How I Used the Apartment Binder in Buenos Aires
Hi, I'm Emily and I have ADHD. One of my most helpful coping mechanisms to combat my ADHD is keeping things organized. If you've been following me for a while, you know that I created a Home Binder back in 2020 when we moved into our house. I shared it on the internet and it went viral, you guys loved it! I had people constantly asking me to sell a version of it, so I created one and have a download for it on my site. Since then I also had people asking about apartment versions of it. When we lived in apartments, I had versions of this to keep myself organized, so I created the Apartment Binder. The problem was when I created it, I didn't then have a way to use it because I wasn't living in an apartment. Well, we have been living in an apartment in Argentina since June so I've been able to put the Apartment Binder to the test while we've been here. Since I now have first hand experience with it I figured I would walk you through how to set it up.
Life Skill Download - Tying Shoes
I was trying to teach my daughter how to tie her shoes and it was not going well. I tried to teach her the "bunny ears" method and it was not clicking for her, which I can understand. It took me a long time to learn how to tie my shoes when I was a kid too. Theoretically she could just not have shoes that need to be tied, I feel like this is still an important skill to learn. So I searched for a method that would be easier for her to learn, found a really promising one and then made a life skill download for it after she picked it up super quickly.
Dental Hygiene Life Skill & Social Story
I decided the next life skill that I wanted to work on with my daughter was brushing teeth and just oral hygiene in general. My daughter seems to be struggling with that at the moment, even though she hasn't in the past so I knew it was something that I wanted to work on. I know that she's not the only autistic to have trouble with it, so I wanted to do a social story to go along with it. I already have a going to the dentist social story, but I wanted to make a dental hygiene at home specific social story.
Ferry Boat Trip Social Story
When we went to Uruguay in August, we took a ferry from Buenos Aires to Colonia de Sacramento, Uruguay. Since my seven year old autistic daughter has been on dozens of planes to this point, I thought that she would be fine with the process of getting on/off a boat and boat travel. Unfortunately, I was wrong. So, because of this experience and how difficult it was for her, I decided to create a social story about taking a ferry boat and what that entails.
Introducing Life Skill Downloads - Bathing
I've talked recently about our life skills list. This is a list of life skills that we've come up with of things that my daughter, a seven year old autistic girl, is able to do with or without accommodations to help her to succeed. The first thing that we did was bathing. Up until this point my husband or I were helping her with washing her hair, but I felt like this was something that she really could do on her own with some guidance. So I wrote all the steps out and put them on the wall in the bathroom here in Argentina. After doing this, I thought about all of the other things that would be helpful to her and other people as well and decided to make a whole life skills download and make it accessible for other people!
Going Shopping Social Story
Since coming to Buenos Aires, I have had to take the kids shopping on my own a lot more. This is a new experience for us because, in Tennessee, my daughter goes to school and my son naps at home where my husband works, or I can take my son to my parents house or I have the luxury of ordering groceries. In Argentina, though, it's really hard for us to get stuff delivered to us for a large variety of reasons and I don't have the added support, but I still have to get things done so I've had to take the kids out more. We're been going to the grocery store, clothes and toy shops, bakeries, and anywhere else that we need to. Sometimes it's just to give us something to do, but either way they're just in stores more. I noticed that it was really hard for my daughter, and despite thinking that I had sufficiently prepared my seven year old autistic daughter to go shopping, she was still having a difficult time. So I wrote a social story especially for her about going shopping.
Using the Spanish Visual Schedule Board to Supplement Our Spanish Lessons
I’m going to show you how we’re using our Spanish visual schedule board while we’re living in Argentina with the help of our local Spanish tutor.
Putting Together The Autism Binder
So my seven year old is autistic, and when she was going through the process of being diagnosed, a family member recommended that I start putting everything together in a file. The file included her evaluation, anything I was concerned about, her IEP, etc. and that turned into this binder. Each year I add to the binder, and it's time to do that now. I need to add the stuff from this year into the binder, also get a new binder. So while I'm reworking the whole thing I figured that I could show you everything that goes into this as well as all of the supplies that you need, including the $5 download that I created that makes putting it together a breeze.
Closing Out the School Year Using the Forever File Box
If you're anything like me, you probably have a stack of papers from throughout your child's school year that you don't know what you're going to do with. You also probably need to figure out what you're going to do with all of those papers. I'm going to show you the Forever File Box, which is something that my team and I created that makes it super easy to keep track of everything for your kids throughout their childhood. For our family the general rule is if it doesn't fit in the box, it doesn't get kept. This makes it easy to consolidate what's being kept each year.
Home Binder Series
It's been a little while, so let's update my home binder. If you are new here, this is a binder I created that keeps all of the important documents for my house in one place. So, if I were to move out of this house and leave all of the appliances, built-ins, etc, I could just hand this binder to the new buyer and they would have everything they need in one spot.
Updating My Daughter’s Visual Schedule Board
My daughter's visual schedule board needs a little bit of an update. She's three years older than when I originally made it, and the frame I was using just doesn't have enough space to put as many activities throughout the day as my daughter would like.
DIY Builds and Their Downloads
I've built quite a few things in the last few years, and I actually have build plans for a lot of them! So, I wanted to show you my process when I'm building a project and then go over the downloads for them.