How to Determine and Prioritize Your Needs and Wants in Assisted Living

Assisted living is a tool that many aging adults can use to grow and thrive after retirement. If you are considering moving into assisted living, you might be wondering how you can make the most of it. 

Follow these tips to make sure your needs and wants are taken care of before, during, and after your move!

Evaluate Your Current Living Situation

It’s important to reflect and recognize what works best for you when it comes to your living situation. What works well for you now? What didn’t work in the past? 

When you tour any assisted living community, you should compare their amenities and services to your current living situation. Do they have the food options you have at home? Do they offer more access to socialization and fitness than you have now? 

Once you determine the positives of your current living arrangements, you can decide which assisted living facility best matches them. 

Look Over the Amenities Before Moving

Each assisted living community has unique benefits, so make sure you look over each community’s amenities. 

Amenities can include things like fitness centers, for example. Recreation can help you stay in great physical and emotional shape — which ultimately improves your quality of life. Other amenities may include things like theaters or music rooms for entertainment or mental engagement.

So as you tour each community, ask your tour guide about the amenities that they offer. You might learn new information that isn’t available on their website!

Consider Your Medical Needs

Assisted living is designed to make life easier for seniors who have various health problems. That’s why you should make sure your community has the appropriate medical and rehabilitation services to keep you comfortable and safe. 

Most assisted living communities have medical staff available at all times. However, there are some other considerations when it comes to your physical health. For example, if you struggle with joint pain, you should look for a community with swimming pools. Aquatic exercise is one of the best ways to combat joint pain because it takes the pressure off of your entire body.

When in Doubt, Ask!

If you don’t see something you need or want when touring or researching an assisted living facility, don’t be afraid to speak up and ask for it! The staff members in assisted living communities are there to help you and can help you figure out ways to make your assisted living space comfortable and enjoyable.

Get the Help You Need In Assisted Living

You should never feel guilty for having specific wants and needs. You are human, and assisted living is there to make your life easier.
Follow these tips to make sure your needs and wants are the top priority of your assisted living community! 

4 Things to Look Out for While Touring Senior Living Communities

Senior living communities are full of helpful amenities and supportive people that help you thrive in your later years. But when you’re touring prospective communities, you must know what to look for so that you choose the right one. 
Here are some things to keep an eye out for as you go on tours. 

1. Fitness Options
Physical fitness is one of the most important aspects of graceful aging — when it comes to protecting your health long-term, exercise is extremely valuable. 

So check out the different health and wellness options that each community offers. Most places have indoor fitness equipment and swimming pools, and many offer group fitness classes, which are a wonderful addition to any senior living community. These sessions allow you to socialize with other residents while moving your body in ways that feel good to you.
If benefits like these aren’t offered, it may not be a good fit for you. Staying active and fit — even if you just take a walk each day — is incredibly important for your physical and mental health. 

2. Cleanliness and Maintenance

As you tour the buildings in a prospective senior living community, pay attention to how clean and orderly things are. A community that doesn’t have good maintenance and cleaning services can be hazardous to your health. Beyond that, it simply isn’t enjoyable to live in dirty conditions. 
If you have any questions about the frequency and availability of maintenance, don’t be afraid to ask your tour guide. If something breaks and needs to be repaired, you will have to rely on their maintenance team. 

3. Staff Attitudes 
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When you go on a tour, do you notice an overwhelmingly negative atmosphere? Do the staff members look displeased or hostile? These are common red flags that you must keep an eye out for. To be clear, staff members are human and shouldn’t be expected to always maintain perfect attitudes. However, a positive atmosphere is essential for your mental health. 

You can also determine the general mood of the staff by the way your tour guide interacts with you. Are they receptive to questions? Do they act annoyed, or do they seem happy to give you their time? Don't hesitate to cut the tour short if you have a gut feeling that the staff isn’t very pleasant. You will save your time (and theirs), and you can then move on to visit a better community. 

4. Dining Options

The value of high-quality, healthy, delicious dining options cannot be overstated. Therefore, make sure you ask about the community’s dining options. 
Do they operate based on meal plans? Are there cafeteria-style buffets where you can choose your favorite foods each day? These are important questions to ask when you tour a senior living community. 

Find the Best Senior Living Community for You 

If you hold each community to high standards, you will eventually find the best community for you. Follow these tips to find the perfect senior living facility!

SoHo, NYC

SoHo is home to the world’s greatest collection of cast-iron architecture. But more than that, SoHo is unique among New York’s neighborhoods for its classical French and Italian architectural designs. It simply doesn’t look like anywhere else, not even the neighboring West Village or Lower East Side. 

For one thing, the colors are much more distinct in SoHo. They’re brighter. Perhaps that’s a reflection on the people living here. But for many of the cast-iron buiildings that give SoHo it’s unmistakable character, the reason for their bright coloring is actually pretty obvious: whenever you construct anything from wrought iron, it’s going to look like, well, wrought iron.

So the colors of SoHo as they’re known, or at least as they ought to be known, the colors that are just a street photographers dream come true (where else can you find so many amazing backdrops?), are actually the result of many, many coats of bright paints. And they light up a photo in ways even a flash cannot.

For me, it’s all about New York streets. They’ve been immortalized in who knows how many songs and poems, movies and books, but even though I’ve spent years documenting them with my photography, I don’t think I’m any closer to understanding them than I was when I started. They are their own kind of art, and for a photographer, all you need to do is setup the shot and take it. I have lived in New York for only five years, but I have been a working, professional photographers for fifteen years now.

Street Scenes

You never know what you’ll find on the streets. And if you happen to be a photographer working in New York, that’s doubly true. I’ve had the good fortune to shoot all over the world, and when I come back to New York, I’m always reminded of why I started my career here.

The New York street scene is, for better or for worse, the street scene. It’s the one that is the most iconoclastic, and because of the backdrop of New York, it’s the one that I think people from just about anywhere imagine when they think of the idea of a street scene—whatever a “street scene” happens to be.

I created this album to showcase some of my favorite street scenes that I’ve captured in New York. This is nothing that I’ve done on contract or in my studio, just real life moments captured by me with my Mark III when I had some time to kick it around the city. I hope you like what you see. I did.