Your mom’s doctor suggested sitting down with your brothers and sisters to talk about your mom’s changing mobility. She’s having a harder time with day-to-day chores, and her doctor feels personal care services are the best way to help her stay in her home.
You aren’t sure what that covers. Here’s a guide to the services that are often part of the personal care services menu.
Cleaning and Laundry
Cleaning and laundry services are part of personal care services. Your mom struggles to remove her bedding and carry the dirty sheets, blankets, and comforters to the laundry room. Since it’s hard for her to do these chores, she rarely changes her sheets anymore. That’s one area where homemaker services will help.
Your mom can sweep her hardwood or tile floors, but the vacuum is too bulky. She trips on the cord and struggles to carry the vacuum upstairs to the bedrooms. That’s another area where caregivers can help her with household cleaning chores.
She’ll have help wiping down and sanitizing counters, cooking surfaces, and sinks. She can have caregivers sterilize doorknobs, phones, and handles. They will do the laundry, fold it when it’s dry, and make her bed with clean sheets. They’ll dust shelves and furniture like entertainment centers, too.
Grocery Shopping and Meal Preparation
It’s been a while since your mom was able to do the grocery shopping on her own. She has a hard time inventorying her food supplies. Items pushed back in cabinets or on upper shelves are out of her reach. She ends up buying things she already has in stock.
Caregivers can help her keep track of the items she needs to purchase. They’ll help her develop a weekly menu, build a shopping list from her meal plan, and take her shopping. It doesn’t matter if she can’t read the fine print anymore, as caregivers can read labels for her.
Once the groceries are purchased, Caregivers Ashburn can carry them to the car, load them into the car, and drive your mom back home. There, the caregiver puts groceries away and prepares meals and snacks.
Organizing the Kitchen and Bathroom
Your mom’s senior care aides can go through her cabinets and refrigerator and check the expiration dates from time to time. Items that are expired are disposed of properly.
Before putting things back, the caregiver can help organize your mom’s foods and medications. She’ll find items easier to locate when they’re in a specific cabinet or on a particular shelf.
Pet and Plant Care
Your mom often forgets to water her plants. She ends up giving them too little or too much water. She can’t take the dog out on a leash without someone helping her. Again, these are all part of companion care services.
Hire caregivers to help her water her plants or do it for her. Caregivers can remind her when to feed her pets, take them outside, or give them their medications.
That’s just a small selection of the most commonly arranged senior care services that help with tasks of daily living. Call a senior care agency to learn about these and other services designed to help your mom stay in her current home.
