Helping Your Loved One Keep His Home Clean

If your elderly loved one has recently become a widow or widower, they might find they are living in a home in which there are numerous things they don’t know how to do. It’s not uncommon for couples to split home chores by always having one person take care of some things and the other person take care of other tasks, but when one of them passes away, especially if it was unexpected, the remaining partner may find themselves in a home they don’t know how to maintain.

Common Chores Your Loved One May Need Help With

• Yardwork. If your loved one is in a home where their spouse used to take care of the yard and outside areas, they may need help with mowing, gardening, shoveling, and other outdoor maintenance projects.
• Meals. For some couples, one spouse did all of the cooking, which never allowed for the other spouse to learn even the basics about cooking. Your loved one may not know how to safely prepare raw chicken, how to cook eggs, or how to shop for the ingredients needed to make spaghetti. Instead of allowing them to become completely dependent upon prepared and frozen meals, they might need some tutoring on how to cook for themselves.
• House Cleaning. It could be that your loved one never gave much thought to dusting, mopping, window cleaning, or wiping the counters because they never needed to. And let’s not forget the bathroom. That area might also have been completely taken care of by one spouse. It won’t take long for your loved one’s home to get very dirty if they don’t either learn how to do these things or have someone come and help them out.
• Pet Care. It doesn’t matter what kind of pet your loved ones have, that pet will need some type of care – from feeding to cleaning to possible routine vet visits.
• Driving. Another chore that often gets managed by just one person in a relationship is driving. If the person who passed away did all of the driving, your elderly loved one may no longer feel comfortable driving certain places or at certain times of the day. It’s also possible that the vehicle they have is not suited for your loved one to drive, either being too large or too small. They might need a completely different vehicle if they now need to drive themselves around.

Getting Household Chore Assistance

Finding help for these chores can occur in a couple of ways. First, it might mean helping your elderly loved one learn how to do a specific chore, such as cooking a meal from scratch or mowing the lawn. The next option is often finding someone to do the chore for the person, especially if it is a strenuous chore that the surviving partner cannot do. In these cases, family and friends may be able to step in and help occasionally, but for consistent, reliable assistance, you might choose to retain a home care team that will send home care providers to the home regularly to help with these tasks that your loved one cannot do on their own. Home care providers can help with meals, cleaning the home, some pet care, and even transportation.

If you or an aging loved one are considering Home Care in Kannapolis, NC, contact the caring professionals at TenderHearted Home Care today. Call us at (704) 612-4132