We have one of those electric kettles that automatically turns off. Love it…and it’s way faster than the stove anyway. Use it for anything that needs boiling water.
For coffee for the elder…a Keurig. No way to leave the pot on.
In our family, we had to flip the circuit on the stove because MIL has some mat on top of it and kept turning it on. Then we got smarter and just took the knobs off and put them in a place she couldn’t find them…so others could cook there if needed.
We got Corelle dishes. Yes, you can break them, but it’s very hard. They are light weight which is a plus.
No car keys in the house. Getting rid of the car would be good, but that’s another story.
Removed ALL throw rugs from the house. Every single one. A slipping hazard.
Stopped a bunch of subscriptions. Elder wasn’t reading them anyway.
The best safety thing we had for my dad was getting him to agree to a life alert system. He had a few falls where he couldn’t get to the phone but was able to call for help with the alert “necklace” button.
The company also had a lockbox on his door for first responders so they wouldn’t have to break in.
The other safety measure was getting my dad to agree to using the senior transportation van for doctor’s appointments. Anything to facilitate him driving less!
Also yes to removing throw rugs and encouraging the use of a cane and walker as needed.
Liberally installing additional handrails and grab bars — near the toilet (to help with standing up), in the shower, near stair landings. Even if there’s protest that the grab bars aren’t needed, they end up getting used.
My FIL got a blood clot in his leg and ignored the pain. This was during Covid. Short story is they cut off his leg and then he got an infection and died. Come to find out he wasn’t taking his medicines correctly. My MIL was constantly in and out of the hospital. I took over filling her pill containers only to learn she wasn’t taking her meds correctly either! We got her the Hero medicine dispenser via Medicare about 2 years ago and she hasn’t been to the hospital once. My H fills the machine, gets alerts when she doesn’t dispense her pills. It really has been wonderful.
This isn’t exactly a safety thing but one of the most confusing things for my mom when she was in assisted and then memory care was the difference between her mobile phone (was a nokia back then) and the tv remote control. When the phone would ring, she’d pick up the remote and try to answer it and say “no one is there” or try to turn the tv channel or on or off using the phone. Bless her heart (not southern snark) - she really was trying. I finally printed a picture of an telephone handset with rotary dial and cradle and put it over the screen (she wouldn’t read it anyway) so she would know that was the phone. A list of numbers was taped to her end table where the charger was. The staff told me to put duct tape over all the buttons on her tv remote except the UP and Down channel and volume buttons on the remote because she couldn’t remember any channels anyway but this way she could at least change them and hear them (or not).
These are some of the things we’ve done for ourselves:
grab bars by our toilets and shower, as well as in one guest bathroom
Zojirushi water boiler - bought after overheated water “exploded” in the microwave
Keurig - H is in a fog in the morning and would never remember to turn off his old coffee maker or would remove the pot before the machine finished and hot coffee poured onto the counter
keypad locks on the door into the garage and from the garage into the house, as well as on the gate
motion sensor light controls for several rooms
outlet covers with built-in nightlights that direct light toward the floor plus emergency/auto-on lights for power outages in other rooms
under cabinet low voltage LED strip lights beneath kitchen and bathroom cabinets that could be left on 24/7
no steps anywhere and very low thresholds at entrances, plus 36" wide doors to allow for easy use of a walker or wheelchair
custom cabinets made lower on side with cooktop so I no longer have to use a riser to see into tall pots on the big burners at the back
lower vanity in my bathroom
Corelle dishes for everyday use - must easier for my arthritic hands with Carpal Tunnel
12)removed the area rug in our bedroom after I tripped over a corner that had somehow gotten turned up
I love these things. A dimmer switch for a bedside lamp. No fumbling for a light switch on a lamp–tiny indicator light to show it’s location in the dark. Made a huge difference for my dad. Easy to see in the dark when needed and no reaching up to turn on lamp.
I am a property manager for low income seniors age 62+. If I get started on ideas, I may not finish!
I like all of the suggestions already made.
I would also suggest considering a tub cut out for households that only have showers within a bathtub. They cost me around $500 each plus labor to do it for convertible ones, where you could put the piece back in and use the tub as a tub. Without the convertible part, the tub is rendered useless. I am not sure how much they are in a regular retail store. Menard’s and Lowe’s would have them, Amazon may as well.
Speaking of the shower…a seat for the shower is a good idea too. And a shower sprayer that can also be hand held. Much easier than getting in and out of any tub.
We like our touch control nightstand lamps. Any hand touch at the base turns it on, and subsequent touches make the light brighter and brighter and then turn off.
The chair does not help if a person has a hard time lifting their leg up and over the side of the bathtub to get into the shower unless it is like a double chair that straddles the side of the tub, where the person can sit down and slide over.
Alexa to turn on and off lights. No fumbling in the dark!
Soap in a cut off leg of a pair of stickings, tied to the grab rail. This way, it never falls on ground so never requires pick up in a slippery environment, and is always available. (I would love to take credit for this, but my mom’s OT came up with this one.)
When my Mom was losing it my SIL thought one of those electric kettles would be a good idea. My Mom put it on the stove…
We never found a medicine system that my mother wasn’t able to subvert. In the end the best thing was to get the prescriptions simplified so you weren’t taking one pill 3x a day, another 4x a day etc.
My Mom frequently lost her wallet so my SIL put one of those locator things in it. My Mom forgot what it was for and took it out.
Now all the parents are gone and I guess it’s time to proactively figure out how to simplify our life so we don’t aggravate our kids as much!
About those Corelle dishes… when I was living with a bunch of Caltech students and we started talking about how they were supposedly unbreakable which seemed very unlikely. Being scientists of course they did the experiment. It turns out that it shatters into a million pieces if you throw it on the floor. Much messier than stoneware!
We found this out first hand when our daughter dropped one on our ceramic tile floor. It truly seemed like a million pieces. We were still finding shards months later. I think we found one on top of the refrigerator or somewhere crazy like that.
The biggest thing with some of these safety things is the ability for the user to remember to use them. We have one of the pill things for MIL…but someone has to be there every morning to make sure she actually takes the pills. We were finding them all over the house…and floor. So now, the caregivers get there in time to make sure she actually takes her meds.
We have some touch and voice activated things. She doesn’t remember they are even there…never mind use them.
But these certainly work for others…so keep the ideas coming!
Going thru this with FIL now. He is only early 70’s but has been widowed and retired for 20 years. He is a social person and without a routine it has affected him cognitively. It is hard to tell if he is forgetting things or just refusing to do them. He’s been in 2 car crashes recently with one requiring a new car and the other major repairs (not to mention he did this crash 4 hours from home and made my husband coordinate it all). He relies on my husband for basically everything. I see the toll it leaves on my husband mentally trying to manage 3 houses (as we are taking over his dad’s lake cabin as well). FIL literally does nothing for himself. Wont set up his pills, expects his son to do all his cleaning and laundry and grocery shopping. I have told my husband over and over again that eventually his dad needs to realize he loves his son more than he loves that house. I get that leaving your house is hard and emotional (I’ve done it twice now). I get that losing independence is scary. FIL goes to Florida every winter and is SO much better there as he has tons of friends in the complex and is more on a routine. I wish he would see that thinking about a senior living apartment complex would actually give him MORE freedom!
