Most of the hospice home is kept by the people inside it. The outside is different. The walk, the steps, the handrail, and the gutters belong to the house, and they keep needing attention even when no one is going out. When one of them fails, the failure lands on whoever has to get in and out, including the nurse, the aide, the pharmacy delivery, and the family member coming back from the car. The question that matters is who owns each piece, and who is the backup when that person cannot be reached.

Local option: New Plan Care gives families in the St. Louis area in-home help so a parent can stay home: companionship, help with bathing and dressing, meals, and overnight care. Call (314) 405-0887.

Walk the path once and write down what you see

Stand at the car and walk to the door as if you were carrying a bag of groceries and a bag of supplies. Note the slope of the walk, any cracks or lifted slabs, the number of steps, whether the steps have a handrail on both sides or one, and whether the handrail is solid when you push on it. Note where water sits after a rain. Note whether the house number is visible from the street. Write it on one page so the next person does not have to walk it cold.

Snow and ice: who clears, who salts, who checks

Three jobs need names: the shovel, the salt or melt product, and the check afterward. The person who clears the walk should not be the only person who checks it, because the check is what catches the spot that was missed at the corner. Buy a melt product whose label says it is safe for concrete and for pets, and store it where it stays dry. If you hire a snow service, ask whether it clears on a schedule or after snowfall, whether it does the steps and the handrail as well as the walk, what time of night it comes, and what happens when a storm is missed. Put the answers in writing on the contract.

Check your local rule

Local rules differ on who must clear a public sidewalk along a house, and many put that duty on the homeowner. Look up the rule for the city or county where the house sits and write down what it requires and by when. The point is not to argue with the city. It is to know which duty is yours, so the walk is not left in a state that makes the way in unsafe for the caregiver.

Gutters and downspouts

Clean the gutters after the leaves come down and again after the spring rains, and check that each downspout carries water away from the foundation and the walk. Water that pools by the front steps freezes there. Ask whoever cleans the gutters to look at the downspout ends and tell you where the water lands. If the gutters are too high to reach safely from a ladder, hire the job out and put the invoice on the owner list.

Repairs that cannot wait

A lifted slab, a loose handrail post, or a step with a crack that moves under weight goes on the list the same day. Name who calls the contractor, who pays, and who checks the work when it is finished. A repair that waits for a free weekend is a walk that stays dangerous for another stretch of days.

The owner list

Put the list on the same page as the path notes, with one line for each job: the job, the owner, the backup, and the trigger that makes the job happen. The trigger matters most. Shoveling is triggered by snow, not by a calendar. Gutter cleaning is triggered by the leaves and the rain. A list that names the trigger is one a tired person can follow at the door without having to think it through. Keep a copy by the door.