How do daily living aids work?
Daily living aids are a range of products that have been specifically designed to make living in the home easier and safer.
Many of the daily living aids you will find are focused around the kitchen, as naturally, this is a place where many of the more functional activities in the home occur and where most help is needed.
That said, there are many other aids for other areas of the home or the garden, or even in the car, or for when travelling.
Daily living aids work by usually taking the strain, or weight of an object or activity and making it easier to grip, handle, move and balance.
So naturally, daily living aids focus a lot on helping the coordination that may be affected by increasing years, a disability, an injury or just a general weakness that is leading to difficulties doing certain tasks and activities.
Daily living aids have evolved greatly over the years in terms of the many more functional aspects that they cover, as well as benefitting from the latest lightweight and compact materials.
As well as being very handy, many aids also have an ergonomic and aesthetic appeal as many manufacturers, inventors and designers have recognised that users appreciate modern looks, textures, colours and styles that fit in with their personal tastes and home interior décor.
What is a typical daily living aid?
There isn’t really a typical daily living aid these days, as the range has grown so much over the years.
In the kitchen, for example, there have been ever-popular living aids that make a big difference and are therefore very popular.
As an example, The Swedish Fix It Food Preparation Board makes all of the many food prep tasks simpler, so it’s easier to select and use healthier ingredients, instead of grabbing the nearest unhealthy ready-meal, or dialling for a takeaway.
The board comes with four non-slip rubber feet to prevent it from moving. Suction pads are also provided for use on wet surfaces.
Sometimes, moving food from one room to another and managing closed doors and handles, as well as other obstacles that you could really do
with a free hand to move and avoid proves difficult.
A great aid around the home is the Freehand Tray With Non-Slip EVA Mesh. This tray only requires one hand to use, so allowing much easier movement of food, or any other items around the home.
The Freehand Tray allows you to open doors, climb stairs and support yourself safely whilst carrying items. The handle folds flat inside the inner rim of the tray and locks into place in the upright position, ensuring your hands do not become trapped when you put the tray down.
The non-slip EVA mesh means that the contents of the tray are held in place securely when being carried, avoiding any spills or dropping of items along the way, as the contents of the tray securely grip to the rubber base.
Sometimes, the act of reaching in the kitchen, garden or anywhere else in the home can be hazardous and is a common cause of strains, aches or even worse.
One very useful daily living aid, and a great example of a typical aid around the home is the Lightweight Handy Reacher, this very useful reacher allows the user to grip and lift light objects that would otherwise be difficult to reach.
Both lightweight and compact the reacher allows for objects to safely be grabbed or moved, both easily and safely.
The Reacher has a single moving jaw that can be operated with ease by a trigger action from the handle. The head is complete with a magnet, perfect for picking up small metal objects e.g. pins, and it also has a hook to aid in dressing.
As the examples above show, daily living aids provide useful assistance in a number of ways and save on discomfort and even injury as they make handling of items easier and can also save the back and the knees from strain or injury.
Daily living aids combine physics, material technology and aesthetics to bring modern solutions to longstanding problems.
Over the years ahead it is very likely that we’ll see even more inventions and innovative products brought into the daily living sector, so it’s well worth keeping an eye on the many new products as they are launched.
If you’d like to take a look at a much wider range, then simply click here to go to a full category page for daily living aids
Phil Ashforth is a staff writer for Mobility Smart, an online retailer of health, wellbeing and mobility equipment to help you recover from injury, recuperation and protection of joints and muscles when exercising or just helping you in normal daily life, you’ll find their website here
