This article was developed via a partnership with BetterHelp.
Keeping up with daily life might be difficult for seniors with Alzheimer’s disease or another kind of dementia. Looking for vital records, losing valuables, or losing track of where you keep everyday necessities can all add to the stress and frustration you’re already feeling. Reducing stress, increasing safety, and simplifying everyday life are just a few of the benefits of assisting a parent with dementia in decluttering and organizing their home.
Advantages of Maintaining Tidiness in Your Home
Cluttered and unorganized living spaces can make it challenging for people with dementia to make sense of their surroundings and process information. Even if your elderly parent or other loved one doesn’t seem bothered by the mess in their home and may even take some solace in the stacks of papers and boxes that litter the place, this “visual noise” can cause overstimulation and make it difficult for them to concentrate on even the most fundamental of daily activities, such as eating, cleaning, and grooming.
Helping the elderly live more effectively and independently can be as simple as removing unnecessary items from their homes and arranging their stuff in a way that makes everything within easy reach. This could mean lowering the variety of available coffee mugs or notepads, or perhaps moving into a smaller home.
Disorganization Can Be Overstimulating
People with dementia struggle to make sense of their surroundings and struggle to comprehend information when there is a lot going on around them. As a result, it might be challenging to find what you need, to concentrate on a single task, or to recall the correct order of events in a home with excessive amounts of clutter.
Most of us rely on our possessions, both personal and otherwise, to help us feel like ourselves. However, people with dementia may react differently to their possessions and furniture due to diminished ability to make decisions, greater disorientation, and memory loss. Takeout menus and their accompanying Food containers, for instance, could be considered valuable documents and objects, respectively. There is still an almost obsessive need for belongings and keeping them safe, and this can lead to issues if people can’t distinguish what should be thrown out.
Many people with dementia, especially those who live alone, tend to accumulate a lot of clutter at home, such as bills, old correspondence, grocery bags, magazines, etc., which can make it difficult to move around and even unclean. The disarray can make it harder to focus because it’s not clear what needs priority.
Construct a Safe Environment
Alzheimer’s patients frequently experience a decline in their ability to understand their physical surroundings, so it is crucial that their environment be as intuitive and straightforward as possible. Get everything off the floor except the furniture. Any unnecessary containers or stacks should be taken away.
Put the furniture in a layout that makes it easy to get about. Keep things from being too cramped. Allow for free flow of traffic while designing a floor plan. Ensure that all roadways are well-lit and spacious. Always go for the simplest solution. To make the area more secure, it could be essential to do away with certain pieces of furniture totally.
Inspect the house for any potential dangers. Steps leading from one room to another should be clearly marked with colored tape at the top and front border. Try to avoid bumping into any sharp corners or projecting edges of furniture or other obstructions. If at all feasible, reposition objects so that the edge is not jutting into the room. If you can’t remove the sharp edge entirely, at least protect yourself from it.
Everything Must Have a Label
Labeling things can help keep people from getting confused or forgetting where they put something. Your loved one will benefit from this since they will be able to more easily find things and return them to their proper homes.
Put labels on the exterior of the cabinets to indicate what is stored inside. Then, name the compartments of the cabinet or even just the parts of the shelves that are used frequently. Mark the contents of each drawer. It’s important to clearly label each container, especially if the contents could be mistaken for anything else (such as sugar and salt). The intent is to make it glaringly evident what goes where in terms of storage.
Set Up a Reminder Board
Information regarding impending events can be posted in addition to normal calendar annotations. An appointment with Dr. Cooper at 2:30pm on a certain date, for example. You could put up an image of Dr. Cooper, some information about the type of doctor he is, and the reason for the consultation on the reminder board.
The names and contact info of other key people, such as internet services, home health care providers, cleaning staff, relatives, neighbors, and others, with whom the patient may regularly interact, should also be posted on the reminder board.
You should also put up signs with important information in case of an emergency. In case emergency services need to be called, it is helpful to have information about the residence listed alongside emergency contacts. A simple card with the home’s address, phone number, and directions from a main roadway. Learn more about how putting up visual reminders is helpful to dementia patients at https://www.betterhelp.com/advice/dementia/.
Put Up Instructions
Do not just rely on labels; instead, put up instructions on or near the appliances themselves. Create something straightforward but comprehensive. Such instructions should include reminders to turn off the stove’s burner. Assume that absolutely nothing is simple or universally known.
If a family member or friend seems to be having difficulty with a certain chore, you may want to write out some brief guidelines to help them out. Rather than being condescending, these instructions will assist the patient preserve a degree of independence by allowing them to continue doing minor things for themselves
