Prescription Medications

1.  Ask for easy-to-open medication bottles.  Prescription bottles can be difficult to manage when you have RA hands.  If you have trouble removing childproof lids on prescription bottles, ask your pharmacist to replace them with easy-to-open lids.  These will take much less effort to open and put less strain on delicate hands and fingers.  However, if you have children in the house, you will need to be especially careful to store your medications in a place which is safely out of children’s access.

2.  Organize medications in daily and weekly containers.  Go a step beyond the easy-to-open lids and organize your medications in weekly containers, the molded plastic type which are available at most pharmacies or discount stores.  These containers with snap-lock hinged lids come in 7-compartment, 14-compartment, or even 28-compartment configurations.  You can choose one day a week during which to fill the compartments with your medications and not have to open those tricky childproof lids for another week.

Home Lighting

3.  Replace traditional wall light switches with rocker-panel switches.  Rocker-panel switches can be turned on and off by pressing with an arm, elbow, or palm of the hand each which require less fine motor control than the traditional toggle wall switch.  Rocker-panel switches are available at hardware and home-improvement stores.

4.  Turn any metal lamp into a touch-sensitive lamp.  Lamps are easier to turn on and off if you install a lamp converter, which fits into the lightbulb socket and bypasses the on-off switch, making the lamp “touch-sensitive.”  If you use a three-way bulb, the light gets brighter with each successive touch and then finally turns off.

Doors and Doorknobs

5.  Replace regular doorknobs with level handles, or purchase a rubber level that fits over any standard doorknob.  Lever handles are easy to operate since you can just push down with your hand, arm, or elbow.  Or you can wrap several rubber bands around the largest part of the doorknob to make it easier to grasp and turn.

6.  Keep doors easily movable by oiling squeaky or stiff door hinges with a little WD-40 or 3-in-1 Household Oil.  If a door scrapes along a rug, plane the bottom of the door to make it open and close more easily.  One way to plane the bottom of a door, without having to remove it, is to put a large piece of coarse sandpaper on the floor under the door (padding it, if necessary) and then move the door back and forth a few times until it swings easily.

Grocery Shopping Time

7.  Ask the grocery bagger not to fill your bags too full, spreading out the items into more bags that will weigh less each.  Ask that all frozen or perishable foods be put into bags together.  Then, when you arrive home, you only need to immediately empty the bags with frozen or perishable foods; the others can wait until later (unless of course you have a personal army of attendants at home ready to do your bidding, lol).