How do you tell your Mom to change her clothes, without offending her?

Rainmom above has some excellent points regarding the bath itself. As we age we fear falling and going into a bathtub or shower is a huge fear. If you don't have a bathmat on the floor of the tub or shower, get one as that does help. AND that bathmat is a good giveaway if someone had taken a shower earlier on and under the mat would still be quite wet.

For myself I have found the bath towels are getting too big to handle.... as one ages and has less strength, a wet towel starts to weight a ton. I could never find a bath towel that was shorter than my Mom so Mom kept using her old thin towels even though you could almost see through them. Mom just couldn't life the newer towels.

Have Mom bathe when you are home, that would make Mom feel more secure that someone is in the house in case she should fall. And sometimes we have to bribe our elders to do things..... no cake & ice cream until after your bath !!

Maybe do you have a cyclic issue? Dirty body in clean cloths is still a dirty body then if she's like my mom and doesn't feel cloths need to be washed after one wearing (undies and socks excluded) then you've got dirty cloths going on a clean (maybe) body or worst dirty cloths dirty body. You can try some detective work to check about the bath. Put a little bit of salt in a spot where it would get washed away. If she's not using the bath is it because she's worried about a fall or being able to get out after? Does your bath have grab bars? After you've determined the bathing, sneak a look at how clean her cloths really are. My moms eye sight prevented her from really seeing how dirty her cloths got. And - she couldn't deal with the physical aspect of doing her own laundry anymore so she just hung stuff back up. Fighting odors like this with probably take dealing with both these issues. Then I agree that tactful honesty is best. Tell her it's because you love her you're bringing it up. Tell her if you didn't care you'd let her go around smelling bad.

I had the same problem. It was a real task. What I would do is I would go through her closet and pick out a new outfit almost everyday. I would tell my mom, "I haven't seen you wear this in awhile. Do you think it still fits? Would you try it on and let me know?" It seemed weird at first telling her the same thing over and over, but she never realized what I was doing and she would change her clothes for me. When it came to bathing, I would just tell her that I needed her to take a bath when I was there to make sure she was clean. Even if she insisted she had already bathed I would just tell her that in order for me to get the government assistance that we were recieving I had to be sure she was bathing and she had to go in a bath again, so that I could be honest. She would fight me about it at times, but usually she would comply.

All you can be is honest when it comes to hygiene. The problems with letting hygiene slide is that the results can cause illness, particularly in women. So be honest with her and let her know that you are not fooled. Let her know the importance of being clean and be honest when she smells. You will be doing her a favor by being honest. It is better that you tell her that she smells and needs a bath than for everyone to start avoiding you or for her to start having urinary tract and skin infections.