Both me and my 13 year old son are firmly in the Attention Deficit camp, so I know the importance of using lists to help mange executive function (when the house is on fire, and the dog needs to pee, and you can’t choose which to put out first).
So to help with the late mornings and minimize the anxiety, fights, and screaming “god help me” I made him a quick reusable and modular list that is mounted at eye level right next to his door.
The black tabs can be changed or flipped over with different list items, and when you’re done you can kill the task with a satisfying sniiik, putting it firmly out of mind and relieving a tiny bit of anxiety.
Oddly enough “teenager don’t you know” he likes it and it seem to help.
Materials:
PG Med Draft board, black art paper, button cap screws, and a little shellac to keep the pizza stains washable. Assembled with wood glue. I did end up 3d printing an insert to keep the black paper tight but that was mostly to fix a design flaw that could have been easily changed to keep it all laser.
Short story version…yesterday, between dealing with my mom moving into a new place in another city that we are both unfamiliar with, doing laundry, cooking dinner, keeping the new kitten from being bitten by the copperhead she caught, answering forum questions and finishing up a parametric design in Fusion 360…somewhere along the line in there, I forgot to actually turn on the washing machine.
I need to vindicate myself slightly… it’s one of those eco-friendly models that doesn’t actually wash your clothes, but has an energy gulping spin cycle that renders them nearly dry when you take them out…it’s hard to tell if you’ve thrown soap on them whether they’ve been washed or not.
So I grab the clothes out somewhere along the line, toss them in the dryer, and only when it came time to fold the tee shirts did I notice the large soap spots.
Like I said…i need one of those. One of the slots needs to read “Turn the machine on dummy!”
We have been through what feels like a million versions of lists to try to keep my kids organized and none of them were ever as cool as this. And if the 3d printed part is the little orange dot, I think it’s an excellent addition to the visual design!
Thanks, the dot is painted on the back board, the 3d printed part is inserted in the same slot as the paper but cant be seen. It keeps the paper from flopping arround and the slider above from falling in. Here is a pic of the printed model. This could have been fixed by making the slot that the paper goes into slightly smaller and out of a thinner board.
