Last night, Rachel and I had an interesting discussion about mum and dad. Rachel said that being in the house can drive you crazy because everything gets misplaced, order is continually overturned, and the resulting confusion and endless searching for lost things stresses everyone. I agreed wholeheartedly; this is one of my hobby-horses, of course. The interesting things was that we also agreed that it was hard to address this problem because mum and dad usually reacted badly to the disruption of attempts at organisation - reactions ranging from mild irritation to outright fury. Why was it interesting that we thought this way? Because while all this is going on we are looking for hostels for them. Now if moving into a hostel for old people isn't a major disruption or reorganisation, I don't know what is!

The conclusion, therefore, was that we probably ought to push a bit harder on sorting the house out, even if it does mean temporarily upsetting our parents, because the benefits are undeniable, and may actually help to postpone the eventual move into aged care accommodation.

So, to minimise the impact we organised a bit of subterfuge. I would take mum and dad out for an outing, and Rachel would get into the house and start sorting things out. Everything went according to plan. Mum and dad had a pleasant day with me, shopping, driving up the coast, stopping twice for afternoon teas, and coming home just as the afternoon began to cool. Meanwhile Rachel filled her car boot with junk - hundreds of plastic bags, old kitchen appliances, towels that are too dirty to ever use again, and, yes, a few good things that she and I want, and which our parents don't use or even remember having (more on this kind of filial rifling in a later post). Anyway, when we got home the tidyness was immediately apparent to me, and cheered me up too. I think we got away with it!

The other development that took place was the arrival of the area nurse to begin administering the drug Aricept to both mum and dad. This will be a daily dose of 5mg, increasing to 10mg if it seems to be working. The nurse took something like 90 minutes to go through what to me seemed like enough paperwork to rival the treaty of Versailles, and then quickly popped the medicine in my parents' mouths and left, promising to come back again tomorrow (and every day thereafter). It all seemed to go remarkably well, particularly in view of the trouble we had trying to ensure that mum took her previous course of tablets - again, more of that story in another post.

So overall we feel like we may have made some progress today. Personally, I think the simplification of the home by the removal of unused and unwanted objects is something that ought to continue, but I may not have the full family's support on this.