When a loved one lives at home with a terminal or serious illness, the home often becomes trafficked with visitors. These visitors may be friends and family, but there are often nurses and other health care workers, along with your Death Doula, who are always stopping by.

It can begin to feel intrusive, or you may feel that you need to keep the home tidy for these visitors and have to clean again once they leave. When you have an ill person at home, keeping the house clean is important but turning yourself into a host for visitors can push you a little too far into exhaustion.

I recommend setting up a space in a living room or family room, if possible, that can become a regular spot for your visitors. If possible, arrange this space close to an entrance to the home, close to a bathroom and close to the person they are coming to visit. Eliminate the need for visitors to walk through your kitchen or to go upstairs into more intimate and private areas of your home. This really narrows down the area of the house that you need to clean before and after a visit.

Your visitors may not always be so keen on pets, but this is your home and your pets should be able to live their normal lives while visitors are present. Pets can sense tension in the air and it can be very hard on them to always be locked away in a separate room, especially when they know that there is an ill person in the home. If needed, perhaps a member of the family can be present to help the pet adjust to the visitor, and to help the visitor adjust to the pet.

If you do feel the pressure to act as a host when a visitor is present, you can relieve some of the workload by having a little snack table near in your visitor area. A few drinking boxes and granola bars, or water bottles and apples, for example, can be neatly stacked on a nearby table or in a nice basket. This way your visitors are offered food and drink automatically and you can keep your focus elsewhere. Make sure to have a little trash can there so your visitors do not need to go snooping to find a place to put their garbage.

A few magazines and books can also be stacked in your visitor area to keep your visitors occupied if they need to wait around for a bit. This can relieve the pressure you may feel to have to keep your visitors entertained while waiting for their turn to visit.

Some people do keep a guest book in their visitor area – have a pen handy and perhaps make some space for people to write some memories.