Laundry

Many of our clients have difficulty performing housework and other ADL tasks. They are often limited by decreased strength, standing balance, and endurance during these activities.  To keep clients engaged and interested in our interventions, we often incorporate housework into treatment.

Our role as OT’s is to work individually with clients to restore function, teach compensation strategies, adapt the environment or activity to facilitate independence, and promote health. Sometimes we educate our clients on adaptive strategies for performing tasks related to laundry. For example, using a rolling push basket or sitting down while folding clothing to compensate for decreased endurance and promote energy conservation.

If you treat in a therapy gym, it is easy to skip over functional activities.  In order to keep function in our treatments, we make sure to have the right tools with us.  This basket was purchased at the Dollar Tree along with some towels, socks, and shirts. We have clients practice folding laundry, either sitting or standing, placing clothing into basket, and transferring clothing from basket to other surfaces.  This activity can be simply upgraded or downgraded depending on the client’s level of function. You can even facilitate an entire laundry task from washing, to drying, to folding and transporting the clothing.

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