The Problem Behind the Problem
A few days ago, I was talking with a daughter who was exploring home care for her parents.
The help they needed sounded fairly straightforward. Someone to assist her mom with a shower.
And someone to strip the bed, wash the sheets and remake the bed every morning.
Then she explained why.
Her mom has dementia and is incontinent at night. She refuses to wear disposable incontinence briefs, so she wets the bed almost every night.
That means her 91-year-old husband is stripping the bed, doing the laundry and remaking it every single morning.
Every morning.
Of course, home care can help with that. A caregiver can strip the bed. Start the laundry. Remake it.
Problem solved, right?
Not exactly.
Because I kept thinking:
What if instead of only helping Dad deal with the result of the problem, we could change the problem itself?
Start one step earlier
This is something I think families, and those of us who work with older adults, sometimes miss.
We get very good at identifying the task that needs to be done.
Mom is wetting the bed. So someone needs to change the sheets.
Dad can't manage all of the laundry. So let's hire someone to do the laundry.
Those may absolutely be necessary.
But before we stop there, it is worth asking:
Is there something that could make this situation easier before we ever get to the laundry?
In this case, there may be.
What if she would wear something different?
The obvious solution to nighttime incontinence might be a disposable brief.
Except Mom refuses to wear one. And dementia can make introducing something unfamiliar especially challenging. A person may not understand why it is necessary, dislike the feel of it or simply see it as something they have never worn before and want nothing to do with.
You cannot build a successful plan around a product someone absolutely refuses to use.
So I told the daughter about EverLeakproof washable absorbent underwear.
Her reaction was immediate.
"Those look like regular underwear!"
Exactly.
EverLeakproof makes washable, reusable underwear with built-in absorbent protection. They offers several absorbency levels, including higher-capacity options intended for heavier leaks and overnight use. The underwear is designed to look and feel much more like conventional underwear than a disposable incontinence brief.
For someone who refuses a disposable product largely because it feels unfamiliar, that difference may matter enormously.
Does it guarantee there will never be another wet bed?
Of course not.
Fit matters. Absorbency needs vary. And no single product is right for every person.
But what if it significantly reduces the number of wet beds?
Suddenly Dad's workload may look very different.
And what about the nights it doesn't work?
This is where another product came to mind.
PeelAways sheets.
PeelAways are multilayer disposable waterproof fitted sheets. When the top layer becomes soiled, you peel it away and a clean fitted layer is already underneath. The company describes the process as taking under a minute and eliminating the need to immediately strip, wash, dry and remake the entire bed.
Think about that in this family's situation.
Maybe EverLeakproof reduces the number of accidents.
And maybe PeelAways makes the remaining accidents dramatically easier to handle.
Now we aren't simply finding someone to do more laundry.
We are potentially reducing the laundry in the first place.
That's a very different way of looking at the problem.
The real issue wasn't the sheets
What struck me most about this family's situation was not actually the wet bed.
It was the 91-year-old husband dealing with it every morning.
Changing sheets once isn't a big deal. Stripping wet sheets, carrying laundry, washing it, drying it and remaking a bed every morning when you are 91 is something entirely different.
When we are helping an aging couple remain together and as independent as possible, we have to look at what is happening to both people.
The question isn't only:
"What does Mom need?"
It is also:
"What is Dad now having to do because of what Mom needs?"
That second question often reveals where the real strain is.
This is why I love age tech
When people hear age tech, they tend to picture cameras, sensors, artificial intelligence, medical alert systems and complicated devices.
Those certainly exist. But age tech can also be wonderfully simple.
Absorbent underwear that looks like regular underwear.
Sheets you can peel away instead of completely remaking a bed at 2 a.m.
A medication dispenser that removes the need for three reminder phone calls every day.
A TV designed so someone with memory loss can actually use it.
The technology doesn't have to be impressive.
It has to solve the right problem for the right person.
And sometimes that means looking past the obvious task.
Instead of asking: "Who can help Dad change the sheets?". We might ask: "How can we make it so Dad doesn't have to change the sheets nearly as often?"
That is the kind of problem solving I want families to know is possible.
The challenge is knowing these solutions exist
Most families aren't spending their free time researching products for incontinence, medication management, fall prevention, memory support or staying connected with an aging parent. Why would they? Usually, they start looking only after something has become a problem. And then they have to sort through hundreds of products, advertisements and Google results while already feeling overwhelmed.
That is one of the reasons I created the Age Tech Now Directory.
It is a curated collection of products and services designed to solve real problems that come up as parents age, organized around what families actually need help with.
Because sometimes the answer isn't more care. Sometimes it isn't another person doing another task. Sometimes it is discovering a simple solution you didn't know existed. And occasionally, that one solution can change an entire family's daily routine.
Before we figure out how to manage the outcome, it is worth asking whether there is a better way to solve the problem.