A Few Of My Favorite Things - Part 8: Hand Vac

REVISED BELOW - I HAVE A NEW FAVORITE VACUUM

Everybody makes a mess from time to time, and I'm no exception.  The other day, I spilled dry coffee grounds in my lap.  If you did that, it wouldn't land in your lap because you wouldn't be sitting down while working with coffee.  But if, for some reason, you were sitting down to make coffee, and you ended up with coffee grounds in your lap, you would stand up, and brush the mess onto the floor where it would be easy to sweep up.

Sweeping is not easy for me, and standing is much harder, so how to get rid of the mess?  Enter the 18 Volt Shark Cordless Handheld Vacuum.

In its natural environment

I did a bit of homework before buying this particular vacuum.  This one has very good suction power, so it makes very quick work of the lap coffee, and the powered brush attachment helps if I get the coffee in the carpet.  It has a couple other attachments that I haven't used yet, but that will probably be useful one day.  Critically, it has a very convenient charging station that can mount to the wall, and holds all the attachments.  I put mine in the laundry room where it is within reach, but otherwise completely out of the way.

I haven't used my cordless hand vac too many times yet, but I like knowing it's there in case I need to collect some wayward M&Ms, clean up after a preschooler who eats like a defective wood-chipper, or perform a hands-free scary bug removal.



REVISED 8/24/2019

I haven't looked at this blog in 4 years, but I wanted to update this entry since I fell out of love with the Shark, and fell deeply in love with the Dyson cordless vacuum line.

I have 2 different models.  Of the two, I prefer the V7 which is the newer one.  I suspect any model would do the job although I think they get heavier as they get newer which might make them more difficult to handle.

This vacuum is smaller and lighter than the Shark, and the shape does a better job staying on my lap for transport.  I found the Shark tended to roll around as it wasn't really flat on the bottom.  I lay the Dyson on its side on my lap and it stays put, plus I think the V7 is just as powerful as the shark if not moreso.

Dyson V7 Motorhead Cordless Stick Vacuum Cleaner

It comes with attachments which allow you to use it as a dustbuster or crevice vacuum.  I find it's excellent at vacuuming up bugs if that's something you enjoy as much as I do, and it does a pretty decent job on hard floors.  I don't use it on carpet much, but it would certainly be better than nothing.

A Few Of My Favorite Things - Part 7: WeMo Light Switch

There are a lot of weird problems that come with paralysis.  One of the ones I noticed very quickly after I came home from the hospital was turning off the light at night.

Getting in bed at night is non-trivial for a paraplegic, especially when they are new to it.  Transferring from the wheelchair to bed, or from bed to the wheelchair can be a bit hairy, especially in the dark.  When I first moved into this apartment, I was brand new to these transfers, and I did not feel comfortable doing them in the dark.  My solution was to have a night light running in my room all the time.  This solution was a compromise.  There was a little bit of light when I was doing my transfer, but not as much as I really wanted.  Then there was more light in the room while I was sleeping than I would really prefer.

Smart phones are fantastic.  I held out getting one for several years while some of my friends pressured me to get one.  Ultimately, I did get one, only about a year before my injury.  I don't know how I'd ever survive a spinal cord injury without one.

I use my phone for everything.  I use the alarm feature many times a day to remember to take pills, or to empty my bladder.  I use a grocery list app to share my grocery list with Gus so he can pick things up for me if he goes to the store.  I use several chat and email apps to stay in contact with my friends.  I use the camera to take pictures for the blog.  I use the calendar to keep track of doctor appointments and dinner dates with friends.  I use the contact list to keep track of all the doctors and therapists I've seen.  I use the IMDB app to find out what actors were in certain movies.  And now I use WeMo to turn my lights off at night.

The WeMo light switch, by Belkin, is a smart light switch that uses your home WiFi network to talk to your smart phone.

WeMo on the right

There's not a lot to say about it except that I love it.  I can now get in (or out) of bed with the lights on, and then turn them off (or on) when I'm ready using an app on my phone.  It may seem like a little thing, but it makes my life a LOT better.

Update (5/20/2014) - My friend, Ben Parees, wants credit for introducing me to the dorky world of home automation.  It's true.  He did.  Thanks, Ben!  If you run into him, ask him about his project to automate the opening and closing of his mini-blinds in correspondence with the position of the sun!

A Few Of My Favorite Things - Part 6: Reacher Grabbers

The world we live in is designed around people with functioning legs.  Spend one day in a wheelchair, and this fact becomes painfully obvious.

I live alone, and if I need to reach something that is either too high, or too low, I have to use a reacher grabber.  I don't especially like having to rely on a fancy tool for something so simple, but I don't really have any other options.

I have an assortment of grabbers, and each is useful in its own way.

My collection

If I could have only one, it would be the Duro-Med 26-inch.  This is the one they recommended when I was in rehab.  It has decent grip strength, and it has excellent precision.  If you drop a pill under the table, this is the grabber you want.

Duro-Med 26"

I own four of these that I keep in different rooms.  In rehab, I remember them specifically saying this one was good if you want to grab a cloth to wipe something up on the floor.  I haven't tried it yet, but that's probably true.  I keep one in the bathroom to help flush the toilet since I can't get my chair close to the handle, or to pick things up if I drop them in the shower.  I keep one near my bed, and when the HO was keeping me from reaching my feet, I used it to help put pants on.

This grabber is also somewhat effective for pulling things down from high cabinet shelves in the kitchen.  My strategy for managing my kitchen space is that I keep just about everything that I use every day on the counter where I can reach it.  My kitchen is very small, and I can't afford to waste any space, so some things that I don't use daily have to go in the upper cabinets.  I have my friends put things up there when they come.  Extra food has to go up there sometimes, so when I need it, I just use a grabber to pull it down.  Most of the time that means pulling it off the front of the shelf, and either catching it, or letting it hit the counter.  I try to put durable foods up there.  Putting anything back up on a shelf is tricky at best.

The grabber I use more often for pulling things off shelves is the Unger 32-inch.  It has a longer reach than the Duro-Med so it can reach things on higher shelves, and the jaws open a lot wider so it can grab larger things.  The inside of the jaws also have a rubberized cover, so it has a chance of gripping a bottle.  The head can also turn 90 degrees which is convenient for grabbing vertical boxes.

Unger 32" and PikStik 20"

The problem with the Unger is that it does not have very good grip strength.  If it did, it would be much more useful.  Once I pull a box of cookies off the shelf, the odds that the Unger can hold it for a graceful landing are very low.  For that reason, that's about the only thing this grabber is good for, but sometimes it's the right tool for that job.

The jaws of the Unger aren't very precise, so it wouldn't be good for picking up a pill, but another issue is that it's just too long.  It's hard to appreciate until you try it, but using a grabber that is too long is very awkward.  One reason the 26" Duro-Med is so useful is that it's a very convenient length, but sometimes you want something even shorter.

The PikStick 20-inch is such a grabber.  I'd say this is my least useful grabber, and I haven't really used it much.  I bought it to use to help with putting on pants, and I think it would have been perfect for that job, but I stopped needing a grabber for that at about the same time it arrived.  Its head turns 90 degrees like the Unger, but I'm not sure if that's a useful feature for a grabber this small.  Its grip strength is also not very good.  It might be weaker than the Unger, so if I were to give up one of these grabbers, it would be this one.

A grabber that I would NOT want to give up is the Grappler 33-inch.  My aunt sent me this when I first came home from rehab, and it took me a while to appreciate its usefulness.  It's a little bit heavy which makes it a little bit clumsy to operate, but it has incredible grip strength.  It's also the longest grabber I have, so if there is something up high, and I want to have a reasonable chance of not dropping it, this is the grabber I want.

Grappler 33"

It was designed as a trash pick-up tool, and it's made almost entirely from steel so it's super strong.  The jaws also open much wider than any of the other grabbers so it will pick up things they won't.  The jaw tips have rubber booties on them so it has reasonable "gription" as Gus likes to say.  Most recently, I used it to take down my wall clock which is well out of reach so I could replace the battery.  I also was able use it to put the clock back up.  None of my other grabbers could come close to doing that.

At this point, I feel like my grabber collection is just about complete, but the Grappler is so impressive, I am considering buying the 24-inch version as well.  That would give me a smaller, lighter option for those times when heavy or large things aren't quite as high up or as far away.  After that, I think I will have a reacher grabber for every situation.

A Few Of My Favorite Things - Part 5: Door Pulls

Going in and out of doors is an important part of life that everyone does many times a day.  You probably don't give it any thought, but if you rely on a wheelchair for your transportation, you know every door can be a challenge.

When negotiating a door, you almost always have to operate the door with one hand while you maneuver the wheelchair with the other. Driving a manual wheelchair with one hand is challenging.  Doing it while leaning out of your chair to reach the door handle with the other hand will make you question how badly you really need to leave the room.  Add in any additional complications like a spring-loaded door closer, a bumpy threshold, or a fragile item on your lap that needs to go with you, and the profanity will start to flow.

For a lot of the doors out in the world, there is nothing I can do.  They suck and that's that.  But for the doors in my apartment that I use every single day, there are options.

I got this idea from something I saw in a video by this guy.  He has done lots of really helpful YouTube videos about how he manages his paralysis; if you're recently paralyzed, you should check him out.  I was watching one of his videos, and I noticed something in the background.  He had a handle mounted to a door near the hinge that he could use to pull the door closed behind him.

One of my biggest door-related annoyances in my apartment is that whenever I leave, I have to go out, turn completely around, roll back across the threshold, grab the door handle with one hand while backing myself across the bumpy threshold with the other, trying not to hit the wheelchair with the door as I do it.  It's awkward and difficult and annoying.  If I'm taking something out with me, I have to take it off my lap since it will probably fall off my lap while I'm closing the door.

When I saw it in the video, I immediately recognized how nice it would be to have a handle on the door that I could reach from outside without rolling back in.  The guy in the video (I don't know his name) used what looked like a drawer pull for his handle, but I know he owns his house so he probably just drilled mounting holes in the door to attach the handle.  I rent an apartment, so that's not really an option for me.  Fortunately, I'm a problem solver.

 I bought a drawer pull that mounts using #6 screws inserted from behind, like this one.  The screws that came with it wouldn't work for my purposes, so I had to buy some flat head machine screws that would fit, like these.  Then I got some 1/8" x 1" aluminum bar stock to mount the handle to.  Before my injury, I could have done this myself in my garage, but I had to get a friend to do it for me.  He cut the bar about 2 inches longer than the handle.  He drilled two mounting holes in the aluminum, and countersunk them so the screw heads would sit flush.  He cleaned up the rough edges, and assembled the whole thing together.

Looks like this

Now I had a handle mounted to a plate that was perfectly flat on the back.  I use a product called Command Hooks all over my apartment to attach things to walls with adhesive stickers that are strong, but removable.  I borrowed 4 of the small command strips to mount the handle to the door.

The finished product

I put one on the front door, and one on the door to my balcony.  Now when I go out, I just have to turn slightly, grab the handle and pull.  It works ridiculously well, and when I move out of this apartment, I'll just pull the tabs on the command strips, and it will come right off.  At least that's the theory.

The one on the balcony door

What it looks like on the back

It seems like a little thing, but it really makes my life a lot better.  I smile every time I use it.