Hook Home Help “helps with the tricky things” - changing sheets, cleaning hard to reach places, looking after precious objects and even more precious memories

Hook Home Help often helps with basic cleaning or specific things that are hard to reach or hard to get to. To be honest changing a double duvet is a bit of a task for even the fittest of us but as we get older these things get harder and I am happy to “help with the tricky things” as one client says. 

In this case the tricky things are usually changing the beds, and cleaning floors for someone who finds it hard to kneel down but is fiercely independent and proud to be coping on their own in every other way. I love being able to support this independence while ensuring that the house stays clean and safe. 

This week he suggested that I help to clean the window ledges in rooms that I don’t usually work in. More than happy to help, I started in the kitchen and we chatted as I worked. As I moved into the conservatory I saw the ledges were packed with so many precious vases and ornaments, each one covered in dust and cobwebs. 

I felt the weight of responsibility as I carried them all as carefully as possible into the kitchen and washed each one. Each one held a special memory or was being kept because it had been special to his wife, now long gone. 

It was a big job to clean the windows and the surfaces as well as all the precious objects and get them all back in place in the time available. I was glad to be able to make sure that everything was left cleaner and tidier and that the ornaments with such sentimental value had the careful treatment that they deserved. 

Each week he makes me a cup of tea before I leave and likes to have a little ten minute chat. He tells me about a long life filled with adventures and stories of his family. It touches my heart that he remembers to ask after my children and their exams and feels comfortable telling me about his bereavements, both recent and long passed. 

He tells me all about the people who he has lost and what they meant to him. He tells me about the live they led and the things they achieved. This week he told me about how his sister, aged 16, had camped out for 3 nights to see the queen’s coronation all those years ago. He was proud of her sense of adventure and how he had told her all about it when he was working overseas in the navy. Then he told me how they had sadly lost her only a few years later. 

I feel very privileged to have these precious memories shared with me and I hold them as carefully as the ornaments that we had just been looking after. 

I see that he is keen to talk about the times from the past and the people who he has lost. And I know that I learn a lot and am reminded about what is important in life by hearing these stories.