Home safety · 5 min read

The 12-point home safety checklist for aging parents

If a parent is coming home from hospital, or you have just started noticing the house is harder for them than it used to be, this is the list I would work through. It is the same list I use on a first visit, and none of it requires a contractor to assess.

Before you start

Walk the house the way your parent actually walks it — slowly, holding the things they hold, at the times of day they move around. A hallway that looks fine at noon is a different hallway at 6am in February. Take your phone and photograph anything that makes you hesitate.

Bathroom — where most falls happen

1. Grab bars, not towel rails. A towel rail is not a grab bar and will pull out of the wall under body weight. Real bars go into studs or rated anchors. One by the toilet, one inside the shower, one at the entry.
2. A shower seat and a handheld showerhead. Standing is the hardest part of showering. A seat plus a handheld removes the need to stand at all.
3. Non-slip surface in the tub. Mats that suction on are a temporary fix; a properly bonded strip or textured mat is the real one.
4. Night lighting on the route. Plug-in motion lights along the path from bed to bathroom, not just a brighter ceiling bulb.

Stairs

5. Handrail on both sides if the stair is wider than about three feet. One rail is fine on a narrow stair; on a wide one it leaves a side with nothing to hold.
6. Contrast on the stair edge. Older eyes struggle with depth perception on same-colored steps. A contrasting strip on the nose of each tread is cheap and effective.
7. Nothing stored on the steps. This sounds obvious and is the single most common thing I move on a first visit.

Kitchen

8. The heavy things at waist height. Move cast iron, bulk flour, and the good pots down from the high shelf and up from the low cupboard.
9. Lever handles instead of round knobs on the doors and drawers they use most. Round knobs require grip strength that arthritic hands do not have.
10. A sturdy step stool, or none at all. If a step stool lives in the kitchen, it will get used. Better to relocate what is up high than to trust a stool.

The three spots people forget

11. The front and back door thresholds. A half-inch lip is nothing to a 40-year-old and a trip hazard to an 80-year-old with a walker. Threshold ramps are inexpensive.
12. The route from the car. Whatever path they use to get from the driveway to the door — check the lighting, the step, and the handhold. That is where the fall happens when nobody is watching.

What this does not cover

This list is about the physical environment. It is not medical advice and it will not tell you whether your parent should still be living alone — those are conversations for their doctor and, honestly, for the family.

What it will do is remove the environmental reasons a fall is likely. That is the part a handyman can genuinely help with.

If you want it done rather than assessed

Most of the items above can be handled in a single visit. Grab bars, seats, lighting, handles, thresholds and rails usually run $200–$600 depending on how many and where they go. You get a flat written quote first, and no deposit.