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Tag: Home Safety

How to Improve Indoor Air Quality

Posted on by ltcep2023

As you get older, it can be harder to manage your house without help, which can make aging in place harder than it needs to be. If you want to age in place, you may need the help of family members, cleaners, and in-home care to continue living a high-quality life. In-home care can help with daily tasks such as getting dressed, cooking meals, reminders, and helping you stick to a routine. But they may also help with things like laundry and smaller chores that help keep your house clean, like dusting and vacuuming to reduce dust and dander. These are important tasks that improve air quality.

Here are a few things to know about improving air quality for seniors aging in place:

Why Indoor Air Quality Matters for Seniors?

When your house has poor indoor air quality it can have several impacts on your health as a senior. It can lead to more allergies especially if you have animals, extra fatigue throughout the day, irritation of your lungs, headaches, and eye aches. Keeping your house clean is one part of controlling the air quality but there may be more that you or in-home care can do to keep the indoor air quality better. Here are tips you can use to get your air cleaner!

Use an Air Filter

Your home may come with HVAC which has an air filter but you may need to buy an additional one if you have more animals. These can be places around your home to purify the air and keep it cleaner. It will remove dust, dander, hair, and other allergens that could be bothersome. This is crucial to maintaining a clean home. On the other hand, these do require maintenance. You need to change the filter occasionally or clean them out to ensure they are empty and usable. If you don’t clean these out they become clogged, dirty, and may not help the air quality around the house.

Clean Your Vents

Your house will have vents that help the airflow of your home. They will usually push out hot or cold air to keep your house at a lovely temperature. However, these also need to be maintained especially if you own your house, no one else will do it. You need to dust the outside of them regularly, but you may also need to clean the insides of them too. It’s important you dust them to keep your house from spreading allergens. A quick dust on the top of each vent can be done once a week and a deep clean should be done once every few months. This may be something an adult child or house cleaner needs to help you with.

Keep The Carpet Clean

Carpet and rugs can be the best for your home because they trap any dust, dander, and dirt, and it truly won’t spread in the air. But that is good and bad news. Yes, it traps things for you, but that also means you have to clean your rugs and carpets regularly. You should be vacuuming your carpets as often as one time a week. If you have animals you may need to clean the carpets like two or three times a week. In-home care may help you do small areas once a week if you ask them for help!

If you or an aging loved one is considering in-home care in Walnut Creek, CA, please contact the caring staff at Golden Heart Senior Care of Walnut Creek. (925) 203-3039.

Cooking Dangers for Seniors Aging in Place

Posted on by Craig Bass
Senior Home Care in Concord CA
Senior Home Care in Concord CA

As your loved one has gotten older, you might be noticing that she’s avoiding the kitchen a bit more, even if she once loved to cook and prepare meals. While there are plenty of reasons why your loved one may be slowing down in this area, one of those reasons may be that she doesn’t feel safe in the kitchen anymore. This is not illogical reasoning. There are plenty of danger zones in the kitchen that your parent may not be able to safely navigate anymore. Here are a few of them and how senior home care can help seniors stay safe in the kitchen.

Recipes

While recipes are not dangerous, following a recipe is important and for those seniors who are perhaps at the beginning stages of dementia, they may find themselves unable to follow a recipe anymore. While most times it’ll just end up in some poorly made food, not preparing food properly can result in a foodborne illness or some severe stomach upset. Having a senior home care help your parent follow a recipe might be a great way to eliminate this danger.

Cabinets

If your parent has cabinets that are higher up than she can reach, trying to get that heavy mixing bowl from the top shelf could be a real danger. To help reduce this hazard, it might be time to rearrange the cabinets so that all of the items your parent would want are in easy reach. While a step stool can help as well, it can also produce another hazard of a misstep.
If your elderly loved one is wanting to use a mixer that’s out of her reach, senior home care can get it down and ready for her to use.

The Stove

The stove has always been a dangerous place but with less stability and even with depth perception issues, it can become even more dangerous for your senior. Bending down to pull a heavy casserole dish out of a hot stove may cause your parent to fall or stumble into the hot stove. Or she may drop the dish once it’s out, breaking the dish and/or stove door.

Forgetfulness

Forgetfulness can lead to many kitchen accidents and while it can happen to anyone, seniors often struggle with remembering little things that can harm them in the kitchen. Your aging parent may forget to turn off a burner which may burn her when she puts her hand too close, or if she forgets it for hours after leaving the kitchen, could generate enough heat to start a fire.
She may also forget how hot a pan may be and burn her hands when reaching for it by not using oven mitts or a towel.
Finally, she may forget about a meal she’s placed in the oven to cook. While the hope is it just ends up being an over-cooked meal, leaving something in the oven for hours longer than it should be might ruin the oven and even cause a fire.

The good news is that senior home care can help your parent safely navigate the kitchen and take over many of the tasks she can no longer do. Be proactive and look at which parents your aging loved one needs help with today.

Source
https://www.webmd.com/healthy-aging/features/keeping-seniors-safe-in-their-own-homes

If you or an aging loved one is considering senior home care in Concord, CA, please contact the caring staff at Golden Heart Senior Care of Walnut Creek. (925) 203-3039.