Transition to Assisted Living with These Three Tips
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Planning is crucial, especially for major life changes. If you are a senior who has been looking into assisted living for elderly care or have a loved one who is considering making this change, it is going to be a stressful time. Even if you’re excited about the prospect, there is still going to be a measure of stress involved in the situation.
Not everyone considers moving to be such a stressful aspect of life, but among life’s many changes, it is one of the top five. Even for somebody excited about the prospect of a new living environment, it will cause stress. That’s why it’s important to be prepared.
We put together a few tips that will help you or an aging senior be better prepared for this move to assisted living.
Tip #1: Start early.
Elderly Care Five Forks SC – Transition to Assisted Living with These Three Tips
In other words, leave yourself enough time to properly pack things up, find new homes for your possessions, mementos, and other items, especially large appliances or furnishings, and avoid the temptation to put things off.
If this aging senior is not thoroughly excited about the prospect of moving to assisted living, he or she may try to drag their feet about getting ready. Encourage him or her to start going through their items, their possessions, photo albums, and everything else they have acquired through the years to figure out what they want to do with them once they move.
If your senior is planning to hold onto their house for a while longer, they may not see the need to start packing everything up, but it’s a good idea because when they choose a quality assisted living facility, they will understand the value in it and won’t want to go back to living alone.
Tip #2: Find out what you can take with you.
Each assisted living facility is different so don’t just assume because one place allows you to take a pet or a fish tank, for example, that others will. Each community will have its specific requirements for furnishings, what is allowed, if residents are permitted to hang pictures or frames on the wall if they can bring their bed, and so forth.
Find this information out sooner rather than later so you can be prepared for this transition when the date arrives.
Tip #3: Secure help for packing up and moving day.
It’s not enough just to have people ready to help you on the day you move, it’s also a good idea to have people helping you along the way. You may need assistance getting things down from the attic, out of closets, boxing up items, moving them into a storage unit, or having them shipped off to family and friends all around the country or even the world.
Make sure the senior has the help needed to get all of this done by the time he or she is ready to move in. If you follow these tips, the transition will go smoother, and be less stressful, and that’s a great way to start one’s new life in this wonderful assisted living community.
