Keep Elderly Care Organized with a Calendar

Elderly Care in Broken Arrow, OK – An Old-Fashioned Paper Calendar Could Be the Key to Keeping Your Family Caregiving Tasks Organized

Organization is key when it comes to creating your elderly care plan. Especially if you are also caring for children, nurturing your marriage, engaged in social or volunteer activities, and managing a career outside of your family care relationship with your elderly parents, being organized and knowing what to expect is essential for getting everything done when and how it is supposed to be done with as little stress and confusion as possible.

While it may seem simple and obvious, one of the most effective and yet commonly-overlooked tool for keeping your elderly care plan organized can be a calendar. While smartphones, tablets, and computers have integrated calendars, using a large paper calendar placed in a prominent location increases visibility and ensures you see it throughout the day rather than requiring you to actually look at the application in your device or wait for a reminder to pop up.

Use these tips for integrating a calendar into your elderly care plan so you can stay organized and confident managing all of your activities, appointments, and other responsibilities:

• Choose a desk-size calendar. A large calendar can demand attention and ensures you can see all of the information on it with just a glance. Rather than using a small wall calendar that you may even start ignoring because the pretty pictures start to look like decoration, choose a plain desk-size calendar that has large blocks for each day as well as space on the side for notes
• Color code the members of your family. Keeping the schedules and needs for several people straight is overwhelming and confusing. Making an obvious visual distinction among the individuals can allow you to quickly and easily recognize who has needs on particular days so you can plan accordingly. This eliminates the need to write a person’s name on each note, cutting down on the clutter on the calendar and saving room for other notes. Give each member of the family a specific color and add a key to the bottom of each page for reference. Then when you need to make a note about something, use that person’s color and just write the need. This simplifies and streamlines the planning process.
• Separate tasks for a caregiver. Your parents’ referred caregiver doesn’t need to know that your daughter has ballet class at 5 on Friday afternoon and your husband has to go in for a dental checkup Sunday morning, but she does need to know that your mother has her bridge game Wednesday night and your father needs to be reminded to take his pills with lunch. If your elderly parents live with you and receive care from a referred caregiver, reduce clutter and make it easier for her to take care of her responsibilities by having a separate calendar for her days. Maintain your calendar with the things you do with your parents, but use another to pinpoint exactly what your parents need for their referred caregiver so she does not have to take time sifting through other notes to find her tasks.