Do you help your elderly parents manage their home and daily living activities? With summertime here, it’s the perfect time to ensure their home is safe, comfortable, and ready for summer fun. Whether making minor adjustments or arranging in-home care to support their daily needs, preparing for the warmer months doesn’t have to feel overwhelming. You can make it more manageable by breaking it down into three key focus areas.
Before you start, consider recruiting help so you’re not handling everything alone. From family members to service providers to neighbors, having additional in-home care support can lighten your load while ensuring your loved ones get the care they need.
Three Areas of Summer Home Preparation
#1 Outdoor Safety
For your peace of mind and your loved ones’ safety, making sure their home is safe and ready for summer fun is important. Some key areas to inspect include:
- Secure outdoor walking areas. Sidewalks, driveways, and garden paths should all be inspected to make sure they are still even without any tripping hazards. The winter and spring months can easily damage walking areas and create tripping hazards.
- Review all outdoor lights. Summer nights are great for enjoying the yard, either by themselves or with company. Make sure all lightbulbs are clean and working to help prevent any accidental falls.
- Inspect all yard and outdoor elements. Winter weather can loosen railings from their foundations, rot and weaken outdoor furniture, and make elements less secure.
- Look at the trees. The winter and even spring storms could have broken branches that may need to be trimmed to prevent them from falling and injuring someone.
#2 Comfort
Make sure your loved one is comfortable for the summer. It might mean removing window coverings that prevent the cold air from entering the home or double-checking the air conditioning unit to ensure it’s ready for all of the work it’ll have to do in the upcoming warmer months.
This is also the time to help your loved ones set up their outdoor living areas for the summer months by bringing out patio furniture, grills, and plants.
#3 Maintenance
Warmer weather and longer days are often the only times that certain aspects of home maintenance can be done both inside the home and outside of it. Your elderly parents may feel like they are capable of performing such duties, but many home maintenance tasks can put them at risk.
Now is the time to talk about what jobs need to have someone else, like in-home care providers, come to the home and perform them, such as cleaning gutters, lawn care, and window washing.
Preparing the Inside of the Home
The outside looks great, but the inside could use some summer/spring cleaning as well. An in-home care team can help your loved one get their home ready for summer days and nights by assisting with cleaning, routine care, and other home chores.
Ask your loved ones what tasks are difficult for them, and then work with an in-home care team to see where they can step in and provide in-home care assistance so your loved ones don’t need to worry about injuring themselves to get their home in shape for summer.
All your loved ones need to worry about is who to invite over first to enjoy these fleeting days of summer.
If you or an aging loved one is considering In-Home Care in Chapel Hill, NC, please contact the caring staff at Affordable Family Care.
Serving Raleigh, Greensboro, and the surrounding areas in North Carolina. Call today at (919) 676-1070
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