This summer, my friend from church was standing in her front hall with a laundry basket on her hip when she started to cry.
Her husband had come home from the hospital two weeks before. He was using a walker now, after a bad fall. And the walker kept catching on everything.
The rug by the door. The shoe rack. The stack of mail on the floor by the stairs.
“I can’t keep up,” she told me. “Every time he gets up, I’m moving something out of his way.”
I set her basket down and gave her a hug. Then I asked if I could come back on Saturday to help.
That Saturday turned into six of them. What we cleared, and the order we cleared it in, made her days a little easier. If you’re caring for your husband, I hope it helps you, too.
You Are Not the Only One
If you are caring for your husband, you have a lot of company.
About 63 million Americans are family caregivers, according to a 2025 report from AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving. That’s about one in four adults.
The same report found that older caregivers are more likely to be caring for a spouse. Nearly two out of three caregivers said they feel moderate or high emotional stress.
My friend didn’t know any of that. She just knew she was tired, and everything in the house seemed to be in his way. (She’d been a nurse for years before she retired, and even she felt lost.)
So we started with the house.