Honor your mom during May’s Older Americans Month. Take time to do some of the projects around her home that are harder for her to complete independently. Here are six ideas.
Set Up Her Gardens
If your mom wants to garden this year, set up the patio planters or raised beds for her. She won’t have to try to carry heavy bags of fertilizer, peat moss, or mulch. You can do it for her. Place planter pots where she wants them. Once they’re in place, she can plant items and care for them.
Improve Her Home’s Safety
Take a few minutes to go through her home and look for common hazards. Make sure she has grab bars in the bathroom. See if her rails on indoor and outdoor stairs are sturdy and mounted to studs or secure deck posts. Look for loose carpeting, tiles, and slippery throw rugs.
Help Her Declutter
Remove clutter with your mom. As she narrows down the items she doesn’t want or need, move them into boxes and donate them to a store like Goodwill. Make sure the items she wants to keep have a place to go. If her bookshelves are overloaded and she still has books she wants to keep, she needs to figure out what can go so that they can stay.
Reorganize Her Kitchen
One of the reasons aging adults fall is trying to reach items in a kitchen. Go through your mom’s cupboards and move items to lower shelves. Save the upper cupboards for items she rarely uses. For example, put mason jars in the high cupboards if she only cans/jars vegetables in the fall.
Clean Her Refrigerator and Freezer
How messy is your mom’s refrigerator? You could clean it for her. Remove shelves if possible and wash them in hot, soapy water. Go through her condiments and other items and get rid of things that have expired. Move them to the compost bin and wash and recycle the container. Wash the fridge’s interior walls with a disinfectant like bleach mixed with water.
Do the same with her freezer. If she can’t remember how old some items are, it’s best to get rid of them. Use freezer tape to date items if she remembers when she bought them.
Scrub Her Oven
One of the harder tasks for aging adults is cleaning the oven. Getting down on your hands and knees is painful, especially if arthritis is a factor. Not every oven is self-cleaning. Even if it is, not all of the grease and grime will come off during a self-cleaning cycle. Get a heavy-duty degreasing foam like Zep and give your mom’s oven a thorough cleaning.
When her home is in order, hire homecare services providers to help her keep her home cleaned and organized. Homecare aides assist with activities like laundry, dishes, and meal preparation. Talk to our homecare agency to learn more.
If you or an aging loved one are considering Homecare Services in Westwood MA, or anywhere in Eastern Massachusetts, please call the caring staff at CARE Resolutions – (508) 906-5572.
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