Packing to cope with care home laundry

Agree and you can even sharpie on dentures !

Yours must be a well managed home that your DM can be admitted over the holiday weekend. Many places only have a skeleton staff at weekends so that's hugely encouraging they had senior staff able to offer her reassurance. She will have a 'named' member of staff who looks out for her especially.

Not going to lie, it is a bit tough when you leave her behind at first. However, it does get much easier. After a few weeks you will start to know people by name, residents, staff and visitors. You just need to focus on how much safer she is with people around 24/7.

Occasionally Mum is wearing clothes that I don't think are her's (my SIL's sometimes buy clothes so I can't be sure) but she has never been in anything that wasn't the type of clothes that she liked and wore. Mostly cotton traders/edinburgh woollen mill type. Staff are also generally good at getting residents to pick their clothes, hence why the outfits are not always matching or perfectly put together. My Dad ended up wearing poloshirts and joggers as he got distressed at being helped to dress and this was all he could manage himself. I remember one day going in when his dementia was pretty advanced and a carer was encouraging him to chose between a red and a green poloshirt with with way more patience than I could have managed.

And I've met some amazing teenage Kitchen Porters, in particular one who realised why my Dad was so upset at dinner one day when there was an unusually high number of agency staff. He told them and they were able to sort it straight away.

I'm sure the carers will do their best to reassure her. My mother was very unsettled to begin with, it is such an unfamiliar environment. But within a few weeks she told me she loved it there.

It is horrible to have to make the decision to move a relative to a care home, but as as a PP said sometimes there is no choice. Best wishes to you.

Having worked in numerous care homes it really does depend on who does the laundry.

most care homes have laundry staff only, carers don’t do it, and they’re a dab hand at it as it’s what they do, day in, day out.

im not aware of anything being washed on hot washes apart from towels.

I’ve not known anything to be ruined, however it’s probably not advisable to send in wool or anything that needs a certain wash setting

Why? Surely she should have all her favourite clothes with her? Who else is going to wear her clothes in your home?
‘If she’s used to Jaeger and Hobbs, I can’t see her wanting to wear F+F and Asda’s finest!

That doesn’t make the care home any more enticing for the “loved one”!

When your loved one changes personality and starts attacking you the only safe place is a carehome. Sometimes you don't have a choice.

@Mum5net that's a lovely story, and my MIL's (council run) home had similarly lovely staff. Whenever I visited (and they didn't have prior notice) my MIL was dressed beautifully in her favourite skirts, blouses and jackets. All perfectly coordinated.
My SIL and I both lived 2-3 hours away, so if she needed anything new, the home would call to ask permission to buy the items. And they went to great trouble to buy in her favourite colours, and things that would complement what she already had. Even when MIL 's dementia was such that she seemed almost unaware of her own existence.

There was so much love in that home. And the carers had almost all worked there for many years.

Never believe that council run homes are inferior. My mum's Bupa home was crap. I'd turn up to visit her in the afternoon and she'd still have clumps of dried up cereal round her mouth from breakfast. And as it was all run for profit, the staff were paid peanuts and lasted months rather than years. Nobody gave a damn.

Get the arm of the frame engraved with your mums name. Specsavers do this when they visit (and sell!) new glasses.
Hasn’t helped at all for us, the engraving is so small no one sees it! Over £700 worth of glasses gone within a year. We now buy multiple pairs from glasses direct and sharpie them.

Not just nicer, an essential part of knowing who you are. There’s a reason prisons all over the world deprive people of the right to wear their own clothes!

Agreed.

My dad is always in his own clothes.

Good luck @Frankinsenseless It will be a sad occasion but this will balance with the sense of relief that you know she is safe and warm and in company. Don't be surprised if they tell you not to visit for a couple of days so she can settle.
Your comment about Hobbs and Jaeger reminded me of a marvellous resident at two of DM's places. (When one closed they both moved to same place.) She had previously owned a shoe and handbag concession in one of the big department stores in a major city. As she become more frail she had been addicted to champagne and had been calling taxis to Asda to pick up supplies. She had been taken to the care home but all her attire was business wear: Jaeger, Max Mara, all with matching shoes bags and pearls. She had no casual clothes Everyday she also had complete customer facing makeup. I saw and was familiar to her in the care home(s) for about five years. Always the very formal I can -meet-the Queen today look. Then one day, snow prevented many staff from coming to work. I could walk to the care home in less than an hour so arrived with supplies for my DM. In the lounge, Helen was having her make up lovingly applied by one of the teenage kitchen porters. He said he'd watched his sisters for hours putting on their make up so how hard could it be? He made a fantastic job.

I think it varies between care homes. My MIL's looked after her clothes beautifully. My mum's, not so much. So I'd ask the care home what temperature they wash at. It's be far nicer for your mum to wear the clothes she likes and is familiar with, if possible.

My dad had the odd item go missing in the laundry (mainly slippers - I suspect they just fell apart), but was always dressed in his own clothes. That's really shoddy care giving people the wrong things that don't even fit.

I bought a practical wardrobe of easy care clothes for MIL and sewed name tapes on all of them. Also collected together her sensible shoes and slippers.
Most of it disappeared within a couple of weeks and she was shuffling round in a massive dress, socks and crocs that were 3 sizes too big. We had to give up replacing the hearing aids because it got too expensive. This was 10 years ago and the cost of the home was £1500 a week.
My advice would be not to buy or send in anything expensive.

If you have any "favourite" clothes then maybe don't send them in with her. Yet another reason to avoid a care home - not only do you lose all your valuables (they’re equally lost to you whether they’re at home or in the room of another resident) and you can’t even wear clothes you like. Is it surprising that people try to make out they’re coping better than they are?

It’s really boring having to take Christmas presents out of their boxes and label them before wrapping them. And it means you can’t get things sent straight to the home.

I would bring home and launder my dad's woolly jumpers for him, the care home laundry boil washed everything. And yes to labels! The woven kind, stitched on to survive the heat. Even towels and bedding

When my grandmother went into a care home, despite labelling everything, you'd still see other ladies wearing her clothes! Also she then lost loads of weight and we started to buy new clothes and the carehome manager said to us not to bother wasting any money as they had plenty there to spare.

If you have any "favourite" clothes then maybe don't send them in with her. Also, for belongings anything sentimental keep at home.

My mother's care home washes everything at 60. I buy her cotton clothes and pyjamas from M&S, Cotton Traders, occasionally Primark. Some of her Cotton Traders clothing has survived several years of care home laundering. The things which deteriorate quickest seem to be pyjamas, the elasticated waist perishes. I use iron-on labels, except for socks which are difficult to label, I do sew those labels on.

I agree with the advice re specs. The week my mother moved there, the manager showed me a drawer full of unnamed and very similar looking specs, residents take them off and leave them around, and he had no way of knowing who they belonged to.