Public Service Announcement

A brief digression today. I had lunch with my mother and we were talking about her volunteer work. She works with a group that places alarm systems into the houses and apartments of elderly people who want to be able to alert someone if they get hurt or sick. You know, “I’ve fallen and I can get up!” Only reputable. Anyway, she was telling me about her most recent client. And, as she often does, she was shuddering at the multiple piles of objects, thingies, whatsies and overall crap this person had all over their apartment.

“This woman was bedridden,” my mother said, grabbing a spear of asparagus, “If she hits the alarm, I don’t think an EMT stretcher could get around all her stuff and into her bedroom to get her.”

This wasn’t the first time I had heard a story like this from her. She swears that at the end of every shift, she comes home and gets rid of a couple of objects. Another year of this, she’ll be down to a fork and a flashlight. I skipped over discussing her potentially monastic life and asked the larger question.

“What percent of the people you see have this much stuff?”

She thought. She chewed. She swallowed.

“That bad? Maybe only ten percent. But I’d say seventy percent of the elderly people have too much stuff in their house.”

I gestured with a breadstick. “Define ‘Too much’.”

Too much is a loaded term. One person’s “Cozy” is another person’s “So…many…pillows. Can’t…breathe…”

“Too much is when you aren’t stable when you walk and there isn’t a single clear space on a tabletop where you could put your hand to balance if you had to. Too much is stacks of mail left next to the stove. Too much is having a vision problem and the floor strewn with small objects. These people maybe won’t die directly from too much stuff, but they’ll end up in the hospital from a run-in with their stuff.”

“Seventy percent?”

“Yep.”

I felt contrary, so I played Devil’s Advocate. “Is it possible that the population needing alarm systems is already more fragile than the regular elderly population and therefore isn’t as on top of cleaning? That the average older person’s house isn’t quite so cluttered?”

My mom shrugged.

“Probably. But I’ll tell you that at least half of my friends could do with holding a really big garage sale.”

The population is aging. I know very few people who don’t have a relative over the age of seventy they aren’t helping in some way or another. Maybe you don’t get over to their place a lot, or maybe you do but you’ve developed a blind spot to the clutter. Maybe the clutter makes you nuts but who needs the drama of that conversation? I sympathize, but it has to be done. I asked my mother what I should tell my readers if I wrote about this and this is what she said:

Tell them to look around the older person’s house and try to imagine coming through with a stretcher. Tell them that when I volunteer in the ER, I help people fill out their forms when they arrive and that nearly every fall an elderly person takes in their house was avoidable. Tell them that the “Grandma, let’s pack away some of your stuff” conversation is less awkward than the “Grandma, your broken hip means we need to sell the house” conversation. Oh, and tell them to get those small area rugs off the floor. I can’t believe how many of those I see in old people’s houses.

Consider yourself told.