If there is one thing that every caregiver has, it’s a list longer than their arm of things that need to be done. We are exhausted daily by this list, and it never seems to end. We drown in the list of all the things that must be completed, and everything feels like an emergency. We are perpetual white rabbits that are late, late, late for a very important date.
What if it doesn’t have to be like that?
The first piece of advice I’m going to give you about lists is this: the sooner you stop treating a chronic situation like an acute one, the better off you’re going to be in every way. If your LOWD (Loved One With Dementia) has other health challenges that are creating a greater sense of urgency, of course honor that, but if not…. it’s okay to slow down a minute and take some time. That’s for all things in life, not just what I’m about to teach you.
Here’s the First Step:
First, this is a week-long project, but it’s going to be just doing what you’re already doing with one extra step during the day. What you’re going to do is make a list of everything you have to do the next day. Every single thing. Everything from brushing your teeth to brushing their teeth to paying bills to going for a walk. During the day, cross off that list, and if you do any action that isn’t on that list add it to the list and then check it off (or draw a line through it, whatever way you prefer to show that you completed a task). Whatever is left over, keep rolling it over to the next day. Rinse and repeat for at least 5 days. Keep all the lists.
And the Second…
Now, sit down with a lovely cup of tea, a nice glass of wine, whatever your favorite drink is. Get your Rocketbook, your notepad, your iPad with Trello on it, whatever method you prefer to make lists, and then gather all the lists from the past week that you’ve made. On your page- digital or otherwise- create three columns. In column one write “Automate” as the title, in column two write “Delegate”, and in column three “Eliminate”. You’ve made the lists that will save yourself.
The Third…
This is the part that’s actually going to require the most thought, so get ready. You’re going to go through each and every list and assign each bullet point to one of those columns. Can you automate it? Can you delegate it? Can you eliminate it- and if so, how? When you put each of your actions into one of these silos, all of a sudden you start seeing where you can actually create space and time in your calendar that you didn’t think existed. It may require a concentrated effort on your part to create the new parameters for that action item to be automated, delegated, or eliminated, but the option is there to streamline your time so that you can spend it on things that mean more to you and your LOWD.
So, Wait, I Need Examples!
Sure, who doesn’t? It’s super simple, and I’ll give you examples from my own life. When I sat down to make my Lists of Automate, Delegate, and Eliminate I was first amazed at how much I did in a day- and it was because I was, to quote my Southern mother, “going like a house on fire” all the time…but I wasn’t really moving the needle on completing the overall project of fixing all the things that needed to be fixed. Additionally I realized that I was spending a lot of time on Mom’s Stuff…but not a lot of time on Mom, or me. And “me” was important too- you can’t pour from an empty cup. Mom has dementia, the ultimate disease of being in the present-as-in-right-this-moment, and I couldn’t be there too because I was spending my time on everything else.
Eliminate! Eliminate!
So, I realized first that I was spending entirely too much time cleaning house. Way too much. That was not what I was born to do with my time. One of the best ways to eliminate housework is to eliminate the things that cause the work. I also found out at about the same time that a decluttered space helps create calm for people with dementia, so I did a massive clean out of the house. If you don’t have it, you don’t have to spend time on it. I eliminated a lot of dusting that way, and a lot of moving and reorganizing. I even did things like reducing the number of dishes we had available to us in cabinets because if there weren’t as many, I just couldn’t possibly spend as much time on dishes. I automated everything I could in the house. I programmed the thermostat and put a cover on it so Mom couldn’t mess with it (eliminating my need to constantly keep a check on it), I got a Roomba so I stopped having to take care of the floors with my own time. I got a Swiffer with disposable pads so that mopping didn’t require filling up buckets, and I could just throw them in the wash I was going to do anyway. I quit allowing shoes in the house to cut down on the amount of debris that was brought in. I programmed the coffee, I programmed everything I could. If there’s a hack so that you stick-it-and-forget-it… do that. I eliminated something like 15 hours of cleaning from my life doing this, which is HUGE when you’re caregiving for someone who has dementia because, well, they are often not tidy people. And accidents do happen. Having hours of clean time on reserve made life better.
Automate
Then I realized that I was spending too much time on banking and paperwork. I pulled out the important things that really require a hardcopy, an made everything else paperless. Everything. I put myself on the no-junk list for the mail. Guess who basically never has mail? Me. Guess who also doesn’t have endless boxes of files? Also me. I saved myself hours every week not doing that.
I eliminated my need to “do the bills” by automating them. This one can cause you a fight if you’re doing the bills for someone who is used to doing their own, but it’s worth it. When I became my mom’s caregiver, I inherited what can only be described as a financial dumpster fire- so automating bills took some time. I started with one, and then gradually just built a new budget around these automated costs that I didn’t really have to think about anymore. Not spending hours on bill paying and budgeting was incredibly liberating. I didn’t stop there, though…I automated everything possible. If I could make it to where I never had to look at it again, I was happy. One of the most tiring things about being a caregiver is how much bandwidth of your brain is taken up every single day by nine million tasks that aren’t getting your anywhere, but must be decided to be done and then performed. Even if it’s something you have a ritual for, it creates decision fatigue because we just have so many of those types of things to do. Automate as much as possible in every way that makes sense for you.
And then…Delegate.
Hard facts: you don’t have to be the one to do everything. Can you hire it out? Do you have a family member that can do X thing just as well as you can? I’m looking at you, Person Who Insists They Can Mow The Lawn Too If They Get Up At 6 AM. (No really- I know a caregiver that got up at 5 am so that she could do every single thing on her own every day. Madness, I tell you.) Do you have friends who have said to you “just let me know what you need, I’m here” or some variation. Well, here’s their time to shine. Delegating out simple, low-or-no-barriers to entry tasks that achieve specific goals at least once is a great way of teaching your community how to show up for you, makes opportunities to socialize a bit, and they also get to feel good that they showed up and were a friend to you… and you got help that you needed so that you can focus on the things that only you can do.
Well, Now…What Am I Going to Do with the Free Time?
There are two answers to this. The first is that you’re probably going to do this process several different times during the course of your caregiving because you’re going to start jealously guarding your time not spent on things that aren’t as important as spending time with your LOWD or even on yourself (please spend some of your free time on you. I’m going to repeat: you cannot pour from an empty cup.) The second is: you’re going to start having time to be a person beyond being a caregiver. For caregivers, that time is absolutely necessary. A full 18% of us die before the people that we care for, and often times it’s because of isolation-related factors like chronic conditions that go unchecked because we don’t think we have time to go to the doctor or go on a walk. Without this time, we cannot realize any of our own wishes, and when you don’t have something that you’re working for with yourself… you start to feel like you don’t matter and you withdraw even more. Isolation is not the answer, and being buried in caregiver chores isn’t either. Make the Lists and save your time to save your sanity, and maybe your life.
The Dementia Diva 