I'm going to share with you how to make your house more wheelchair accessible or
handicapped accessible you might need to only temporarily provide access for a
wheelchair in your house but these are the life hacks for a wheelchair that
worked for us so that the family member can still be independent and
self-sufficient the first thing we noticed we needed to do was to take off
the bathroom doors because the walker needed to get through the bathroom door
the wheelchair got through the bathroom door fine it was narrow enough but we
had to take off the doors to the bathroom for the walker to get through
and by we I mean a friend named Gary my name is Laurie and I make youtube videos
about ideas that pop into my head I make videos about travel ideas that pop into
my head beauty and fashion ideas that pop into my head I make videos about
planner ideas that pop into my head home and organization ideas and pop into my
head thank you for visiting and please leave me a comment below if you have any
ideas that pop into your head that you'd like to share with me so pop into my
parents house with me so we can show you what we really mean and we're going to
split your house into four stations the first one being base camp base camp we
mean the base area where your family member is going to be for most of the
day that's where they can still do their work and get stuff done during the day
so you have your chair where they're going to prop their leg up or get in
whatever position they need to be in you have an end table over here and then you
start thinking about what am I going to need during the day my cell phone and my
home phone and my laptop the three most important things in every person's day
now you're also going to need like Bank stuff things that they can take care of
with their bank their purse their wallet access to cash access to credit cards
during the day a craft that they're going to want to work on there weren't
any Kleenexes lotions so you're going to need a place to store your medicine you
might need a place for your medicine at your nighttime station as well but a
place for your medicine some kind of water container like the
metal aluminum cups or a water bottle if you're going to be walking back rolling
back and forth a water bottle is a good thing that you can stuff into parts of a
wheelchair we realized after about a week that you're going to need the
antibacterial sanitizer because when you come in from the doctor's office you go
straight to your chair because you need to get that leg popped up or in a
certain position and you forgot to wash your hands and you're too tired to go
all the way back to the bathroom and wash your hands this highly recommend
this you're going to need a trashcan you're going to need notepads or paper
and pen it's good at an end table with drawers in them so that you can stuff
some things in now let's talk about all the things that will help you store all
those things that you need at your base camp if one of our main concerns for our
family member was safety if they fall while they're transporting somewhere by
themselves they need a way to contact people and we use a lanyard that she
just had around the house you can hold your cell phone any medicine that you
need the remote control the home phone and they'll just always have it around
their neck so that can hold even a pin a writing pen and a little paper tablet
can go in there another item we thought about was a cat tower because you have
the laptop you have a box of Kleenexes that might not fit on this end table
with everything else that you have there but a cat tower if you if you have
anything like a ladder or step ladder that you can just set up and then also
we decided to use a tray table because that gives you a wide base and surface
area you can use another end table you can use a chair you can use an ottoman
bring an ottoman over and just put it beside the chair another item that we
love is something we had around the house was a college lap board that you
would use in college but it's got the squishy beanbag material underneath and
then the heavy board up top we use it as a tray table when she's eating if you
need a surface write a note on into the great little
circus thing and it's heavy enough but it's squishy so it is heavy enough to
stand up when you're leaning it down you don't want it on your lap anymore you
want to lay it down and put it against the wall another key item that we found
out we needed was power strips you don't realize how many power strips you don't
have until you need a bunch of them but we use a power strip but that helps you
charge your phone your computer it helps you plug in your base home phone if you
need to a lamp we recommend an overhead lamp so that it's out of the way so that
you just have to reach up to turn on the lamp instead of taking up surface area
if you do not have power strips available and you need to charge your
phone and your laptop your you can charge your laptop with your one plug
and then you can get one of these little cords I'll link it below and Amazon prom
it's also I also recommend it if you are traveling on an airplane since it plugs
into your phone and then you plug this into your laptop and it will charge your
cell phone it will charge your cell phone from this power you just have to
keep the laptop open and it's charging your phone you can put them both on your
tray table and leave it there for 30 minutes and it'll be fully charged so
our first idea was to give him a backpack to carry everything in so
you've got your backpack you get in your wheelchair and then you're ready to go
to the next station for supper or to bed you have everything you need in your
backpack that's why a water bottle would be good but the backpacks are a little
too big or they can't fit on their back or they can't move their arms enough to
get the backpack on their back and look what our friend Nancy suggested and made
for us with the little 12 fabric on the inside line and everything it ties
lengthwise but if you don't have a friend like Nancy or you won't
don't want to buy anything you can also use a grocery bag and how you would do
that is you can see that if we try to top
ends right here it's not quite large enough so you just tie them together and
it still gives you a pouch to put things in you would double tie it and you still
have room to put things in if you absolutely have to transport something
in a bag and can't use your hands now what we do and we supplement the sides
to when we're going to another room you can stuff so many things down the sides
but that's just a handy-dandy quick hat for living with a wheelchair temporarily
okay if your family member has a walker we highly recommend getting a basket
that is made just for that Walker they do not fit like they're not universal
baskets so make sure your basket will fit the model number of your Walker but
that's another way if they if your family member can walk on a walker
that's an easy way to transport medicine water bottles stuff like that okay one
of the most ingenious things that we did in a bedroom is we taught a piece of
twine because that's what was in our house we taught it to the overhead fan
light will keep the fan on and we need a string from the light so that if he
needs to turn off the light during the night he can for the station in the
bedroom we suggest just having an end table with a lamp that the family member
can reach closely while they're in the bed while he or she is in the bed we
also recommend having a power strip beside the bed and connecting you can
see how I connected his cell phone wire to the lamp wire that's already there
and then from the bed they can plug in their phone if they need to charge their
phone at night we also recommend having a home phone base beside the bed because
you want to charge your phone at night and you want to charge the other home
phone during the day and you can swap them out during the day don't forget the
toilet paper for the potty chair we recommend having two baskets one for
dirty clothes one for clean clothes we also recommend putting clothes on
part of the bed so the
when they are get up in the morning they can get dressed with the clothes that
are already there you might want to hang some of the shirts on the closet door
because it's a wheelchair height for them to get the shirts off in order to
put them on in the morning we highly recommend the stand-up potty chair with
a walker base almost but there are no wheels under it it's just like a walker
but these walkers are so sturdy for balance and someone would clean out the
bucket with some rubber gloves and some Clorox spray in the bathtub the next day
or something like that what we like about the potty chair is it is right
next to the bed so the person can stand up from the bed and then twist around to
go to the potty without fear of falling our last station that I'm going to talk
about is the in the kitchen if your family member can get around the kitchen
in a wheelchair that is of course optimal we like to keep dishes that they
will have access to on the counter height so we get bowls plates
saucers mugs water cups fruit nuts the coffee maker of course oatmeal we
don't recommend styrofoam bowls because you cannot reheat those in the microwave
the toaster oven things that you can put in the toaster oven casserole dish sets
aside that will fit in Dakota toaster oven and then we also pull down
a tutor pot and a cookie sheet and a little skillet any bottles of water that
will leak like these Camelback pipes water balls they're great for wheelchair
use of transporting they don't leak a contigo is another brand that we
recommend we also like leaning the bottle of dish soap out so they can wash
some dishes or glasses that they need to think if your favorite ever has to take
care of an animal inside the house we recommend using a gallon jug for the
water another thing to take care of the food
is cutting off that gallon jug and scoop out food and then they can dribble it
from above from their wheelchair down into the bolas its built-in spills
they can use a broom having a broom close by with that they can just scooch
the food over that would help and then someone else can put it in the little
dustpan and throw it away later another day when they get checked on thanks so
much for visiting my Larry Popp channel ideas that pop if you have any tips or
tricks or wheelchair hacks that you would like to tell me please leave me a
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