b.zang

It seems you have to take your chances with the facility, but a good label is a great start. If your mom keeps it folded at the bottom of her bed, it should be left in the room and not taken to laundry. My mom took a couple of favourite quilts with her into long-term care and the staff does not send them out for washing. Just as they don't send her coats unless she makes a request.

copycat

Thank you for your input with your past experiences. It seems to be a gamble on whether or not it will go missing.
The idea of an air tag is a good one. We have an air tag sewn inside her purse as she always loses it. Now I don't know if the air tag can get washed. I'll see if she asks for the quilt first. If so, I'll bring it back and forth with me as I visit often. I can always say I have to wash it and she would be fine. With her declining memory, I think this will be my best choice.

KalamaQuilts

a lot of things that go missing in care homes is from what staff calls "shopping" by residents Most anything can be found in another residents room.
I could only see my mother about once a month when she was in the memory care facility and I'd go through the room gathering other residents stuff and return the pile to a staff member.
Items of value don't belong in a home where people can come in and out freely. Family of a resident in mother's 1st nursing home was banned because they all stole items.

pamelor

My dad went to assisted living for only 2 months. It was a very expensive place, good and bad, I learned it's a mixed bag how a place cares for your loved one and not always possible to predict in advance. All his belongings got labeled with name and room number and no laundry ever disappeared. However it would have been difficult to police whether a certain item got laundered. When he first moved in, I asked him which blanket he wanted to have at the place and his eyes lit up when he saw my colorwash quilt. That was enough for me. Knowing that quilt made him a little happier was worth it and I stopped worrying about the laundry. It survived maybe 5 or 6 industrial washings, maybe more. You could see fading but no rips or tears. If he'd been there long term it would have probably been increasingly damaged but I would have happily provided another quilt.

maryb119

My mom was in assisted living for 5 years. I gave her a brand new quilt for Christmas the first year she was there. It was on her bed the whole time. I put a label on the back with her name on it. She did not lose anything the whole time she was there. It was a wonderful place.

Luna Tique

I would not take it to the facility unless you are planning on picking up her laundry and doing it yourself with explicit instructions to leave all her processions for you, I did my mother's laundry with instructions and still she lost item after item, including a robe that had her name appliqued on it. I will say that doing and elderly persons laundry is not a pleasant experience sometimes.

tropit

I love that you took the time and effort to make her a quilt for her new living arrangement. That is so wonderful of you. It's sad to think that someone might have taken it. Just go for it and make her another one with some serious markings/labels on it, so that anyone who takes it this time will know that they took it from a real, elderly person and let karma take its course.

petthefabric

Dad's quilt walked. Staff would return items to the correct patient. The top level staff made this a priority and it trickled to enough other staff to make it a policy.
His name was written in extra wide permanent marker on the back. Not pretty, but it worked.

scrappingfaye58

Having worked in LTC for decades as an LPN, I would never take anything of value. Unfortunately, things have a way of disappearing or becoming damaged (not necessarily on purpose, but accidents do happen). If at all possible, I would always wash my loved ones laundry simply because the commercial washers and dryers are very hard on fabrics, and if the quilt would wind up needed to be laundered, it could be ruined that way as well. Label EVERYTHING that enters the building>

Butterflyblue

Depends a lot on the facility and how things are run, and even the part of the facility she’s in, I think. My husband’s grandparents are in an assisted living facility. His grandmother is in a small apartment and his grandfather is in the memory care wing. Workers from the assisted living make his grandmothers bed daily and do her laundry. I don’t know how often they wash the bedding, but she’s had a store bought quilt on the bed for the year she had lived there with no problems. None of her belongings have disappeared, but some cash has. In the memory care, her husband has had several things to missing, and it always turned out to be other residents who took things, or employees who took them for “safekeeping” and forgot to tell his wife, who is mentally sharp, and visits every day. His bedding gets washed more often, but isn’t a quilt.