Moving into a care home can feel scary and unfamiliar, but it doesn’t have to. From bringing furnishings and smells from home, to special memory boxes, there are many ways you can make your care home feel just like home.
Here are a few suggestions to make things feel a little more familiar:
Pictures of family and friends
Many care homes, such as signature-care-homes.co.uk, encourage their residents to make the space their own in whatever way they can. Keep pictures of your family and friends to remind you of what’s important in life. Home is where the heart is, and having reminders of relatives and friends, past and present, is a great way to feel more at home.
Use smells from home
To make your care home room feel more familiar, try bringing perfumes, air fresheners, or washing powders from home. Even though we don’t always notice it, every home has a unique smell to it. The smell of your home is likely to be so familiar to you that you don’t even notice it when you walk in. Try to recreate that sense of familiarity in your care home with scents from home.
Bring soft furnishings from home
Bringing your bed sheets and other soft furnishings from home can help you to feel more comfortable and at home. Your bed is a very personal thing and putting your own bed sheets on your care home bed will really help to build a sense of familiarity.
Bring your favorite books and music
Books, music, films, and other types of media stay the same no matter where we are or how much time has passed since they were made. Try bringing some of your favorite records or novels with you to your care home so you can pick up a familiar, dog-eared book or play an old record when you’re feeling a little homesick or nostalgic.
Have things that remind you of your favorite memories
We all accumulate objects through life that may not look like much to anybody else but mean the world to us. These can be gifts given to us by a loved one, childhood toys, trinkets that remind you of good memories, and countless other things. Try to think about what these items mean to you and which objects you own that bring back memories just from looking at them. Bringing these along to your care home will help you to remember those important people and times in your life.
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Make the space your own
Ask your care home if you are allowed to decorate your room. Painting your room, or even bringing furniture from home, is a great way of replicating your home and creating a sense of familiarity. Or, rather than trying to recreate your old home, you could decorate in a different way that still makes your new space uniquely your own.
Memory boxes
Have a special box dedicated to your most precious memories. This could include pictures, jewelry, and other trinkets. You could keep it tucked away somewhere, as something to occasionally look through when you feel like reminiscing, or have it proudly on display, so you can tell your friends in the care home the stories behind the objects in the box.
