This post started off as a litany of complaints about my difficulty with cooking while in pain from osteoarthritis, a condition I blogged about last week. I was all set to whine about not being able to find helpful kitchen tools, but soon discovered I was wrong; instead, I found an abundance of riches about things that will help you age in place. Before I was done, I had discovered an entire world of gadgets and techniques that could help older people be fully functional and comfortable as they age.

I came face to face with my new reality this week, while doing a simple thing like preparing and cooking a favorite dish. I set out the ingredients for lasagne—ground meat, Italian sausage, fresh basil and parsley, and of course, onions and garlic. But I was well into the process before I was sharply reminded, in case I had forgotten, that I was still in the grip of a bout of osteoarthritis which had settled into my hands and back a few days ago.

As I moaned and grimaced my way through the chopping, and dicing phase of the recipe, I found myself wishing I had access to better kitchen tools that would help me breeze through some of these chores. Oh, sure, I had good knives, a high tech can opener, a dependable garlic press and so on, but what I really needed was a special kind of kitchen gadget. Short of having a kitchen robot, or a sous chef, I needed kitchen tools specifically designed for cooks who had limited hand strength.

Some gadgets that will help you age in place

I started by searching for the individual tasks, ‘chopping vegetables when you have arthritis’ ‘opening jars’, and so on. Nothing there, so I moved on to searching for the specific item I needed. I soon realized that this was a hopeless route to take—there were simply too many YouTube presentations and ads to view! And really, I decided, after an hour of this exercise, I would need to purchase and try out several utensils in each category before finding the perfect one for my needs.

Fortunately, before long, my search took me to some sites I know and trust, WebMD, VeryWellHealth, Everyday Health, and more… To my surprise and delight, it appears that inventors and companies have been engaged for decades in evaluating tools that would make life easier for those with arthritis. Here are some examples from an article written by Denise Mann for WebMD:

• Fat rubber grips slip over everything from a toothbrush handle to a pen or potato peeler, reducing pressure on your joints and making it easier to hold small items.
• Doorknob adapters are lever handles that fit over standard round doorknobs; once installed you only need push the lever up or down to open a door
• Lamp adapters. Screw a lamp adapter into a light bulb socket and it converts any metal lamp into a touch lamp with three settings.
• Leg extenders can lengthen the legs of your office chair, dining room table, kitchen island, or any piece of furniture that’s too low to use comfortably.
• Spring-loaded scissors can save your hands from fatigue from garden to office.
• Key turners snap onto the heads of household keys, widening your gripping surface and making keys easier to turn.
• Lever-style faucets or tap turners—inexpensive tap turners, lever-shaped pieces of plastic that fit over faucet heads and make turning taps easier.

Another site (Very Well Health) offers a list of gadgets such as a can opener that operates at the touch of a button, and two salad choppers that make this chore effortless.

As well, I found some creative solutions for other situations in and around the home at the EveryDay Health site: A seat belt extender, a zipper helper, a hydraulic seat ejector that will lift you out of your chair!

The future is bright for those who want to age in place

There is more help coming. Today, robots are being designed to operate our remote control, take our temperature, even respond to facial signs that indicate how we are feeling. They are seen as a response to the widening gap between the need for caregivers, and the availability of trained care personnel.

An article on the Waypoint Robotics site, however, points out that the industry is still evolving and has many limitations, saying:

“…an elder care robot in the future may easily be able to find and retrieve a pill box from another room, however, without an excellent mobility system, it will be stopped dead in its tracks should it get caught on something along the way.”

Personally, I’m not looking forward to having robots do the majority of our care, but I do believe the day will come when it will be necessary. I agree with Cynthia Matuszek’s speculation in her August, 2017 article for the Smithsonian, in which she says:

“I believe robots will perform many elder-care tasks within a decade. Some activities will still require human caregivers, and there are people for whom robotic assistance will never be the answer. But you can bet that robots will help seniors age in place, even if they won’t look like butlers or pastry chefs.”

For now, though, I’d be happy to be able to find some simple kitchen tools that will make my cooking, and my life a little easier!