Having aging relatives may mean you need to play a role in ensuring their safety at home. One way in which you can do this is by maintaining their home as they age so they have a clean and functional space. Here’s how you can help maintain their home as they age and give them a gift that they will be grateful for.
Get Help
While you may be willing and motivated enough to take on this responsibility by yourself, keep in mind that it’s a heavy burden to bear alone. You may burn out at some point and end up harming yourself or the elderly person you intend to look after. Seek professional help for things like keeping the home clean and tidy, meal preparation, and anything else that’s very hands-on. When you do this, you can leave yourself a role that’s more of a supervisory one, and one that may be easier to manage. Remember that you’re also human and have needs of your own that you need time to cater to. Of all the adults with long-term care needs, 65% of them rely totally on friends and family for assistance, while 30% supplement family care with some paid assistance.
Minimize the Risk of Falls
To ensure that their health stays good, find ways to minimize the risks of falling around their home. This includes removing things like cables, mats, pet bedding, wires, and more out of the way. A small fall can have serious effects on an elderly adult, so it’s important to ensure the house doesn’t present tripping hazards for them. As an extra measure, add grab bars at specific points throughout the house and add dim lights on all pathways. When they can clearly see where they’re going, your aging relatives will have an easier time making their way safely around their house.
Make Necessary Repairs
If there are any issues with the house, it’s important to fix them right away. This will ensure that they don’t worsen to the point of necessitating expensive and extensive repairs, by which time they might have become a hazard. When you consider the fact that a small leak can potentially waste about 10,000 gallons of water every year, making repairs will help you lower potential bills, too.
Seek Financial Assistance
Getting the home of an aging relative in good shape can become an expense quite fast, so consider seeking help with financing. You can find state and local programs to help you with your budgeting needs, so you can make the house more friendly for an aging relative. These will come in handy for retrofits and medically prescribed changes you need to make around the house. They may also have the option of low-interest loans if their home is considered a low-income one, so there are many options available to help you make the home physically more adapted to an elderly person’s needs.
Start a Garden for Your Elderly Relatives
Finally, spending time outdoors can do wonders for the mood. Because of this, starting a garden at your elderly relative’s home is a great idea. Whenever you want to spend some quality time with them, you may both find some reprieve outdoors in the garden. It’s also a way to potentially keep them active. While outdoors, you can exchange informative facts such as that food crops have to compete with 10,000 species of insects that eat plants. The garden will additionally be a source of healthy food.
With these suggestions, you can help your elderly relative enjoy living in their well-maintained home as they age. This way, both of you will enjoy the time you get to share with each other a lot more.
