Helping My Sister Who is Disabled Organize Her New Pocketbook

My sister has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair. Due to her disability she lives in a nursing home. Sometimes when we visit her, we help her with various tasks. This article describes how we helped my sister organize her new pocketbook.

Because of her disability, it is difficult for my sister to complete certain tasks on her own. She could organize her new pocketbook without any help, but because of her disability, it would take her longer.

Asking for Help: My sister told me during one of our telephone conversations that she wanted to discard her old pocketbook and she wanted me to help her organize her new pocketbook. It gives us a good feeling whenever we help my sister, who uses a wheelchair, with various tasks because we feel useful and helpful.

Preparation: To complete this task, we started by getting my sister's current pocketbook and we emptied the contents on a table in her room. There were many items including pieces of notepaper, newspaper clippings, etc. in this pocketbook that my sister no longer needed, so we discarded them. She was glad that with my help, she was able to decide what to keep and what to throw away.

My sister asked me to put some of the items from the old pocketbook into a dresser drawer for her. The rest of the items including her mini daily planner, her change purse, etc. we kept on the table to place into her new pocketbook.

The new pocketbook happened to be a nice black leather pocketbook that we gave her as a gift a few months ago. Before we could get the new pocketbook ready to be used, we needed to remove a tag from the pocketbook and then we needed to remove the paper that is stuffed inside new pocketbooks when you buy them. Next my husband helped us to adjust the shoulder strap on the new pocketbook so that it would be at a length that was comfortable for my sister. Having the shoulder strap adjusted to the proper length allows my sister, who uses a wheelchair, to carry the pocketbook without being concerned about dropping it.

Organizing the New Pocketbook: Now we started to place the items my sister kept from the old pocketbook into the new pocketbook. This part was a bit challenging because this new pocketbook has fewer compartments than her older one and we needed to figure out where to place the items in this new pocketbook. As we were working to organize the new pocketbook, my sister commented that it would take awhile to get familiar with her new pocketbook because the items were now located in different places.

Finishing Up: Finally we took the pretty purple "silky" scarf that we gave my sister for her birthday and tied it into a bow on the shoulder strap of her new pocketbook. My sister told me that she liked the pocketbook and the scarf and that she was glad that we organized it together. She told me that my helping her made it easier for her to complete this task. Hearing her say all of that made us feel happy.

A little while after my sister started to use her new pocketbook, she told me that she was very happy because people told her that her new pocketbook and scarf looked nice.