A Few Of My Favorite Things - Part 1: Towel Holder

It's hard to believe, but I've lived in this apartment by myself for almost two years.  In that time, I have made a lot of changes that have made my life easier.  If you have visited me, you've probably seen a lot of them, but I've wanted to write about them for a long time.  This information might help somebody else one day, so I want to share it.

I'm going to do a series of posts about things that help me out on a daily basis, and I'm going to start with one that I first mentioned shortly after I moved in.

If you live in a wheelchair, and you want to wash your hands, the first thing you need to do is get close enough to the sink to reach the water.  That's not always easy.  If you're in a normal kitchen, the cabinets will probably keep you from getting very close.  When I visit Gus's house, I generally have to either pull up to the sink sideways and try to wash one hand at a time, or have somebody hold the sprayer close to the front of the sink where I can barely reach.

Fortunately, in my apartment, the cabinets under the sink have been removed so I can roll my legs up under the sink and actually reach the faucet.  That's great, but after my hands are clean, they remain wet.  How can I dry them off?  I could wipe them on my pants I suppose, but if I don't want to do that, I have to find a towel.  In a normal kitchen, there is probably a towel hanging on the stove door.  If my legs worked, I would just walk over there and grab it.

Unfortunately, my legs don't work, so I have to push my dirty wheels with my wet hands.  Now my wheels are wet, and my hands are dirty before I even get them dry.  Once dry my hands, the wheels are still wet, and my hands are going to get wet as soon as I push them again.

My solution to this problem is one that Gus came up with shortly after I moved here.

The towel holder in my kitchen

He mounted a bar just under the front edge of the sink where we can hang a towel.  When I roll under the sink, my legs hit the towel, and that would normally knock it off, so we have a mechanism that clips the towel to the bar so it won't fall off.

The mounting hardware

We used a small piece of 1" oak board to create a spacer and a place to mount the pipe bracket.  The pipe is 1/2" copper although I suspect steel would work just as well.  Copper looks nicer.

To secure the towel, we used a part from a SharkBite universal pipe fitting.  It's just the half inch disconnect clip.

Available at Home Depot

I'm sure there are other ways to solve this problem.  You could mount a hook just to the side of the sink, but this is how we solved it, and I'm extremely happy with the result.

We made the same mod in the bathroom.

Also helpful here