Building Community in Assisted Living: 4 Activities that Foster Connection

It can feel overwhelming to navigate assisted living when you first move in. You may feel lonely, especially if your loved ones cannot visit often.

Luckily, many assisted living communities offer social events and group activities to foster healthy connections between retired adults. Here are some of the ways you can build your social circle when youmove into assisted living.

1. Group Fitness Classes

Physical fitness is an important part of your overall well-being after retirement. Assisted living communities offer a variety of group fitness activities to keep you in good shape.

Consider joining the next group hike, biking session, or Zumba class to meet new friends and connect with like-minded people. You will reap the benefits of healthy movement while maintaining your post-retirement social life.

You can also gather your own group of people and participate in group fitness activities like long walks or swimming sessions. There are no limits when it comes to senior fitness in assisted living communities.

2. Live Entertainment

Some assisted living communities feature guest musicians, poets, and more to keep seniors engaged and lively. Enjoying live entertainment together is a great way to build positive connections with other residents.

You may see concerts, speeches, and drop-in classes on your assisted living community’s bulletin board. Take note of the dates and times these events will occur, and mark them on your calendar. You never know what a new live entertainment experience might bring.

3. Game Nights

Game nights are a family tradition in many households, and assisted living is no different. Most assisted living communities host weekly or monthly game nights to bring residents together for lighthearted, competitive fun.

Your community might host bingo nights, board game events, or trivia activities. All of these activities are wonderful for bringing you closer to other residents.

During game nights, you work together with your peers to come up with strategies and solutions during the game. This strengthens your cognitive abilities as well as your social health.

4. Cooking Competitions

Do you love cooking and baking? Are you known for making a really tasty signature dish among your family and friends? Host a cook-off (or bake-off) to invite other residents into your culinary world!

Cooking competitions are the perfect blend of delicious and social, so don’t hesitate to spread the word around your community. Making meals has long been associated with social connection.

Let Your Social Life Thrive in Assisted Living

By partaking in fun, enriching activities, you can make your assisted living experience memorable and fulfilling. There are plenty of amenities and activities to keep you connected with other folks in your community. Try these fun activities with other residents and watch your social health improve.

Caring for Aging Parents: When Is Memory Care the Right Choice?

Your parents are an important part of your life, and it is understandable to want to care for them for as long as possible. However, memory care might be necessary if their symptoms are putting their safety at risk or becoming too much for you to handle. 

Memory care offers a memory-specific approach to senior health problems. You never have to worry that your loved one is hurt, lost, or neglecting their health when they’re in memory care. 
Here are some signs that it’s time to consider memory care for your aging parents. 

You Feel Caregiver Burnout Creeping In 

If you have chosen to care for your senior parents, you likely want to see them thrive and stay healthy. However, the average family caregiver doesn’t have the knowledge and resources to avoid burnout while always ensuring their loved one’s needs are met. 
Some signs of caregiver burnout include:

• Depression

• Irritability

• Mood swings

• Trouble sleeping

• Low or no appetite

• Stress-eating

• Random physical pain 

• Constant fatigue

• Resentment toward your aging parents​

If you notice any of these signs in yourself or another family caregiver, it’s time to consider memory care. 
The professionals that work in memory care have extensive training and experience that allows them to handle complex senior health problems. You don’t have to do this by yourself. 

Your Parents Are Increasingly Unsafe at Home

The average home has hundreds of potential safety hazards that can be dangerous or even fatal for your aging parents. Hot stoves, electrical wiring, unlocked doors, and high windows can all threaten the safety of your parents as their memory issues progress. 

Memory care communities are much better equipped to avoid unnecessary health risks for your parents. These facilities are supervised and secured 24/7 so that there is a much lower risk of accidental harm. 

They Can’t Take Care of Themselves Anymore

If your parents now struggle to complete basic tasks, like brushing their teeth or showering, it might be time for memory care. 

You might be tempted to take over their care once your aging parents can’t do it for themselves, but this involves risks. Caregiver burnout and lack of medical training are both serious risks to your loved one’s well-being (and your own). 

In memory care communities, staff members are always available to assist with feeding, clothing, showering, and grooming your loved one. They don’t have to take on housekeeping and personal care by themselves.

Find a High-Quality Memory Care Community for Your Parents

You aren’t abandoning your parents by placing them in memory care. That is where they receive the highest quality of caregiving and personal assistance. 
Start researching memory care communities if these signs ring true for your family.

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 
​
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.