Caregiver with a messy house.

Hi @anncgrl,
You started a new discussion perfectly. Caregivers is the group. "Caregiving and Reality" is a discussion within that group as is this new discussion. Make sense?

Have you ever considered hiring a house cleaner? It took me a while to convince my mom to get a house cleaner when my dad was ill. She thought it an unnecessary expenditure and my dad didn't want a "stranger" in his house. When things got to be too much, she got a recommendation from a friend. Well that was 4 years ago. My dad passed away 3 years ago, but the house cleaner is still a bi-weekly fixture that I don't think she'll ever give up.

At this point I need a clean-up crew first and the idea does appeal to me. I am embarrassed to let someone in and show them the depth of my disrepair.Pride goeth before a fall which may come true if I stumble over one more thing! Good suggestion!

Hi @anncgrl Scott here again. No caregiver can keep all the balls of caregiving in the air all the time. Like you, my wife and I were good housekeepers and while not cleanniks, we did keep our home clean and clutter-free. That went bye-bye when her demands increased and my time available stayed at only 24 hours a day 🙂 In our case, and this again is only in our case, my wife could not tolerate anyone else in our home and especially was sensitive to any smell in the house out of the ordinary. So while I did lots of wiping up with scent-free Clorox wipes, etc. You couldn't believe what our home looked like towards the end. I became an advocate of "out of sight out of mind". Luckily we have a downstairs and that became the repository for everything I did not have time to deal with. Offseason clothing, decorations, gifts that didn't work out or weren't needed at that point in my wife's journey. I simply told anyone who visited 'don't look downstairs and if you do, just ignore it.' Not a person ever commented. Family knew, in their hearts, I was on the verge of drowning in caregiving duties so the 'condition' of the house was secondary, or tertiary at best. I have not gotten our home back up to snuff yet, but I am working on it! You might find the attached photo of interest. This is what I needed!

Know that you must focus your energy on the critical caregiving needs. For me that was my wife's care, the bathrooms, kitchen, and washing clothes. All else, as I said, got pushed to the wayside.

Colleen's idea is great if you can manage it!

Peace and strength!

A picture really is worth a thousand words! Thank you for sharing your experience. I don't feel as if caregiving is taking up most of my day but I suspect there is an awful lot that goes on inside of me that I do not recognize in terms of emotional exhaustion and the impact of constant awareness. These traits have become so ingrained in me through looking after my parents and now my husband that I do not see them but I am certain they exist and drain me. It is my nature to have expectations of myself that are unrealistic. Thank you for your reply and for the picture. WOW!