Over six million Americans have Alzheimer’s, and your mom is one of them. As she enters the middle stages, she’s having a hard time dressing, grooming, and hygiene. How can you best help her?
February’s National Time Management Month is a good time to look at how to best manage your time when helping your mom with personal care tasks. Here are some tips to help simplify grooming and hygiene schedules.
Use Online Calendars and Schedulers
The best way to stay organized is by having lists planned to cover each day, week, and month. Google Drive is free and convenient for this reason. You can implement Google Calendar in the plans to make it easy to track appointments with your mom’s dentist, doctors, and podiatrist.
Keep lists that other family caregivers can also access. As your mom’s grooming and hygiene tasks are completed, you can mark them as done. If another family member takes over, they know what has been completed and what still needs to be completed.
Google Sheets is handy because you can add drop-down data validation to make it easy to note what’s completed or started. Family caregivers won’t lose track of what’s up next.
Use Timers
Timers help keep you on schedule. If you brush and floss your mom’s teeth, set aside 10 minutes. This gives you time if she gets upset or uncooperative. If the timer goes off and you’re not done, move on to something else. When she’s calmer, you might finish.
Have Items Ready to Go
When it’s time to help your mom with her shower, have everything ready. She may not enjoy having you help her with her shower. Keep an extra towel or fast-drying robe that allows her to keep covered up when you wash one area of her body.
For example, if you are washing her back, she could have a robe or towel covering her waist, hips, and legs. It helps preserve some modesty. It also helps her stay warmer, which can help. A bathroom heat lamp might also be of use to keep her warm enough.
The other reason to be organized is that she may not always want to cooperate. You don’t want her running out of the bathroom while you’re trying to find a bath mitt.
Let a Professional Personal Care at Home Aide Help Her With Grooming and Hygiene
Have you considered focusing on your mom’s other care needs? Not only does that make your day a little less hectic, but it may also ease your mom’s discomfort. Hire personal care at home aides to help her with bathing, dressing, hygiene, and grooming.
While someone else handles that, you have free time to take care of yourself and get other chores done. Call a personal care at home agency to learn more.
Providing exceptional Personal Care at Home for seniors and families in the Northern Virginia area, including Arlington, Alexandria, McLean, Reston, Burke, Ashburn, Centreville, Springfield, Manassas, and Oakton. Call today to speak with our caring staff: (703) 272-8838.
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