a month for years to rinse his dishes and put them in the dishwasher when he's done, it happens maybe 10% of the time. I've asked him at least 3 times in the last year to please not touch any laundry that isn't his own. The kids/baby and I stain stuff and he keeps putting them in the dryer before I've had a chance to inspect them to see if the pretreatment removed the stains, so then its 5 times harder to get out once its baked on in the dryer. He keeps washing my clothes in with his and staining my clothes with grease/sharpie/whatever he left in his pockets because he doesn't check them. Anyway, constant reminders do nothing. I'm trying to be understanding but I can only repeat myself so many times before I snap at the "I didn't know" response. To give more perspective, I literally woke up to the freezer wide open once this month because he didn't shut it when he packed his lunch and once last month found my dog a block away from home after he didn't shut the front door all of the way. He tries but its seriously like having one more kid in a lot of ways. Do you leave notes/signs up? Any suggestions?"

~Ashleigh

A.

Reminding him doesn't sound like it's working. You have to remove him from the picture (in terms of the intervention), and instead, create interventions around him that can passively work, instead of actively requiring his active and conscious sustained engagement and attention since sounds inattentive.

Step 1: Get separate laundry baskets so his items are no longer co-mingled with anything else in the house. Then he can just wash only his laundry the way he likes it, and you can wash the rest in the more detail-focused way that's harder for him to follow-through with.

Step 2: Install a lever to the door (or add a screen door that has an auto-close lever to it so that even if he doesn't notice if the main door has shut fully, the screen door will have auto-shut fully so that the dog doesn't get out.

Step 3: For the freezer, get a strong clip magnet (like those silver kinds that hold a piece of paper with a magnet on the back), loop a long piece of twist-tie through it, and then put another strong magnet on the end. Put the twist-tie section over the open door. Whenever you open the door, make sure that the magnet is put back on the front door to close it. Freezer doors that are older or with not-great seals often open whenever you open/shut the refrigerator door, and that's likely part of what's going on.

Step 4: Make sure there is nothing in the way of the sink and the dishwasher (like nothing on top, completely clear). Is there a reason why he's soaking things? Can he just put the dishes straight into the dishwasher & forego the rinsing? Can you buy an additional dish detergent aid agent to help better clean off dishes & utensils so that he can skip the sink washing and put straight into the dishwasher? You want the least # of steps possible, the least amount of visual clutter distraction, and to piggy back off of an existing habit loop.

Step 5: Go see a speech therapist (both of you); they can help you both come up with better suggestions for what might help, and can also help better give you perspective to help you better understand what's going on. It's unlikely that he's actively trying not to do what you want him to. Check out the How to ADHD channel for some other background tips to better understand some of what's going on.

Step 6: Get a smart watch. There are lots. I would recommend the apple watch/iphone/reminders app/calendar app. The apple watch can be set to vibrate when certain alarms are going off, and can be tied to alarms you set on your phone, &/or alarms you set on the reminder app. The reminder app may not help as much when you're home, but when you're not home, it can help because you can set location-based reminders. If you take that same concept, I don't remember the hardware, but there are RF beacons that stores and other places have used in the past to track where people are when they're shopping inside or near a store, and an alert goes off on your phone to offer you a coupon, etc. You can try to figure out a way to set up RF beacons at your home, so that whenever he physically passes by certain locations, he gets a pop-up reminder about what to do. That would likely require more research. But the location-based reminders on the reminders app is really helpful for this.

Step 7: set smart alarms. Get a google home/mini or amazon alexa or equivalent. Set alarms to go off, 10 minutes before something is due. And then set a second alarm to go off 5 minutes before something is due. When the alarm goes off, you'll know it's going off for some reason, and then you can ask the alarm what the next alarm is set for, and it can tell you the name of the alarm so you know why the alarm was going off. Multiple alarms in quick succession can be helpful, because it's easy to forget that an alarm went off after you're startled and are trying to turn the alarm off quickly without realizing what the alarm was for.

Step 8: Figure out what type of learner he is, and then if other things come up along the way, try to focus the interventions in his preferred learning style since you prob. have a better chance at success. Unless the note you leave is incredibly large, high-contrast & incredibly obvious and in his face (i.e., next to impossible for him to ignore it and visually interestingly enough to hold his attention), notes all over the place are unlikely to look. He's probably seeing the overall shape of things, and not focusing long-enough on the details to remember until he's prompted again.

Step 9: Realize that he's unlikely to change, and any changes he's able to make, probably will be slow to come and only after an incredible amount of sustained really hard work. The quickest way for you both to get what you both want and not be upset and have it negatively affect your relationship is to find ways that remove the options that create the outcomes you don't like so that those outcomes are no longer able to occur, versus willing him to do intervention things that involve quality control checking/monitoring skills and other executive functioning skills, which isn't going to happen anytme soon, and certainly not overnight.

Magnets to help with the freezer door closing. Whenever you open the freezer, it’ll automatically fling open, and then when close it, remember to “fasten” the magnet to the front of the door. Note, it may scratch the finish/paint of the door, so maybe can try a different magnet. The good thing about it is can stretch the twist-tie to make the door sort of close tighter, although not really.

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