It’s a rainy, blustery day in Autumn today. How about you? I just came from my church where I picked up duplicate copies of each of my grandkids’ Awanas books to keep at my house. That way I can help them learn their verses each week without having to send the books back and forth. Yes, it’s a little more expensive that way but I love doing it. It saves on the stress load when one of us is taking the kids to Awanas and the other of us has the books! With all the stress in a Sandwich Generation Senior Home Care Giver and Grandparent’s life, we definitely don’t need more. True?

I was thinking about what a blessing all sorts of duplicates can be for us – both for our grandkids AND for our aging parents.

For my grandkids, I’ve routinely keep on hand:

• Diapers, Pull-ups, Good-nites (my all-time favorite night-time pull-up), and Swim Diapers
• Bottles, Sippy Cups, and other special equipment they’ve needed over the years. Also, specialized medical equipment/medications for special needs and/or emergencies, such as feeding bags, allergy kits, etc.
• Formula, favorite foods, non-perishable lunch box items, and easy freezable breakfast items
• Medications – did you know you can ask the pharmacist to split liquid medications into two bottles to make it easy to store some at each house? It’s very handy!

For aging parents with special needs such as those requiring dementia care, walking assistance, etc., many of us in the Sandwich Generation may only be helping part-time to give our parent’s spouse or other full-time caregiver a much-needed break. Some items that can help in that situation include:

• Incontinence pads such as Depends, Poise Pads, etc.
• A walking cane, a transport wheelchair, etc. This can make it easier for the caregiver to bring your senior parent back and forth so they don’t have to load up the car as much.
• Specialized medical equipment for special needs and/or emergencies, such as feeding bags, bedpans, etc.
• Special and/or favorite foods such as Ensure
• Medications

As the commercial likes to say:

Extra supplies for grandkids and/or aging parents  = $xx

Storage = Does take room to store

Stress relief = PRICELESS