Getting a Grip: Tips for Caregivers

• Secure routine coverage.  Find a walking partner, a good listener who will energize you.
  
  
• Avoid feeding fatigue with stimulants / sugars.
  
  
• Find a way to protect your sleep.  Discuss a plan for corralling night wanderers with your physician. 
  Restraints or sedatives that could lead to falls are ill advised.  If frequent trips to the bathroom are a cause of sleep disruption, treat the culprit.  If pain is disrupting sleep it should be treated.  Managing symptoms is half the battle.  Consider keeping wanderers in a room that is safe and secure.
  
  
• Build short breaks into your day. Find support via email, but beware of unknown correspondents.
  
  
• Simplify. Purge one thing you’ve out-grown every day.  It will help your sense of control.
  For great tips on de-cluttering your life visit www.flylady.net
  
  
• List the tasks that burden and drain you.  Try to delegate those to others.  At the very least, delegate tasks you don’t have time for.
  
  
• Keep multicolored folders for handling paper work:  Place paper to sort on the left, keepers on the right
  
  
  1. Mail folder: Keeps all of your mail in one place to sort through at the end of the week.
     Pay the bills as you sort through this folder.  Place outgoing mail on the right.
     Sort the additional mail into the following folders.
     
     
  2. Tax folder: Put financial papers that need to be saved in the right pocket of a tax folder.
     Have someone trustworthy sort, scan & save your financial papers to a disc.
     Keep really important papers in this folder on the right with the disc, then send scanned papers in the “shred & throw” folder.
     
     
  3. Shred folder: Shred and throw all envelopes / papers with identifiers and personal info.
     Anything that doesn’t need to be shredded should go straight into the garbage.
     
     
  4. Read folder:  Put everything you want to look more closely at in the “read” folder.  You might look through this folder with a cup of tea when you’re in bed. Have your phone, calendar, remembrance folder & garbage with you when you go though it.
     
     
  5. Memory folder: Keep remembrances together. When the folder gets full have someone close. Create a scrapbook of them.