Seniors Site

What better way to start the year than decluttering your life? Okay, decluttering your life may sound a little drastic but certainly you could start with your own home right? And since we seniors are encouraged to forever downgrade our homes and our lifestyles to suit our current capabilities, financial and otherwise, this might be the best time to start a 4-week decluttering plan!
4 weeks for me, is ample enough time for sentimental people like me to come to terms with the fact that I need to throw away things even if they were kept for sentimental reasons. However, I must admit, all those clutter tend to take away the beauty of a home so they should really go.
Without further ado, let’s get started:
WEEK 1:
Start with the eye catchers. Start with the things or areas that caught your eye first since if this area was able to hurt your eyes and as a result, finally made you realize that decluttering is in order, then it must be really really bad. Small or big, these are the areas that need your immediate attention. Get started on the things that are easier to deal with, for example, your small mountain of mails, or your work station, or perhaps the corkboard that has loads of paper pinned into them and kind of missing the point now. As soon as you bring order into these areas, you’ll feel good at once.
WEEK 2:
Next stop is your bathroom. Bathrooms for me are the easiest to clutter especially if you are also keeping a medicine cabinet there. I’m sure you have loads of stuff in there that haven’t seen light for 6 months and I’m sure you know that keeping them is not a very good idea anymore right? Especially if they were already opened prior to “discovery”. Drag a big black garbage bag in there and start tossing bottles, makeups and what-have-you’s. Good rule to consider when dealing with bathroom stuff: expiry date and six months to one year prior to opening on beauty products. However, medications should be kept separated from other things since they can be hazardous to health.
WEEK 3:
Your kitchen is the next good candidate after bathroom as this area is a known item “collector” too. Examine drawers and cabinet one by one and see if there are things that you need to throw away now, like that old bottle of spice sitting in there since World War Two. However, unlike what you did in the bathroom, there are things in your kitchen that are salvageable or worth keeping even if you haven’t used them for a long time such as cookwares. These things you can pack nicely and store in attic or storage room. You can also sell them or give them to your kids who are interested.
WEEK 4:
Your bedroom. Of course this must be the hardest to sort since this room has your personal stuff however, you need to throw it some love too just to get some more space and bring back some normalcy in your private quarters. Take your time and take it slow. Start with those visible then work your way into the not-so-visible ones such as your closet. Same rule apply, if you haven’t used it for about 6 months, it should go, or at least be moved to storage.

Once in a while, we find ourselves bitten by the “makeover” bug. Sometimes, it’s just a matter of changing your hairstyle or perhaps a quick trip to a nail salon but most of the time, the change of scenery starts at home. However, money is a factor when going for a makeover and a big space like that of your home would surely cost a lot. For budget-challenged seniors who would like to give their homes a new look, here are some tips to get you by:

* Clear the room and start from scratch. With all those accumulated junk littering your home, it’s quite hard to see the beauty and potential of a room, right? If you would like to test your “eye for beauty”, why not start with the guest room since it is rarely used therefore won’t cause any disturbance or difference if held unusable for days. Take everything that can be moved out – everything, including the bed, if it’s not fixed. With a bare room, you’ll be able to see what needs to be done to make the room brighter.
* Invest in good, classy cabinets to hold your display items. Seniors indeed don’t run out of things to display but leaving them out to collect dust is never a good idea. Your cabinets don’t have to be expensive, just as long as it is sturdy and can stand the test of time.
* Bring in plants. This is ONLY IF you swear to water them and care for them everyday otherwise, just leave them out and alone as a favor. Plants bring life to a house and it brightens up a place.
* Sort your junk – your older junk! Take a quick trip to your storage area –ideally while taking out the current junk from your house –then do a quick inventory of the things you already have there and can be used again inside the house that will suit your current theme. This is called “recycling”. A little restoration can make it interesting again.
* Go for yellow tones as they tend to make a very stylish accent. Orange, brown and mustard are your perfect colors. Don’t make a mistake of choosing too bright and too dull colors, just the ones in between.
* Use old dresses that are no longer serviceable considering your age as pillow covers. Pillow covers are meant to be interesting, by using your own dress which you have worn once or twice will give it character.
* Go for blue in the bedroom. Blue is calming and you can never go wrong with blue, even babies use them! It also creates the illusion of space so your room will look bigger.

As a caregiver, there will come a time when you and the rest of your senior’s family will have to decide what’s the best thing to do now that your senior will require a different kind of care especially medical and assistive that cannot be fulfilled by someone who doesn’t have enough medical experience such as yourself.
Your senior’s doctor is most likely to be the one to advise you when it’s time to move your senior to a residential home however, no matter how prepared you are for this, finding the perfect residential home for your senior can still get quite tricky. Below are some of the useful tips to help you find a suitable home for your senior:
* Educate yourself. It helps to know that you have many options to choose from depending on your senior’s needs. Even the cost can be a factor in choosing the right residential home for your senior. Best to start your hunt by talking to the senior’s doctor and ask what specifically are required in caring for your senior. Ask them for referrals too. If you have funding problems, it is best to tell the doctor too.
* Assess your senior’s capabilities. Can they still move around on their own? Would they need assistance when bathing or dressing up? Or perhaps when preparing their food as well as eating? These are the things that every residential home needs to know.
* Take into consideration your needs too. Of course, location is important to ensure your comfort when visiting the senior and staying in touch. Also, you might want to move your senior to home nearer to your place just in case you need to go to the residential home in short notice.
* Look up services. There are private services offered to families who are clueless as to what to do and where to start. Private placement services will take care of everything for you and your senior.
* Don’t expect it to be easy. Except maybe if your senior is already incapacitated. Expect a lot of resistance from your senior as well as other family members so make it a point to always include them in planning.
* Visit prospective sites. This is the only way you can get the feel of the place which will determine if your senior will like it there or not. While you’re there, take some time to observe how the staff interact with their residents and if the residents are happy and calm.
* Check the facility’s license. Just because a residential home looks good doesn’t mean your senior will like it there. Of course, appearance isn’t always everything.

Indeed home safety is important, however, when caring for a senior suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, it can get doubly important since you have to anticipate situations that are usually not normal in a household. It can get a little stressful especially during your first few weeks on the job and quite frustrating too. To alleviate stress and prevent emergency situations from happening as well, you need all the help you can get most especially from the place where you too are going to spend much of your time together: your home.
When preparing your home for a senior with Alzheimer’s disease, you need to have a lot of foresight. Assess and anticipate situations just like you would when preparing your home for a baby but this time, you also have to consider their size and age. Armed with a notebook to jot down your observations, go over your home and take note of the things you think you need to change or adjust such as that rug that refuses to stay at one place or your spotless tiled bathroom.

· Take out hazardous materials you have been keeping such as cleaning agents, bleach, etc under the sink. Better to store them outside the house or in a part of your house wherein your senior cannot access. If this is not an option then try installing locks on your kitchen cabinet.
· Hide sharp objects and just about anything that can cause bodily harm such as knives, bottle opener, etc. Furthermore, remove anything that looks like food such as fruit-shaped plastics for display as these things can easily confuse a senior with Alzheimer’s disease.
· Install monitors around home. Of course, you don’t have to be all blatant about it instead, discreetly install monitors where your senior is most likely to be left alone such as their bedroom. This will also allow you to do other things inside of home while they are sleeping or not needing immediate attention.
· Be especially aware of electrical units with dials, particularly that of your heating devices. As much as possible, your water heater should be monitored by you when used. Same goes for electric blankets and heating pads.
· Avoid clear glass at all cost. A person, even without Alzheimer’s, can easily be confused by a clear glass, thinking that there is nothing that separates two parts of the house. This usually causes ugly accidents with lots of blood. To avoid this from happening, try sticking decals on clear glass so that your senior will have their point of reference.

A senior cannot just move and be done with it. It needs an awful lot of planning. If you are a caregiver, you might want to consider that as well when convincing a senior to move. For a senior, it is a big event, a big turn-around in their life so don’t ever think that it would be taken lightly. It also means downsizing – losing some of their most beloved stuff and selecting only those they consider as the most important, usually just a couple of photos and legal documents which the senior will need later in life.

If you are still on “convincing” stages, you might want to take note of these things:

* Talk about how living in such a big house is no longer suitable for a senior especially if he or she is living alone.
* A big house will require more maintenance than a smaller space or even a shared space. Point out that (if moving in a senior home), someone will do the cleaning for them and they can now focus on the things that they cared the most.
* Their home might not be suitable anymore since they need a more senior-friendly place to live in complete with assistive devices installed. It is quote expensive to install these things in their homes.
* It is not anymore safe for a senior to be living alone.

The idea is to point out that it is not anymore practical for them to be staying in their home, never harp on their age as it has nothing to do with the moving, although it is closely associated. Just stick on the facts please.

Another moving difficulty that you might encounter when moving a senior is the downsizing part. As their caregiver, you must be able to pinpoint the importance of downsizing and why exactly they need it. Put emphasis that downsizing is done for them, not for anybody else. Get other family members involved, especially close friends. This will also eliminate conflicts over properties that a family member is expecting to receive as well as those heirlooms they would rather not receive.
Moving is really tough especially for seniors who are used to living on their own or just plain living in their own houses with friends and family nearby. As caregivers, do understand that this is something you would not like to do in a haste. Give your senior ample time to think things over and to prepare themselves. Eventually they will see your point and will be more pliable to the idea of moving. Make sure that the facility where you’ll move your senior provides quality service and friendly-enough staff to make your senior comfortable.

Funny that I am doing this post because a good – and very old – friend has just asked me if I could “declutter” her home as she cannot do it anymore – for sentimental reasons and physical ones too. Of course it is okay with me as she is a dear friend and I’ve been trying to tell her a dozen times already that her home needs some clearing up. Although her house is really nice, it became quite stuffy inside that you can no longer appreciate the house’s own beauty. Think two sets of sofa in the living room facing each other like they are hopelessly locked in a staring contest for ages and you sure are on the right track!

To be honest, I think having someone else you trust to declutter your house is a good idea. I might try that myself some other time. Surely this “someone else” will see everything in black and white and will be able to judge your things at face value – if it’s good to go or not. Actually, I have watched a program on TV that did exactly that – raided cluttered houses, sold their stuff and bought them new and useful ones.

While I am not your most organized person in the world, I do know how to put a house in order. Here are my favorite strategies in decluttering a house:

* Raid rooms one by one, starting with the most obvious. Start by putting everything in their rightful places. This shouldn’t be too hard since we haven’t started with the process of elimination yet. We are just putting things where they belong so it will be easier for us to determine which ones should go and which ones are worth keeping.
* Check your closet. If there is one place where clutter tends to pile up, it is definitely the closet. However, this is the easiest to declutter too since it will be just a matter of “are you still wearing this or not?” Rule of thumb applies; if you are nowhere near it in six months then it is time for it to go unless they are seasonal clothing, then you might want to box them up nicely and tuck away in some corner of your closet.
* Take out a few of your kitchen tools. Consider your age, you must have, by now, not been cooking a lot. And if you do, surely it won’t require too much preparations now so it would be best if you give away those humongous, state-of-the-art food machines and settle with less complicated ones that will require lesser kitchen space.
* Take your time. It doesn’t have to be a sprint especially if you have already grown attached to your clutter. Do it once or twice a day until a habit is formed.
* Get some help. Sometimes, decluttering your home may feel like a herculean task so go get some help and be done with it the soonest possible time or at the very least, you lessen the clutter you need to deal with yourself.

So there still exists a battle of senior independence against their need for assistance. A senior won’t readily accept that he or she is in need of assistance whether the reasons are quite obvious. If caregivers would have it their way, the decision would be unanimous; it’s the nursing home or the highway! But seniors see nursing homes as stripping them off of their dignity and your not being able to understand that what you are trying to make them accept is that they no longer have the ability to look after themselves. For me, this is only a matter of not communicating properly, unfortunately, most seniors and caregivers do have communication problems to begin with.

So meeting halfway means the senior should be able to move in accordance to their own will but at the same time, have someone look after them from afar. The tricky part is, if you, as the caregiver, pose as the “other person looking from afar”, your senior won’t like it and it will feel like you’re hovering but if you get someone to look after them and pay them, your senior won’t like it either because it will feel like they badly needed help, so what else is there to do? Room them with someone their age, as if they are off to college!

Shared housing is exactly that and more. This is very ideal for seniors living alone and with rooms to spare. Also, it will ease the pressure of having your senior moved in an assistive facility or even to your own home, especially if they don’t really need too much assistance – that is, if they can still move around on their own. In a shared housing setting, a senior is paired with another senior so they will both feel independent but still be looking after one another.

Shared housing is when two unrelated people decide to live under one roof. That means, they are not family nor lovers, they are just two seniors who happen to need someone to share house with. Ideally, they should have their own rooms but all other parts of the house could be shared. However, it is expected for them to share responsibilities with regard to the home as well as decisions over matters of bills and extra services the other person might need.

Shared housing can work to your advantage since it can dramatically reduce your housing cost by half. Also, a senior can continue to enjoy their independence and still benefit from having a housemate in case you need help. Then there’s security of course since it is much safer to live with someone than to live alone. Best of all, you’ll have someone to talk to and your family will have someone to call if they can’t reach you so basically, it works both ways.

If you are interested with shared housing, whether you are the house owner or house seeker, check out organizations specializing in senior living and care as they sometimes do house matching.

There are several reasons why many caregivers decided to just move their aging parent into their own homes instead of looking for other housing options. One of the most common factors is money. A caregiver/provider who doesn’t have much resource to go around might opt to just move a senior into their own homes and personally take care of their needs from there instead of having the senior admitted to an assistive facility. While it may seem like the most reasonable thing to do considering your situation, you might want to think about it twice as your decision may backfire and in the end, cost you a lot more.
It is important to note the amount of care your senior needs before actually moving them into your own house. If your senior can still move around on his own and do things on his own requiring little or no amount of help from others then it is quite impractical to have them move into an assistive facility and would even help them if the senior stays with their family and loved-ones. In other words, they are the most ideal parents to move into your home since they are most likely to keep to themselves and won’t require too much medical-know-how from their host family. However, if your aging parent has 101 maintenance medications that need to be administered round the clock and is dealing with medical maladies waiting to happen (seizures, etc) then it is best if you find a way to have professionals deal with your senior’s situation than be sorry later that you didn’t.
Here are some more things you must observe when moving your aging parent into your home:
· Your senior’s health. Like stated above, you need to have your senior’s health assessed to know if moving them into your home would work. If they require too much assistance then might as well let professionals handle their case.
· Money and resources. Unfortunately, money has a lot to say on your decision to move your senior into your home. Will it be cost-effective? As caring for a senior is really an expensive job. Also take into consideration the small renovations you need to do around your house to accommodate your senior as well as the other things that go along with their healthcare.
· Your own family. Are they okay with this? Did you consult them with your decision? Are they willing to help out in caring for your aging parent? Hasty decisions can sometimes lead to friction so make sure your family is all in this together.
· Support. You need all the support you can get so make sure they are within reach. Hospitals should only be minutes away from your home, friends and families who can assist you in caring for your aging parent as well as their financial needs. Also, if possible, there should be an organization or support group for caregivers near you.

Safety issues are surely not the ones you would like to discuss in Sunday dinners with your aging parents. You just don’t go straight on asking your parent if he or she has already decided on which assistive community to move into or if they have already installed the grab bars in their bathrooms. Understand that while it is important for you - as their concerned kid - to know, this makes them feel threatened – like they don’t have the capacity to decide for themselves.
Just think of it this way, when you were younger and your parents were the wiser beings, you didn’t like it too when they nag on you and tell you what to do all the time right? Just imagine what you felt and how it made you furious even if you know they were right then imagine yourself being told by your kid, that doesn’t feel really good, does it?
It is also important to start with your right foot forward just so you won’t be considered by your senior parents as the enemy in the picture. You might want to be their confidante, not the enemy as this will only make your intentions harder to do. Remember that when you are viewed as the bad guy, everything that you’ll ever say will surely be met with an argument, no matter how sensible your suggestion is. You may find your parents a little hesitant but that’s just because they are frightened.
To be able to find a common ground, better to discuss everything with an air of practicality. Your suggestion should sound as the most practical thing to do given their situation – however, they must not feel, in any way, that you consider them as a threat to their own safety.
It is also important for them to feel that they also have a say in their situation. Don’t push too hard no matter how pressing their situation is. Having a successful dialogue with your aging parent regarding their safety requires perfect timing. Allow them some time to think then ask again another time, you would know if they are ready. If you really have to make some changes now and your feel your senior is still refusing to cooperate, then seek help from people who you think they respect and believe in, like a pastor or a preacher, or their own mom perhaps? It will not be easy to make your senior “just” follow your decision since they were the ones making all the decisions for you when you were younger. What’s more important is that you earn their trust – enough trust to make them feel comfortable with your decisions over their wellbeing. Surely nobody would trust their financial woes to someone who has just filed bankruptcy, don’t you think? If you have to be in control, you must at least, act and look the part.

Being in an institution can be hard for both the elderly and their visitors. Some family members openly admit that the experience can be traumatic and would prefer not to do it again if not for their beloved seniors. Moving into an assisted facility means “change” and for most seniors, it is unwelcome since most of them – if not all – are not really ready for it yet and would have to go through drastic lifestyle changes, physically, mentally and emotionally.

Now you understand where all those crankiness came from. However, it is important to make every visit count or make it more worthwhile. While we cannot really force a senior to be cheerful, we, as visitors, can definitely bring in the fun.

Most senior homes conduct orientation whenever a family is moving in (We say “family” as reference to the senior moving in and their families moving them) Orientation is done to familiarize the family of how the facility works. Orientations like this usually involve touring the facility and giving pep talks to both the senior and their families. The facility manager is most likely to tell you what they would like you to do in order to help the senior adjust to their new environment. It is expected to be tough but you would be advised to be more attentive and sensitive to your seniors. Families need not worry since the facility is likely to assist you. If they don’t then it is best to move your senior to another facility and report the facility to authorities. Remember that it is their job to assist the senior as well as their families upon admittance of the senior.

Communication is the key to a successful visit to your elderly despite the fact that keeping a good communication line can be hard considering their current situation. It is equally important for families to maintain some kind of continuity no matter how impossible the situation is. This is done to somehow lessen the impact of the lifestyle changes introduced to your senior. Furthermore, working hand-in-hand with healthcare professionals are highly encouraged to make sure your senior is receiving the right kind of care they require.

If your senior seems unresponsive, don’t ever take it personally. Sometimes they don’t even know what they are feeling, much less know that they are hurting you. There are other ways for you to connect with your senior. Experts suggest that you explore other ways such as touching and adapting the proper emotional tone when visiting.

Sometimes, all it takes is for you to listen and listen good. Never judge, never accuse and most of all, never impose. Learn to respect and listen from the heart. Remember that there will come a time when you’ll find yourself in their shoes and all you’ll ever want is for someone to respect you and listen to what you are trying to say.