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Family Caregiver Tips: Keeping Your Senior Parents’ Home Smelling Fresh and Clean

Home Care in Clayton, NC – Try these Refreshers for Your Senior Loved One’s Home

Homemade SoapsAs a family caregiver for your elderly parents, your primary priority is to provide assistance that helps them fulfill their activities of daily living, keeps them compliant with their doctor prescribed medications and treatments, and ensure their safety. This is not the end of your responsibilities, however. In addition to their physical safety and health, it is important to do what you can to ensure their emotional and mental health to support an all-around high quality of life. Part of this is helping create and maintain a home environment that is comfortable and welcoming.

A big part of the comfort of a home is its cleanliness, but this is not just about removing clutter and keeping things visually clean. For many people, smell is one of the biggest indications of cleanliness and also makes a tremendous impact on their perception of the space. Finding ways to fill the home with fresh, wonderful smells improves your parents’ quality of life by creating a more enjoyable and welcoming home environment.

It is important to remember that you quickly get used to the smells around you. Whether it is an unpleasant odor your parents do not detect anymore because they are just accustomed to it, or a pleasant smell they no longer appreciate because they have smelled it too long, if your parents have gotten used to a smell, you need to take steps to change it. When it comes to the good smells you add to their home, this means changing up the method occasionally so the smell remains evident and engaging.

Try some of these methods for adding wonderful smells into your parents’ home:

  • Deodorizing bars. Take care of dank, unpleasant odors anywhere they linger in your home by combining 2 cups baking soda, 1/2 cup distilled water, and 10 drops of your favorite scent of essential oil until it creates a thick paste. Pour the paste into silicone bar molds and allow to dry for 48 hours until completely dry. Put one of these disks behind the toilet, at the bottom of the trash can, in the closet, or anywhere else you want a fresher smell. Each lasts about a month. After the month is over you can crumble the bar up into the washing machine to add a fresh, clean smell to your laundry. (Source)
  • Baked oranges. Add the invigorating scent of orange throughout the home by cutting oranges in half, setting them on a baking sheet, and baking them at a low temperature to distribute the scent. For a warmer scent, add cinnamon sticks.
  • Vanilla Coffee Candles. Give your parents’ home a warm, inviting scent by creating scented wax disks. Melt down pieces of old unscented candles or wax chips and pour these into a silicone disk mold. Scrape the inside of a vanilla bean and push this caviar along with coffee beans into the wax and allow it to harden. Warm one of these in a potpourri warmer to quickly fill the home with fragrance.

The articles posted on this blog are provided for general information and discussion purposes only.  These articles are not intended to suggest anything with respect to the operations or services of this office.

If you or an aging loved one are considering non-medical in-home care in Raleigh, NC, call Griswold Home Care and speak to one of our caring staff members today. Call (919) 229-8944

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