3 Ways to Prepare Before an Aging Loved One Moves in With You
As your loved ones age, they may find it more difficult to maintain a high standard of living in their own home. Rather than arrange for them to enter a nursing facility, you can have them join your family home.
This is an increasingly common arrangement. More older parents are moving in with adult children, with 31.9% of the adult population of the U.S. living in a shared household of two or more adults. Yet, it isn’t a step that should be taken lightly. Having a parent or other loved one move in with you requires careful and considerate planning.
Let’s take a moment to explore three ways you can prepare before an aging loved one moves in with you.
Set Boundaries
Having your aging loved ones move in with you can be an enriching experience for everyone involved. That isn’t to say it will be entirely stress-free, though. There’s a lot of emotional and practical baggage surrounding parents or grandparents sharing space with their adult relatives. One of the ways to mitigate conflicts is to set clear boundaries.
Get together before the moving process begins and discuss this issue openly. Be honest about what your individual concerns are about the arrangement and aspects you each feel will be difficult. Establish where you believe you should draw lines in the shared living arrangements.
Boundary areas may include:
Maintaining one another’s privacy
If you have children, asserting your position as the authority figure
Paying for bills
Decorating or organizing the home to individual preferences
Protocols for inviting guests and hosting gatherings
Acceptable times for noise or disruptive activities
Adjust for Accessibility
Your aging loved ones may have different accessibility needs compared to you and your family. Therefore, the current design of your home and its features may not make for a practical or comfortable environment for older occupants. It’s vital to consider what adjustments need to be made to make the space safe for your relatives and their guests.
Talk to your loved one about the challenges they tend to face in the home. Discuss whether they require handrails to be installed in bathrooms or for non-slip flooring to be laid. It’s not uncommon for aging loved ones to need wheelchairs or other mobility aids to maintain their independence. You may, therefore, need to widen doorways or install ramps in entryways and over steps.
While there are costs associated with this, many older people get help paying for ramps through Medicare and Medicaid and and Medicaid. This can reduce the financial burden on your family significantly. However, reimbursement generally only applies when ramps are medically necessary. Therefore, it’s wise to collaborate with your loved one in making applications to meet the requirements in your state. You may need to get confirmation from a doctor that home adaptations are medically required.
Consolidate Belongings
Up until now, you and your aging relative will have lived largely independent lives. During that time, you’ll likely each have gathered a collection of personal belongings. Some of these will have sentimental value. Yet, often it’s not practical to fit the entire contents of both of your homes in one space. It’s important to prepare for the move by mindfully consolidating items.
Making decisions about what to keep can tie into many of the other considerations that go into arranging for your parents to move closer to you. Think about their current lifestyle and what elements support their activities. If they have pets, you’ll need to look at items that are not just important to your loved one but also to the animal. You should also discuss the potential stress of the move itself, and how a lot of packing can exacerbate this. But it’s good to think about what will give them comfort once they’ve arrived, too.
Be open to discarding some of your own items. Though, it’s important to remember that you will certainly already be doing your part by providing them with space in your home. Aim to take a balanced and fair approach to your decisions. Indeed, this can be a template for your living arrangements together moving forward.
Conclusion
If an aging loved one is moving in with you, considerate preparation is a must. Take the time to set clear boundaries to ensure good living conditions for everyone. Review what accessibility adjustments may be necessary for your loved one’s mobility. You’ll each have a lot of belongings, so a considerate purge or consolidation of items may be in order, too. Shared living arrangements between multiple adults aren’t always easy, but your preparations can help you start off on the right foot.
