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A reminder checklist for carers

Caring for someone arrives with an administrative load nobody hands you a list for. This is that list: the recurring things worth putting on a schedule in the first fortnight, so they stop living in your head.

A woman helping her senior parent sort through paperwork

This is a scheduling checklist, not medical or legal advice

Nothing here is guidance about treatment, medicines, benefits or legal arrangements. It is a list of things that tend to be forgotten because they recur, written so you can put them on a schedule. What to do about any of them is a question for the relevant professional — a pharmacist, a GP, a social worker, a solicitor — and the local rules vary considerably.

Why the admin is the part that breaks

The care itself is usually the part people manage. What breaks is the layer around it: the repeat prescription that needed ordering last Thursday, the appointment letter that arrived in February for a date in May, the annual review nobody reminded anyone about, the bill that used to be on a direct debit from an account now closed.

That layer has a specific character. Almost none of it is difficult, almost all of it is recurring, and every item has a window rather than a moment — the prescription can be ordered any day in a five-day range, and is therefore ordered on none of them.

Tasks with a window are the ones that slip, because there is never a moment at which not doing it feels like a decision. That is precisely the shape a repeating reminder is good at, which is why the answer here is administrative rather than heroic.

The other reason to get this out of your head is that carrying it is expensive. Holding fifteen recurring obligations in working memory costs attention continuously, and attention is the thing you have least of. The list below exists so that you can stop rehearsing it.

Medication and prescriptions

  • Each dose time, on the days it applies, set to the anchor in their day rather than a round number.
  • Repeat prescription ordering, on a repeat that fires several days before the current supply runs out.
  • Collection from the pharmacy, as a separate reminder from ordering — these fail independently.
  • A prompt to check what is left in the box, weekly, so a shortage is noticed before it is urgent.
  • Any medicine with a specific condition attached — with food, before bed, not with something else — noted on the reminder itself rather than remembered.
  • The end date of anything that is a course rather than ongoing, set as a repeat-end so it stops itself.
  • A note of who to ring about medicines, kept with the reminders rather than in a drawer.

Appointments and reviews

  • Every appointment, with a reminder several days ahead as well as one on the day.
  • Transport or a lift arranged, as its own reminder a few days before — this is the part that usually fails.
  • Anything needed at the appointment: a list of medicines, a sample, a form, previous letters.
  • Annual or periodic reviews, on a yearly repeat, because nothing else will prompt these.
  • A reminder to chase a referral or a result if nothing has arrived by a date you choose.
  • The follow-up booked before you leave, and a reminder set for it on the way home.

Household, money and admin

  • Bills and direct debits, particularly any that moved to a new account.
  • Insurance, licences and renewals, on yearly repeats with two weeks' notice.
  • Benefit or allowance review dates, if any apply.
  • Deliveries and standing orders for food, incontinence supplies or equipment.
  • Equipment servicing and battery changes — hoists, alarms, smoke detectors, hearing aids.
  • A monthly fifteen-minute review of the whole lot, so changes are caught rather than discovered.

Reminders for you, not for them

  • Your own appointments, which are the first thing to get dropped.
  • Your own medication, if you take any.
  • A break, on a repeat, at a time somebody else is covering. Put it on the schedule like anything else.
  • Contact with the person who shares this with you, so coordination is not always a crisis.
  • A reminder to ask for the help you keep meaning to ask for — a carer's assessment, a respite enquiry, a conversation with an employer.
  • Something that is entirely yours, weekly, with a real time on it.

Deciding who each reminder is for

Every item above belongs to one of two lists, and mixing them is the most common practical mistake. Some reminders are for you: order the prescription, book the transport, chase the letter. Some are for them: take the dose, the appointment is at two.

Keep them separate, because they have different failure modes and different feelings attached. Your list is administration and can be as long as it needs to be. Their list should be short, agreed with them, and about fixed things rather than about how they spend their day.

The second list also needs a channel that matches how they actually use a phone. Someone who misses app notifications will usually answer a ringing phone, because answering a ringing phone is a lifetime habit. In Timelee that means a reminder call placed to their number, which needs nothing installed at their end — though the number has to be verified with a one-time code by the person who owns it first, which is a step you do together.

Where somebody else shares the caring, a shared reminder is worth more than a message: it is assigned, it is accepted or declined, and the status is visible. "I sent you a text about it" and "they accepted it" are not the same thing, and the difference matters most in exactly the weeks when everything is hardest.

What to do in the first fortnight

You will not set all of this up at once, and you should not try. Do it in this order.

  1. Write everything down before you schedule anything

    One list, in one sitting, with no attempt to organise it. Getting it out of your head is worth more than getting it right, and you will find three things you had been carrying without noticing.

  2. Set up the medication times first

    These are daily, they are the highest consequence, and they are the ones that benefit most from a reliable delivery channel. Agree the times with the person if they are managing their own doses.

  3. Then the recurring supply chain

    Prescription ordering, collection, deliveries. These have windows rather than moments, so they need a repeat and a few days of slack rather than a same-day prompt.

  4. Then the calendar-shaped things

    Appointments, reviews, renewals, transport. Each with a lead time long enough to arrange whatever the appointment needs, not just to attend it.

  5. Then a monthly review of the whole thing

    Fifteen minutes, one fixed day. This is where you catch the changed dose, the new appointment, the renewal that went up, and the reminder that has been ringing for a medicine that stopped in October.

  6. Last, add three reminders that are for you

    Your own appointment, your break, and the thing you keep meaning to ask for. Adding them last is realistic. Not adding them at all is the pattern this step exists to interrupt.

Start with the fortnight's worth, not the year's

Medication times, the prescription cycle, and the next two appointments. That is enough to take a genuine weight off, and the rest can be added at your first monthly review.

Start with GoogleSee how shared reminders work

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