Hello, and welcome to Future Proof Your Home and AARP Quick Learning. I'm Anne Jordan, and I'll be your host. Most of us want to stay in our homes because home is where we feel safe, right? But as we age, our safe place can pose some new challenges. If you're in your forever home, whether you're 30, 40, 50, or 60, you'll probably need to make some adjustments for a future you. Today we'll talk to a retired occupational therapist, a profession that helps people continue to live independently, about what changes you might want to consider, and when it's time to plan and implement those changes. And we'll speak with a homeowner who's in her 40s about her vital role helping her loved ones remain at home, and her plans for her own home for the next two decades. Joining me is Rebecca Murchie. Rebecca is a retired occupational therapist who volunteers with the AARP Wyoming State Office. I'm also joined by Jen Bayer. She is Rebecca's staff partner, and she has considerable experience helping her loved ones remain at home. Thanks to both of you for being here. Thank you. Jen, I mentioned that you stepped in to help your family members continue to live independently at home. Who did you help, and why was this important to you? Yeah, so after working at AARP for 18 years, family members start to come to us and ask questions. And so I've helped my grandparents, both maternal and paternal, I've helped my in-laws, and I've helped my parents. Rebecca, is there a specific moment or circumstance from your years helping people that you think is important to share? Well, in my role as an OT, I often did home safety assessments when people were getting ready to discharge from the hospital. One of the things that became clear was folks hadn't taken the time to think about whether their homes were going to accommodate any changes. So very often people weren't able to go home as soon as they had hoped because their home environment wasn't conducive. Yeah, yeah, that's such a good point. Well, you have so much experience to share. What are some of the significant challenges, and what decisions can we make that lead to success? Some of the challenges include stairs, entryways, in general sort of the traffic flow or the freedom of the house to move around. Bathrooms are a big area that create problems for people. And so we need to start looking at things like adding railings to our stairs, maybe grab bars to the bathroom, maybe a walk-in shower versus a bathtub, grab bars, grab bars in place of towel wraps. And then the lighting in a house is very important as well. You mentioned a lot of changes we can make. So it sounds like if we want to be able to stay in our home for the rest of our life, it seems very likely we're going to need to make some improvements. Rebecca, what other kinds of changes do we need to consider? When is the right time to start planning? The right time is now. And some of the changes are to look at particularly our entrances to our homes, stairways, bathrooms, general spaces, keeping in mind that we might need to, in the future, use some kind of mobility device to get around like crutches or canes or walkers, maybe even a wheelchair, whether permanently or temporarily. So we need to start that process as soon as possible so that we can make sure that the changes that we make are the correct ones, kind of tweak them if we need to. And also, so much of what we do is muscle memory. So making the changes earlier, we get to practice, for example, reaching for a grab bar to get in and out of the bathtub. We get to make it part of our physical routine so that it's automatic and we don't have to think about using those things. Jen, how did you know where to start? What types of projects did you do for your family? Sure. So in every single case, just like Rebecca was saying, it was somebody who had a medical crisis, ended up in the hospital, maybe had an illness, was gone from the home for a time and then came back and they couldn't do something that they used to do. So for example, my grandmother, she could no longer go up for second flight of stairs. So for her, we turned her living room into a bedroom. We cleared all of the rugs away that were tripping hazards, modified her bathroom. We started with the easy stuff that we could do ourselves just so that she could stay in her home as long as she wanted to. Well, it sounds like you were able to do a lot of that work on your own. Yeah. Yeah. We could do the simple things. Rebecca, what improvements are too often overlooked? Widening doorways, especially for bathrooms. A lot of times bathrooms have these tiny doorways that make it impossible to get in if you're using a walker. Looking at the surface heights when in a home, making sure that chairs are the right height, beds, couches, toilets, and a good rule of thumb is to kind of look at someone's height of their kneecap. A surface height should be right at your kneecap to enable easy up and down. And then stairways, making sure that there's railings on both sides and entryways. Rebecca, what projects are too big to tackle on our own? When should we consider working with a contractor? When you're looking at doing bathroom modifications or entryways, adding a ramp. And it's good not only to work with contractors, but to maybe call in another professional. There are independent living specialists out in the community. Many senior centers have them, or a PT or an OT, to help make sure that the changes that you're going to make are ones that are going to be suitable. Because there's guidelines, but then there's also individualizing it to the person. I'm sure that working with a contractor and also those other professionals you mentioned can get really expensive, but then again, long-term care can also be expensive. Jen, did you ever compare these costs? Oh, we did. So the- They're crazy. They are. So I think the national average of an assisted living right now is about $4,000 a month. And the national average of nursing home care, full nursing home care is like 10,000 a month. So every time we did a project, knowing that this project could help our loved ones stay in their own home longer, it was well worth, though, the money to put the grab bars in and to modify the doorways and to do all the things we could do. Because that's where they wanted to be. They didn't want to be in assisted living or in a nursing home. Well, and being in their own home is the advantage of it's familiar. People do much better in a familiar, safe, comfortable environment. And you know, my in-laws had lived on their family farm for 60 years. So we were just worried that if they needed to leave that family lot, that it just wouldn't go well. So we're glad that they could stay in their own. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And those numbers you said really put it in perspective. So I'm curious, Jen, have you started future-proofing your own home? We have. I don't think we've done as much as we could or should, and so I'm hoping Rebecca's going to give me some tips. But we recently did some upgrades, and a couple of the things that we did and thought about was, number one, our entryway. Because when we would host family gatherings, we were lifting wheelchairs up steps. We made a nice ramp up to the front, just out of pavement. So it looks nice, but we'll be able to roll a wheelchair in there if we need to or get a walker out of it. The other thing that we realized is that all of our bedrooms are on the second floor. We can't change that, but what we could do was make sure that there is space that someday if we need to put a simple elevator in, we can do that. The third thing that we thought about, and I ultimately won, was we added a bathroom. Now, adding a bathroom was expensive, but adding a bathroom off of our master bedroom so that we weren't going to have to walk down along the hallway in the dark at night. So we did that. And then the fourth thing we did is we added laundry hookups on the first floor, because of course our washer and dryer are in the basement. So we're not using them right now, but they're there should we need them in the future, because we would really like to stay in our own home that we built as long as possible. Well, it sounds like you've actually taken a lot of steps. You're inspiring me. Rebecca, do you have any final thoughts to share with us? Yeah, making changes to our home may seem a little bit insurmountable or overwhelming, but if we look at them earlier, like you're doing, Jen, and start taking it little bits at a time, it can really be very manageable. And it can also be a preventative measure as well, fall prevention from having things in place ahead of time. You should come over to my house to make sure that I have got all the things, because I didn't really think about it scientifically. And I would do that. I've done that for several friends. That's perfect. Well, thank you both so much. You've given us so much to think about. For more helpful tips about making your home safe and comfortable, be sure to check out the AARP Homesick Guide at this website. Thanks for watching.

home modifications

safety

independence

aging in place

proactive

Caregiving