Downsizing and settling in to an assisted living community can feel overwhelming. As is true of any big change in life, moving is an adjustment no matter how excited you are for a new chapter. It isn’t uncommon for seniors and adult children to struggle to unpack, organize, and feel at home.

If you or a senior loved one has recently moved or is planning to, we have a few tips that may help make the transition go more smoothly.

4 Tips for Adjusting to Life at an Assisted Living Community

Get involved before you move.

Many people struggle with change. For older adults who lived in their home for decades, moving can be physically and emotionally challenging. Giving up a home that has many fond memories attached to it can be tough. You might find yourself questioning if you are making the right decision.

One suggestion is to get involved at the assisted living community before moving. Ask the life enrichment team how you can do that. With current concerns about the coronavirus, team members are getting creative about keeping residents safely engaged in activities and events. There might be opportunities for you to connect with residents through video chat platforms, such as Zoom or Skype.

Take your time downsizing and moving.

Unless you must move quickly for a health reason or if your house is sold, try to establish realistic timelines. There are so many tasks associated with downsizing and moving that it’s easy to be paralyzed by all of the details. Hosting an estate sale and finding a charity to donate unneeded household items to are time-intensive projects.

Some older adults and their families wait to list or sell the house until after the move. Then you can set up a more reasonable schedule for downsizing and selling the home.

Make the new place resemble the old one.

An all-new environment with unfamiliar faces can be intimidating, especially for more reserved seniors. One step to settle in faster is to make your assisted living apartment look and feel familiar.

As you plan your move, decide how to decorate your new apartment so it resembles home. While you might need to donate or sell some of your furniture and home décor, hang on to your most treasured items. Incorporating a favorite chair or love seat, framed family photos, and other memorabilia can help make your new residence comfortable.

Be kind to yourself as you settle in.

It’s important to remind yourself that you will have good and bad days during this time. Most residents find as the weeks go by, the good days outnumber the bad. Be patient and kind to yourself while you are adjusting to this change.

Some older adults and their families find it helpful to create a plan for handling bad days. It might be an agreement to call an adult child or watch favorite family videos for comfort.

Visit a Five Star Community Today

Whether it’s an in-person visit or a virtual tour of a senior living community near you, there are many ways you can get to know Five Star Senior Living. We invite you to contact us to learn more!

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<!–[CDATA[Preparing for a move to an assisted living community can feel overwhelming. From touring a variety of communities to creating a budget, the process takes time and patience. You might think that once you’ve settled on a community, the tough stuff is behind you. While making the decision on where to move to can be a challenge, preparing for the transition is when the real work begins. 

Here are a few tips to help you transition from home to an assisted living community.

4 Tips for Making a Successful Transition to Assisted Living 

Tip #1: Get involved ahead of time

One fear many older adults have as they prepare for this move is that their family and social connections will abandon them. Long-time friends might move out-of-town to be near their adult children. Family members will get busy and visit less and less. 

While some of these types of fears might come true, a senior living community offers many opportunities for making new friends and building new connections. It can help make the transition a little easier if you get involved with social activities before you actually move in.

Talk with the staff at the senior community you are moving to and see what activities and events are scheduled. Make plans to attend a few each week. Also ask to be introduced to residents who share your interests and hobbies, as well as those who will be your new neighbors.

Tip #2: Create an environment that looks and feels familiar

Some seniors and their families are tempted to sell everything and buy all new furniture, bedding, and home accessories to celebrate this new chapter in life. But when everything is new and unfamiliar, it can add to the amount of time it takes to feel like you are home. 

On moving day, unpack and remove boxes from the apartment or suite. Place old, familiar belongings around you. Re-creating your current surroundings in your new home can help ease the transition. Waiting to redecorate until you are moved in and settled might be a better approach.

Tip #3: Plan for good days and bad days

Even with careful and thoughtful planning, there will be ups and downs after the move. This is a big transition and it’s natural for some days to be better than others. Give yourself permission to grieve things left behind, while still making it a priority to embrace this change and the new opportunities it presents. 

Tip #4: Be patient with your new neighbors and staff

Getting to know the staff and residents at the community is a process for everyone involved. Things may not go as planned as you learn more about one another and the staff learns how to support your needs. Be patient and kind and try not to be too hard on yourself or others.

A Unique Approach to Life at Five Star Senior Living

At Five Star communities across the country, we take a unique approach to helping residents make the most of each day. One way we do that is through our Lifestyle360 program. 

Lifestyle360 is our holistic approach to wellness and active living. This program enriches residents’ lives by focusing on each of the five dimensions of wellness. From chair yoga to computer classes and bird watching, we work hard to ensure that each resident lives their best quality of life. 
 

The holidays are a season when families often gather together to celebrate. For those who are separated by great distances, it may be the first time all year everyone has been reunited. Loved ones are frequently caught off guard by the decline they see in an older family member. This is one reason senior living communities often experience a spike in phone calls from adult children during late December and early January.

While touring an assisted living community may not have been part of your original holiday plans, it can actually be a good time to visit. From the festive decorations to the hustle and bustle of activities, here’s what to know about visiting an assisted living community during the holidays.

Why Visit an Assisted Living Community During the Holidays?

1. The community is lively and fun

It’s not just the holiday décor that makes the community seem so lively and fun. Assisted living communities also have very full life-enrichment calendars during the holiday season. Many of these activities and events are intergenerational gatherings, such as elementary school choir concerts and visits from scouting troops.

Families tend to visit more during the holidays, as well. This will provide you with an opportunity to talk with them about how satisfied they are with the community’s care and support.

2. Beat the post-holiday rush

Though family members may realize a senior loved one needs more assistance during their holiday visit, they often delay contacting assisted living communities. Many put off making calls and scheduling visits until after the holidays are over. This makes January one of the busiest times of year for assisted living communities.

If you start researching and touring communities in December, your aging parent or relative will likely have more open apartments or suites from which to choose.

3. The entire family can help

One of the best reasons for touring assisted living communities during the holidays is that more family members may be in town. You can divide up the research and the tours. If adult children conduct initial phone calls and visits, they may be able to eliminate options that aren’t a good fit for the senior. Then family members can all return together to visit those that seem like the most viable options.

Schedule Your Holiday Tour at Five Star Senior Living

If you will be visiting assisted living communities on a loved one’s behalf, we hope you will consider Five Star Senior Living. You can find a community near you or call us to schedule a time!

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You’ve finally convinced your aging parent that they need a little help with household chores and activities of daily living (ADLs). You’ve selected an assisted living senior community that fits their needs, personality, and their budget.

But you might still be expecting some resistance from your aging loved one about the move to assisted living.

Helping a Senior Loved One Prepare for a Move

These tips will help the move go smoothly:

1. Empower Your Senior Loved One
If possible, encourage your loved one to play a deciding role in choosing their senior community. Let them decide on the furnishings and décor, what comes with them and what they leave behind. You may even lay out a floor plan on graph paper or on a computer or tablet, so they can consider the furniture placement and what items will fit in their new home.

As you proceed to pack and schedule the move, let your loved one choose the moving day.

2. Visit the Community Several Times
Prepare your loved one for what’s to come by spending time together at the community before the move. Get to know the staff, as well as other residents and family members. Open the lines of communication and encourage your loved one to ask any questions they might have.

3. Talk, Talk, Talk
Discuss everything—even the seemingly trivial details. To your loved one, moving to assisted living may feel like relinquishing control of their life. Give them some of that control back by involving them in decisions.

4. Decorate Like Home
Don’t treat your loved one’s space in the senior community like a hotel room. It will be their new home. Hang their favorite artwork on the walls, set up picture frames with family photos and give your senior family member a chance to surround themselves with items they love.

The move could even be an opportunity for your aging parent to reinvent their sense of style and choose bold, unique colors they might not have selected for their previous home.

5. Ease the Transition
Make plans to spend all of moving day with your loved one, advises Patricia Bowen, a senior move manager at Get Ready for Tomorrow. Once you’ve helped set up their apartment, join some of the on-site activities, walk the grounds, and share a meal together in the dining room.

6. Make Time for Your Emotions, Too
Give yourself time and permission to recognize the loss that comes from moving a loved one to assisted living. You might gain free time and peace-of-mind, but it can also feel a bit like empty nest syndrome. When all the packing, moving, and decorating is done, reward yourself with some quiet time.

Join Us for a Personal Tour
Five Star Senior Living communities look and feel like home. Find out more by scheduling your personal visit today!

Since the process of helping a parent transition to assisted living is such a personal journey, the way you organize your search is up to you. Sometimes it’s best to include your loved one in ALL of the decisions and sometimes it can be better to make larger decisions on your own and narrow their possibilities.
 
While there is no wrong way to go about it, there are definitely pros and cons to consider. Here are a few to think about as you strive to make an informed choice.
 
Pros and Cons of Taking a Parent on an Assisted Living Tour
 
Physical Ability
Pro: If your parent has limited mobility or physical disabilities, choosing to have them join you on your tour of assisted living communities can be a good idea. Seeing how well they navigate the community can make or break the experience.
If they can explore the community with ease and comfort, then you can rest assured that their experience as a resident will be a positive one. If they have difficulty making their way around the community–whether it’s due to poor amenities or environmental factors–it will be easier to cross that option off your list.

Con: Having a parent with limited mobility or physical disabilities can be a real challenge, especially if you want to tour more than one Indiana assisted living communities in a day. Depending on how far you must travel to visit the communities you have decided to tour, it could end up being more efficient to visit the communities on your own and then take your parent back to see only your top choices.

Anxiety about Decision Making

Pro: Is your parent a good decision maker or do they get easily overwhelmed by too many options? If your loved one still has the emotional and cognitive ability to handle decision making, then it could be nice to include them in the process of touring assisted living communities. Allowing them to have more control over the process can help them feel more confident and independent.

Con: If your parent struggles with making decisions, has recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s or dementia, or has anxiety about change then it might be in their best interest to help make the decision for them instead. The process of transitioning into assisted living can be stressful, especially for those who fear change. There’s no need to add unnecessary complications to the experience by forcing a senior loved one to be more involved than they want to be.

Struggling with the Emotional Aspects of Moving

Pro: Being on the same page as your parent when it comes to assisted living is very important. If they have already agreed that it’s time for them to consider assisted living options, then they can most likely handle the sometimes strong emotions that come along with making the transition into assisted living.

Con: If your parent has been struggling emotionally with the decision to move into assisted living, then taking them on a tour might trigger a negative emotional response from them. Be especially careful if they have been stubborn about not wanting to move into assisted living, because taking them on a tour of a community might actually end up backfiring on you. It might be best to tour a few potential communities on your own and narrow down the choices. Then bring your parent back to see the top one or two.

What’s Best for You

 Clearly there is no right answer when it comes to how you should approach visiting assisted living communities. No one probably knows your senior loved one’s needs as well as you do. You should feel confident in the fact that, whatever decision you make, you will be the making the best one for your family.

For additional information and advice about how to help your parent transition into senior living, sign up for our weekly updates. We’ll deliver helpful updates straight to your inbox.

<!–[CDATA[If your senior loved one is preparing for a move to an assisted living community, you probably have many questions. And maybe even a few worries. Will they like the community? How long will it take them to feel at home? What will your new role be in their life? It can be a big transition for the senior and for their family members.

What’s good to remember is that family members are considered part of the community, too. Both staff and residents want to get to know the family members of their new neighbors.

What can you do to build a strong relationship with community staff members?

We have a few ideas you might find helpful.

Building Bonds with Caregivers at an Assisted Living Community

1. Help staff get to know your loved one.

The relationships between caregivers and residents are vital. When team members get to know a resident well, they are better equipped to care for the senior. They are more likely to notice changes in health and well-being earlier so the appropriate interventions can take place.

By visiting regularly, especially in the early days after the move, you have an opportunity to help the staff learn more about your senior loved one. You can encourage your loved one to share their family history, talk about their work lives, and discuss recreational activities. In this way, you can help the bonds begin to build.

2. Show interest in the team members.

Don’t make the conversations all about your senior loved one. Inquire about the staff members’ families and interests. Do they have children or grandchildren? Are they a part-time student at a local university? Showing a genuine interest in staff members will help to establish connections. This can enable both of you to work together toward your loved one’s best interests.

3. Get involved in the community.

Most assisted living communities welcome family involvement. You might be able to help host a community event on a holiday or tag along during an outing to an area restaurant.

If you play piano or another musical instrument, you could volunteer your time to teach residents. The same is true for other talents like computer skills, art, and exercise. Be assured that you don’t need any special skills to get involved at the community. Spending time talking with residents is all it takes.

4. Honor and thank team members.

The team members at assisted living communities work hard to ensure residents live their best lives. These jobs can be emotionally and physically taxing. A few words of sincere gratitude when you visit the community can make a big difference in a team member’s day.

If you have questions about preparing for this transition, our Frequently Asked Questions about Moving to Assisted Living page probably has the answer. We also invite you to call us at (853) 457-8271. We’ll be happy to help!