Learn about how to keep your home safe. According to the CDC, 50% of adults over 65 who fall and experience a serious injury may never be able to live independently, or have to go to a nursing home due to their injuries. And every 20 minutes in this country, an adult over 65 dies from a fall. These are preventable injuries – often a trip and fall, such as from a slippery throw rug.
Think about how you can keep your home safe in the future. Go to SilverSpaces.com to get information on little things that you can do over time in the early stages of your retirement, so that you can stay independently as long as possible.
National aging-in-place expert Dr. Jill Bjerke of Silver Spaces LLC joins Suzanne to talk about the SilverSpaces.com website, which helps you survey your home to make it more aging-in-place friendly.
Dr. Jill Bjerke says, "For example, one of the things we do look at is your floor covering. Say you have vinyl tile in your bathroom, and it's slippery. Well, there's a coating you can paint on there to give it more resistance. Same thing in the kitchen, if you've got water on your floor, and you don't have a slip resistant coating, that's a perfect place to slip and fall. And these are things that we point out in the online assessment at SilverSpaces.com. These are the modifications that you can do to keep yourself safe.
"I tell people to think about having a tennis ball in their hand. That's what it's like to have arthritis. Instead of having door knobs on your kitchen cabinet doors, lever handles — which just take a push — is such a better solution. These are the types of solutions that we offer to people to try and make their homes safer.
"You can do a whole bathroom remodel and take your tub out and put a walk-in shower. That's logical, if you want to do that, and if it's in your budget. But there are so many other smaller things that you can do. Remember, as we get older, we tend to shuffle. So instead of having that 3" pile carpet in my living room, maybe I should have something that is maybe an inch to an inch and a half and I won't trip as much. If your coffee table has sharp corner, and you trip and fall, you could set yourself up for a serious injury. We start to lose our peripheral vision as we grow older, so we recommend having a very strong color differential between the color of your floor and the color of your walls, so your brain knows where you are in space. There are many things that are not expensive. But we just don't think about things, because it comes on so slowly."
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