Give Away Your Possessions Or Sell Them To Shops
They say that its better to give than to receive, and its absolutely right!
A 2006 study revealed that giving indeed brings us some good vibes!
One way to lessen your anxiety and decluttering guilt is to donate some stuff, especially clothes, that you dont need to the poor and to charities. If you want to earn some bucks, you can sell those products in second-hand shops or flea markets.
Instead of feeling anxious about whether to give up the things you once loved, look forward to the joy that others will feel with your items or the money that you earned while also being free from junk.
Home Care Benefits For Seniors
Home care is a common alternative to senior living for elderly adults who can no longer live independently. There are many reasons families choose home care, versus memory care, for their elderly loved one:
- Aging in place. Many seniors have lived in the same house for decades, and moving to a new, often smaller, home is a difficult and emotional process.
- Level of care. Home care can be adjusted to fit new needs as a senior ages. A home care agency could provide transportation and cooking assistance to an active senior as needed, or it could offer full-time care and companionship to someone whos bedridden.
- One-on-one interaction. In-home care ensures your loved one has the entire attention of a visiting aide. In senior living communities, staff members must tend to multiple residents.
Choosing A Provider For Dementia Home Care
Its vital to work with a home care agency familiar with dementia and Alzheimers care, even if your loved one is only experiencing early signs of dementia. The Alzheimers Association suggests taking these steps before selecting a home care provider:
- Know your care needs. Make a list of dementia symptoms, care needs, and how you expect them to be met.
- Once you have your list of needs, call to screen home care providers for dementia care experience. Interview your top prospects at home so theyre familiar with the space.
- Check references. Make sure the home care agency conducts background checks and ask for contact information or testimonials from current clients.
- Seniors with dementia need to be comfortable with their caregivers, and providers can form stronger bonds with seniors if they know them well. Discuss your loved ones past accomplishments, interests, and fond memories with the home care aide so they can best provide person-centered dementia care and connect with your relative. Share photo albums, favorite music, and recipes as well. These tools are helpful for reminiscence therapy.
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Holiday Hints During Covid
Caregivers may face new challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. Older adults, particularly those with underlying chronic conditions, are more likely to become seriously ill from COVID-19. Adults with dementia may have trouble following personal protective measures, like wearing a mask or physical distancing. In addition, you may need to avoid visits with family and friends due to physical distancing guidelines.
This holiday season, you can find ways to safely celebrate the holidays that are important to you. Consider other ways to connect, like a virtual family reunion, video call singalong, or a phone call. If someone does visit you in-person, be sure to follow CDC’s guidelines for physical distancing. Find more information in CDC’s guidance for caregivers of people living with dementia.
Clutter Can Be Overstimulating
Individuals living with dementia have difficulty making sense of what is going on in their environment and find it hard to process information when there is a lot of stimulation. As a result, a home with significant amounts of clutter can be overstimulating and create difficulties locating a desired item, focusing on an activity, or remembering the sequence of tasks.
For most people, personal and sentimental belongings help us to maintain our identity, but for people with dementia, the loss of judgement, increased confusion and memory loss can cause a different type of response to belongings and household items. For example, a dinner takeout menu might be viewed as an important document, a Styrofoam container as an object of value. Sometimes the inability to recognize what should be thrown out can cause problems because there often remains an almost obsessive need for possessions and keeping them safe.
Often, especially for individuals living alone, the home of some with dementia will have an excess of receipts, old mail, grocery bags, magazines, etc. cluttering the surfaces and making the home unsafe for walking and sometimes unsanitary. In addition, the mess can increase confusion because the person isnt sure exactly what to pay attention to.
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Talk With A Senior Living Advisor
Our advisors help 300,000 families each year find the right senior care for their loved ones.
Home care had a national median cost of $24 an hour in 2020, according to Genworth. For seniors with early stage dementia who dont require full-time companionship and supervision, home care may be a good choice. However, home modifications, overnight care, and tracking programs can add significant expense to seniors with more advanced cognitive decline.
About Professional Clutter Clearing
Part of the job description of a professional clutter clearer is to immerse themselves on a daily basis in the low-level stagnant energies that accumulate around clutter in clients homes. It takes a person with very particular qualities to actually enjoy exposure to such densities of energy, and exceptional skills to be able to handle it without any untoward side effects.
All professionals in this field can benefit tremendously from learning how to handle the energetic side of clutter clearing, and some people really are not suited to deal with it at all. They would be better off choosing a different career altogether.
This article is for anyone who may be considering taking the professional clutter clearing practitioner training that Richard and I offer, or is already working as a professional clutter clearer and would like to learn more about this aspect of it.
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Ways To Manage Hoarding Behaviors
All of these scenarios pose hazards to dementia patients and even their caregivers. A significant hoard of items piled on floors and stacked on furniture can cause falls and illness. Improper medication management can lead to dangerous over- or under-doses. Unopened mail can result in unpaid bills, lapsed health insurance and shut off utilities. Fortunately, when an elderly parent is exhibiting hoarding behaviors due to Alzheimers or dementia, there are some techniques that you can use to try to manage them.
A Note On Storage Or Donations:
It is not true that if you hide something or take something out of the home that the person with dementia will forget it. Very sentimental items or things that they used to use all the time, such as clothing, jewelry, tools, and ties are often things a person remembers having and will go looking for. Some people really do not want their sentimental items stored, or if the items are not out, the person may think the items were stolen and will go through the house looking for them on a regular basis. Consider making a photo album of the stored items. Take photos of valuable items and put them in a book with a paragraph or sentence about the item underneath. This way the person can still see their items and know they are valued and cared for. If the item was given to someone, you may write about that so the person knows where some of the items are. For example: Joan chose to give this vase to her granddaughter, Sarah, for her wedding day.
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Repetitive Speech Or Actions
People with dementia will often repeat a word, statement, question, or activity over and over. While this type of behavior is usually harmless for the person with dementia, it can be annoying and stressful to caregivers. Sometimes the behavior is triggered by anxiety, boredom, fear, or environmental factors.
- Provide plenty of reassurance and comfort, both in words and in touch.
- Try distracting with a snack or activity.
- Avoid reminding them that they just asked the same question. Try ignoring the behavior or question, and instead try refocusing the person into an activity such as singing or âhelpingâ you with a chore.
- Donât discuss plans with a confused person until immediately prior to an event.
- You may want to try placing a sign on the kitchen table, such as, âDinner is at 6:30â or âLois comes home at 5:00â to remove anxiety and uncertainty about anticipated events.
- Learn to recognize certain behaviors. An agitated state or pulling at clothing, for example, could indicate a need to use the bathroom.
What Causes Dementia Rummaging Behavior
Alzheimers disease and other dementias cause problems with memory and thinking. This can lead to repetitive or difficult behaviors.
Rummaging is a coping mechanism for the disorientation that dementia causes.
The person with dementia is usually trying to reassure themselves that familiar items are still there or are trying to fulfill a need, like eating when hungry or doing something useful.
Attempting to get someone to stop rummaging or re-organizing can cause them to become increasingly agitated, paranoid, and determined to do it.
Instead, manage the behavior so its safer and less disruptive.
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Boredom And Dementia Patients
Dementia dramatically affects a persons entire being, and its progression is impossible to stop. A person living with one of the various diseases that cause dementia may experience symptoms from memory loss to speech problems and vision decline, but the greatest complaints are boredom and loneliness.
Why do boredom and loneliness top the list? In most cases, caregivers are at a loss of how to provide dementia-related care. Dementia symptoms have changed the relationship between caregiver and loved one, and its common to feel at a loss of what to do. When you can no longer have a conversation with Mom like you used to, or Dads agitation has made visits with him feel negative, you might start to pull away. You visit the senior home less frequently, or your interactions with your loved start to become limited to basic personal care. And thats the problem. Mom or Dad is still here. They still need love, engagement, and attention. Its up to you to adjust your methods to connect with them in a new way. The care partner role demands lots of creativity.
Noise Problems In Open Spaces
Be aware of open spaces: some sounds appear louder in open spaces, for example noises from crockery in a kitchen and dining area, the wheels of a tea trolley or the sound of conversations or laughing. Shift changeover can be especially noisy in a care home, just as the start and end of the day can be in day facilities and this is often noticed most in common open spaces.
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Memory Care Vs Home Care For Dementia: Whats The Difference
Elderly adults with dementia require specialized care, whether its provided in a senior living community or at home. With the right care tailored to their needs, seniors with cognitive decline can age with dignity, enjoyment, and some independence.
Memory care and home care are two common options families explore for seniors with dementia. What services do they provide, and what are the most important factors to consider when making a choice of home care vs. memory care for your aging loved one?
Making The Home Safe And Comfortable For A Person With Dementia
The content below is reflective of our leaflet.
Dementia can have a significant impact on a persons daily life, including how well they function within their home. Memory issues or problems recognising and interpreting the objects around them can cause the person frustration or create safety issues. The persons difficulties can be made worse by other health conditions, which might affect their sight and mobility.
To help the person with dementia maintain their independence and to support them to have a good quality of life, its important to make their home as easy to manage as possible. This leaflet has tips that our dementia specialist Admiral Nurses use in their practice to help people with dementia to be safe and comfortable at home.
If possible, try to involve the person with dementia in decisions about any changes you are making. If this is not possible, always make sure decisions are taken in the persons best interests.
Changes to a home do not have to be expensive. With some simple adjustments, a home can become safer and more comfortable, helping the person with dementia to be independent and remain in their home for longer.
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Learn Their Hiding Spots
Try to keep yourself apprised of all the various hiding places that your loved one uses. This can help you help them when looking for a lost item. It can also be useful when finding things that belong to others, or rescuing perishable items that your loved one might take out of the refrigerator. However, these are special hiding spots, so be tactful and discreet when it comes to looking through them.
The Clutter In Our Home Not Only Makes Our Homes Look Bad It Makes Us Feel Bad As Well
In Life at Home in The Twenty-First Century, anthropologists, social scientists, and archaeologists found:
A definite link between an over-abundance of household objects and the homeowners health. Definitely affecting the womans long-term well-being. The book stated that men arent as affected by the mess. As they measured cortisol levels over a number of days and in cluttered or messy homes, there was a higher rate of depressed mood toward the evening.
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How Do You Treat Someone Who Is Hoarding
As is any other type of OCD related disorder, hoarding is complicated to treat and difficult to manage. Mostly because the person himself does not see it as a problem. If the person doe not have a dementia, cognitive behavioral therapy and psychotherapy may help. However, if your care receiver has dementia, your best bet is to gently manage the behavior.
In addition to hoarding, people with dementia often hide their possessions, forget where they have hidden them, and then blame others for stealing them. Subsequently, the person may spend excessive amounts of time searching or rummaging through possessions and becoming upset while doing so. This could mean handling and turning over, again and again, the contents of an item. This behavior can be vexing for caregivers if the person is constantly taking things in and out of closets and cupboards.
Explaining The Link Between Dementia And Distress Caused By Noise
Of all the senses, hearing is the one that has the most significant impact on people with dementia in terms of quality of life. This is because dementia can worsen the effects of sensory changes by altering how the person perceives external stimuli, such as noise and light. As hearing is linked to balance this also leads to a greater risk of falls either through loss of balance or through an increase in disorientation as a result of people trying to orientate themselves in an environment that is overstimulating and noisy.
We know that often people with dementia respond on a sensory level rather than intellectually, for example they will note the body language or tone of voice of staff rather than what they actually say . This sensitivity can change over time and even during the course of a day. This is because people with dementia have a reduced ability to understand their sensory environment. When this is combined with age-related deterioration in hearing, the reality is that people react to their environment rather than being supported or enabled by it.
If other senses are overloaded at the same time as hearing the effect can be a dramatic change in the behaviour of a person with dementia. For this reason, care staff often identify mealtimes as being especially problematic. Research highlights the importance of appropriate background noise for maximum enjoyment at mealtimes, even for people who do not have dementia .
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As You Are Cleaning Separate Items Into Four Boxes Labeled: Keep Donate Store Toss
KEEP are items the person needs or uses every day. Later they will be organized and put in places the person can easily find.
DONATE will go to a local charity.
TRASH is odds and ends: old receipts, papers, broken items, expired food, etc. Anything that has to be thrown away should go into the box and be removed from the home to prevent it being brought back into the house.
STORE are the sentimental items you dont use every day but that are creating too much clutter. These items can be clearly labeled and stored, as long as there is available storage space. Some belongings can be boxed and passed down to a family member as an activity in which conversation and reminiscing is shared.
Disregarding The Law And Other Social Norms
Some people with dementia lose their sense of social norms. Shoplifting breaking into someones house inappropriate interpersonal behaviors, such as sexual comments or actions and even criminal behavior, according to a study published in March 2015 in the journal JAMA Neurology, all make the list of surprising dementia symptoms. This could lead to trouble with the law, too: Early-onset dementia can hit people as early as their thirties and forties, well before anyone around them would consider their out-of-character behavior as a sign of dementia.
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