Easy ways to make a home more livable for older relatives

Over the course of a life well-lived, it's easy to acquire another set of dishes, to keep the suit you wore to your son's wedding and hang on to tons of other items.

For seniors, a bad back or sore knees can make dealing with all these possessions trickier — especially if illness or disability enter the picture.

For many older people, home organization can mean more than just storing stuff. At extremes, it can make the difference in whether a person can live independently.

Christina Ersig learned that during the final three years of her grandmother's life. As her grandmother was losing her strength, Ersig focused on helping her continue to live in her own home.

"You really have to get creative with their limitations," says Ersig, a former advertising account executive who became a professional organizer in Louisville, Ky., after her grandmother's death.

"You have to do everything you can to help them continue to live the life they love," she says of older people.

When her grandmother was using a walker, Ersig placed Tupperware dishes with matching lids on the lowest cabinet shelf near the microwave.

"She had this Fiestaware, which are the world's heaviest dishes," Ersig says. "I finally told her, 'These dishes are beautiful, but they're just not practical for you anymore."'

Her grandmother insisted on doing her own laundry and using liquid detergent, but the bottles were too heavy for her. So Ersig kept about two inches of detergent in a spare bottle her grandmother could handle.

Changing routines

Ersig's family is not alone. About 90 percent of the 41.5 million Americans over age 60 hope to grow old at home or in their community, according to AARP.

The key to aging in place, experts say, is to embrace rather than deny the need to adapt living spaces to meet physical changes as mobility, eyesight and hearing decline.

Many people incorrectly fear that remaining at home requires extensive, expensive renovations to accommodate a wheelchair, such as replacing a bathtub with a roll-in shower or putting a bedroom and full bath on the first floor.

But there are dozens of minor ways to make homes more senior-friendly at very little cost and in just a few hours. The chief requirement is creative thinking.

Modifications can be as generic as replacing doorknobs, which can be difficult for arthritic hands to turn, with lever-style handles. Or they can be as specific as Jeanne Crockett's solution of relocating the coffee maker in her Baltimore row house.

For years, she or her husband, Jeffrey Schraeder, would pad downstairs to the kitchen every morning and carry just-brewed coffee up to the second-floor library. But when Schraeder, 62, took a fall last year, Crockett, 59, had what she calls a "light bulb moment" about their morning routine.

"You haven't even had coffee yet, and here you are climbing the stairs with a hot pot and two mugs in hand every morning," she said. "It started to feel dangerous." Solution: She moved the java station up near the second-floor bedroom.

Safety first

Crockett was wise to anticipate trouble. Each year, falls cause an average of 5.1 million injuries and deaths in adults older than 60, says Meri-K Appy, president of the Home Safety Council, a nonprofit research group in Washington, D.C.

Serious falls can create lasting physical problems that lead to loss of independence, Appy says, and yet "they are very preventable without spending a lot of money." Her suggestions include putting lights at the top and bottom of all stairways for better visibility.

Each home and each patient's condition will bring in unique safety considerations, says physical therapist Bernie Didio of Louisville, Ky. For instance, for a person who has had a stroke and is paralyzed on one side, rearranging furniture can help him function using his "good" side.

A cardiac patient's big issue, however, might be conserving energy. Going to a bathroom on the other side of the house from the den where she's watching TV, he says, might be too exhausting. That person could benefit from a recliner and TV in a room closer to the bathroom.

Create a family plan

Older people tend to have a lot of possessions they don't want to get rid of, adds Didio. And that's not a problem as long as their stuff doesn't interfere with their mobility or daily functioning.

"People always ask me, 'So what do I have to get rid of?' " he says. "I tell them, 'You don't have to get rid of anything, but you might need to move it out of the way."'

Didio suggests gathering the family on a Saturday or Sunday to come up with a room-by-room game plan.

Remember it is essential to keep the older person involved in the decision-making, he says. "Older people — especially older people who are ill — already have a sense of loss of control."

Determine which of the possessions are most important, which are necessary for daily life and which have the most sentimental value. A person who eventually goes into assisted living may have to make more difficult choices to pare the list down even further, he says.

Ersig says many older people hang on to things no one else understands.

"They may have an old metal sausage grinder and say, 'I may still want to make my own sausage someday,' " she says.

Just box it up, keeping records on what box it's in and mark your calendar for a year from now. If, in a year it hasn't been used, it might be time to donate it, she says.