Clutter is definitely irritating, but it can be a bit of a diagnostic tool for you as a caregiver. By digging a little deeper into the clutter situation, you can determine what might be going on.
Clutter Has Physical and Psychological Impacts
Clutter itself has a lot of physical effects on your senior’s environment. In its simplest impacts, it makes the space she’s in physically smaller, which can be a problem in an already small environment. The psychological effects of looking around and seeing clutter are powerful, too. Once it reaches a certain point, your senior may start to feel as if her clutter problem is insurmountable.
Clutter Can Indicate that Your Elder Is Experiencing Cognitive Changes
Changes in how your senior’s brain operates can cause her to change how she approaches clutter and managing it. She might forget to do certain household tasks, for instance, or she might forget what’s in boxes and then allow them to pile up. Trash can get ignored and other activities that might have been part of her regular routine now no longer are. Those changes add up, no matter how small they seem.
More Clutter Can Mean Your Elder Isn’t Able to Keep Up Physically
As clutter starts to build up, it becomes more of a problem to keep up with on a regular basis. Your senior’s health issues or declining energy levels can all contribute to this. Having someone else to handle the mundane daily tasks can help so much. Elder care providers can whiz through straightening, vacuuming, and light cleaning when it might have taken your elderly family member a lot longer to do the same.
Increased Clutter Can Indicate Depression
Sometimes what clutter shows you is an outer representation of someone’s inner world. If your elderly family member is feeling cluttered inside and dealing with emotions that are difficult to manage, that clutter becomes a physical representation in her home. Depression also steals motivation and energy, which your elder needs in order to do battle with the clutter.
Reduced Socialization Is an Indirect Side Effect
The vicious cycle of clutter is that when her home doesn’t look the way she wants it to look, your elder may find that she no longer wants to have people over. This can reduce her socialization considerably, especially if she doesn’t tend to go many places. If your senior is making excuses for you not to come in, she may have a clutter issue.
In some cases, cleaning up the clutter is an easy task to undertake. For other seniors, though, it’s not so simple. Once you start to make headway on the clutter, keeping up with it is crucial. Hiring elder care providers can help your elderly family member to do just that. They can also help with any of the contributing factors that helped create the clutter problem.
If you or an aging loved one are in need of Elder Care Services in Rockville Center NY or the surrounding areas, contact the caring professionals at Star Multi Care Services today at (631)956-8835. We are the Right Choice for Home Health Care Services!
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