The First-Week-Home Kit: What to Buy Before Discharge Day

I'm Abdi — I've been a caregiver for 10 years. Discharge day is chaos. The hospital gives you a packet, a list of exercises, and about forty-eight hours to turn the house into a recovery space. I've watched families try to set up the whole house before the person comes home. Don't. Buy for the first week only.

The first week home is one room and one path: the bedroom, and the short trip to the bathroom. That's the entire universe for seven days. This kit covers that universe. The rest can wait until you know what recovery actually looks like.

(If you haven't read it, our discharge checklist article walks through the full first-week plan day by day. This kit is the shopping list that goes with it.)

The items in the kit

1. Raised toilet seat with rails. The bathroom is where your energy goes. A standard toilet is low and has nothing to push against. A raised seat shortens the stand, and rails on both sides give solid handholds. This is the most-used piece of equipment in the first week. Get it before discharge day, not after.

2. Shower chair or bench. Standing on one good leg on a wet surface is exactly what sends people back to the hospital. A shower chair means the first showers happen sitting down. For a tub, a transfer bench that spans the edge removes the step-over entirely. Either way, no standing in the shower for week one.

3. Bedside commode. For the nights when the bathroom feels too far, or for the days when getting there takes too long. Put it next to the bed as backup. Even if they make it to the bathroom most of the time, the commode is there for the 2 AM trip when everything is harder.

4. A stand-assist aid for the bed. A bed cane or grab-handle rail gives them something solid to pull against when sitting up and swinging their legs over the side. After surgery, the upper body does a lot of the work — give it something to work with. If they struggle to stand in more than one spot, a transfer pole covers the room instead of just the bed.

5. A walker or rollator. Whatever the discharge team recommends — and follow their recommendation, not this article. The walker handles the bedroom-to-bathroom path and the first short walks. Make sure the handle height is set right before they use it: handles at wrist height, slight bend in the elbows. Wrong height causes pain, and pain causes refusal.

Set it up in this order

1. Bedroom first — bed height right, clear path to the door, stand-assist aid installed.

2. Toilet — raised seat and rails on, tested, before they come home.

3. Shower chair — in the tub or shower, ready for the first shower.

4. Commode — next to the bed as backup.

5. Walker — height-adjusted, at the front door when they arrive.

Do the bedroom and bathroom the day before discharge. Test everything yourself. Sit on the toilet. Sit in the shower chair. Push up on the bed rail. If it feels wrong to you, it'll feel worse to someone recovering.

What NOT to buy yet

Don't buy the lift recliner, the hallway grab bars, the reacher, the sock aid, or the raised garden of accessories on day one. By week three you'll know which of those things they actually need. Most of the cart never gets ordered. And one important thing: the discharge packet's exercise and movement instructions come from the surgical team and the physical therapist — follow theirs, not anything you read online. The equipment just makes their instructions safer to follow.

Still not sure which one fits your situation? Email us at supplyingseniors.com@gmail.com — tell us about your situation and we'll point you to the right product.