Taking Care of The Elderly

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You may have seen examples of hoarding on television or the movies. Usually, it is a police show and someone is finding a body that is buried in years of accumulated trash. Or perhaps you have seen some of the reality shows where an individual who is a hoarder gets professional help.

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But it is not always like that. Hoarding doesn’t just mean piles of newspapers, or soiled clothing, or bags of human excrement, or (and this is just horrible) discovering the remains of one or more old family pets or vermin.

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It means that they just don’t throw things away. Perhaps they grew up poor and now cannot bear to toss out something they might need later. If they have hobbies, like sewing or crafting, then I can guarantee they will have boxes of “projects I am getting to later.”  LOTS of boxes.

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If they read a lot, they may have several copies of the same book, because they forgot they already had it.

If they don’t cook anymore, they may have a lot of expired cans or boxes of food.

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Or, they could just have lived a long time and had a lot of “space” to fill.

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When we moved my parents to a facility, we had to condense a three bedroom house, a packed full to the rafters (not kidding, they had stuff in the rafters) garage, and a shed out back stuffed to capacity. This was the result of 50+ years of married life, growing up without a lot of money, and, well, growing up in the 40’s and 50’s.

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Some things they were oddly not emotional about, my mom’s wedding dress, box after box of movies, and the shirt my mom made my dad when he was in the navy so many years ago.

And then there was the flip side. NO. Don’t throw it away. Keep it. Give it away. It got so bad that we eventually had a “give away” box (several actually) that we “gave away” to the trash can…a lot.

There were candles that had melted down to about an inch high. Gone

Half assembled patterns without any instructions or actual purpose. Gone

Years worth of daily calendars. Gone.

But happily, no family pets or vermin were discovered.

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If you have a similar situation, start sorting now and getting rid of stuff.   Make it a family event every 3 or 4 months.  Your parents will thank you. They will be sure that Mary gets the piano, that Bob gets the Star Trek DVD series and that Alice gets her favorite rocking chair. And they will be happier living with less clutter. (Don’t let them fill it up again!)

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Note: if they want to give you something during this process that you don’t want, take it anyway. When you get out of their presence, toss it or drop it off at Goodwill if it is in good enough shape. The point is to help them get rid of things.

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If you do not have a similar situation…thank your parents.  Seriously, thank them a LOT.

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If all else fails, rent a storage facility, move all the flotsam there, and sort it out of sight of the parents. That’s what we ended up doing.

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Oh, and on a side note, I found that I am much more reluctant to buy things right now.  I have decided I have enough “things.”