I’m revising our caregiver plan, now that my grandma had been with us for several months I have a better idea of the cost increases to utilities and things like that. I would like to add in a cost for wear and tear on my home. My grandma is sweet and pleasant but boy is she messy and hard on stuff! She spills coffee on the rugs and furniture, and has some terrible habits with her pets that cause things to get dirty and messy. I am constantly cleaning up after her and her dogs. The carpet in her bedroom is destroyed. My yard has turned to a poopy mush from her dogs. How does one calculate the cost of wear and tear? Does anyone have experience trying to explain this to your LO, that these are real costs?
Mother uses her walker as a battering ram and slams into doors to open them. Every door in her pathway is ruined. It used to be that we could paint them every other month and that helped--but now it's just above fixing.
The carpets and fabric furniture has been totally saturated with urine, and at some point, you simply cannot get that smell out. When she passes, her recliner and sofa will be thrown away.
Somehow she has broken all 3 faucets in her place. I don't know HOW. Like, broken from their moorings. They all leak now, and brother cannot get her to leave the apartment long enough to fix them. She is hanging over him the entire time he tries to fix things.
When she passes, he plans to gut the apartment completely, and remodel it to be a master suite for himself and his wife. Probably will need to replace the sub-floor--again--- urine spills for the last 5 years have been constant. She's now becoming bowel incontinent and has overflowed her diaper a few times.
How can you possibility put a price tag on the total destruction of a small apartment? And what would be the point? Mother doesn't pay rent, she pays the cable bill (about $200 a month) and this is her total contribution to the household. All 4 of us sibs are planning to refuse our small inheritances and give them to YB so he can have SOME measure of being made whole. We cannot give him back 25 years of unpaid care, but we can help a little.
If you have to regularly get the rugs and furniture cleaned because of the dogs, that's a cost.
If you clean up outside after her dogs, you have a right to charge for that kind of clean up too.
Housekeeping and pet care services are not free no matter where a person lives. Start charging grandma a monthly fee for housekeeping services.