When the bedroom is upstairs and the stairs are getting hard

A lot of homes in the DMV were built with the bedrooms on one floor and the kitchen on another, and that worked fine for decades. Once climbing gets slow or painful, people make the trip less often, carry things they shouldn't to save a trip, and climb tired at the end of the night. A basement laundry adds trips with both hands full and nothing free for the rail.

The first step is usually a rail on each side of the stairs, good light at the top and bottom, and high-contrast edges so every step shows. For a lot of people that alone makes the stairs safe again.

When the climb itself is the problem, there are two roads. One is a stair lift, where we coordinate the lift and get the stairs and the power ready for it. The other is first-floor living. A den becomes the bedroom, a half bath becomes a full bath, and the laundry moves up to the main floor. That costs more, and it ends the daily climb for good.

That depends on the stairs, the floor plan and where your parent's health is heading. The assessment measures both options in your house and writes down what each would take, so the family decides from numbers instead of hunches.

Watch for someone taking the stairs one step at a time, stopping halfway, or holding the wall instead of the rail. Laundry piling up because the basement trip is too much. A bedroom that has moved to the couch. Any one of these is reason to look at the stairs before a fall makes the decision for you.