It was often the case in the past that as you got older you found that you had to move out of your home due to mobility issues. This can be very hard for people, especially if moving out of their home and into residential care means having to leave their spouse of many years, their family, or the home that they have lived in for a long period of time. Nobody wants to end up on their own and in a strange environment.
However, changes and improvements in the home adaptations industry in recent years means that there are now a wide variety of options available to help people stay in their own homes for longer, stay with their loved ones for longer, and lead as normal an everyday life as possible, which ultimately is what most people want to do.
So, what are the alternatives to having to move out of your home? Of course, every case is different, and in some cases it may be that there is no alternative to moving out of your home. However, there are generally a wide range of things that you can do or changes that you can make to your home which means that you are able to carry on living there, and as technology continues to improve, the solutions to problems continue to increase.
Firstly, if you are not able to get upstairs, and want to be able to carry on doing so in order to go to bed or to go to the bathroom, then installing a stairlift is an obvious alternative to moving out of your home. Quite simply, a stairlift helps you to get from downstairs to upstairs and from upstairs back to downstairs.
However, not every house can accommodate a stairlift, for example if their staircase is too narrow, and some people might not be able to use a stairlift due to the nature of their injuries. This should not necessarily prevent you from getting upstairs, as an alternative to a stairlift is a through floor lift. This could be placed in your living room, and you can either be wheeled into the lift in a wheelchair or walk into it, and then the lift will take you upstairs to your bedroom.
Alternatively, you might not need anything as drastic as a stairlift or a through floor lift. You might still be able to walk, but are less stable on your feet than you used to be. In this scenario, simply installing a handrail on your staircase could give you that extra bit of stability and support that you need when climbing the stairs, and is a quite simple and cost effective way to make getting around your own home that bit easier.
Of course, another solution to not being able to go upstairs is to move everything that you need upstairs to the downstairs of your house. Could you make one of the downstairs rooms in your house into a downstairs bedroom? Do you have a bathroom downstairs, or could an existing downstairs toilet be modified to include a bath or shower? These are the two key reasons why you would need to go upstairs, and although moving the house around a bit might seem like a lot of upheaval, it is a better alternative than having to move out of your home entirely and into residential care, and it is far more cost effective.
So far we have just looked at the issue of getting up or down stairs, but what about getting in and out of the house, or getting around on the ground floor or other levels? Modular access ramps can be quickly and easily installed within homes to allow people to get in and out of their property and around their property without having to worry about steps or thresholds. A modular ramp may seem very simple, but it allows people the freedom to be able to get out of their home, go to the shops and visit their friends, which of course is incredibly important. If you don’t need a ramp as you can still manage steps, but find that the steps going in to or out of your property are too high for you to manage with ease, then the steps can be modified to break each step into two or three steps to make it easier to get in and out of your home.
Reclining chairs might also be worth considering if you find that you need to rest more frequently, but don’t want to go upstairs every time you need a rest and don’t want to move your bedroom downstairs.
All of these solutions mean adapting your existing home rather than having to change where you live. Before making any decision about whether or not to move out of your home, give our friendly and experienced team at Obam a call on 01427 787532, email us on info@obam.co.uk or visit our website https://obam.co.uk/ to see if we can find the right solution for you.
