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Four Kitchen Design Tips To Ease Your Arthritis

9 April 2015

Wyatt Patterson

Unfortunately, summer is now over, and the colder days of winter are on their way. For the 18.5% of the Australian population that deals with arthritis on a daily basis, winter means aching joints and painful flare-ups. Now that you are planning a kitchen redesign for your home, these four tips will help to reduce the amount of ongoing pain you have to put up with because of your arthritis condition.

Underfloor Heating

There are over 7,000 nerve endings in your feet, and when you spend a lot of your day standing on the cold tiled or concrete floors, these nerve endings start telling your body that they are in pain. Carpet is not a good choice for kitchen flooring due to the chance of food spills leading to stains. As a foot-loving alternative, why not pull up those tiles and install underfloor heating?

Underfloor heating can be placed under tiles, timber floors, and stone pavers. This system involves pipes being laid into the floor, which carry a continuous circulation of warm water. The heat from the water radiates up through your floor, and soothes your aching arthritic feet.

Rethink Your Storage Space

Back pain is also very common for those suffering from arthritis, so having to bend down to get items from cupboards under the bench can be a painful exercise. During your kitchen redesign, there are a number of ways that you can tackle this problem:

• Take a closer look at the storage space that you have above the bench with the distinct view of making it more user friendly. It may be that you need to remove what is already there, and replace it with cupboards that have a better storage layout.
• Incorporate a hanging pot rack into your design. Hanging pots off hooks near the cooking area reduces the need to bend down and get them out of the cupboards below.
• Can the overall bench area be increased to allow for more appliances to be left on the benches? Kitchen appliances such as stand mixers and food processors are beneficial to those with arthritis in their hands as it removes the need for manual mixing and slicing. However, these are not always light, so having to remove them from cupboards each time they are needed would be eliminated if they had their own designated spot on your kitchen bench.

Arthritis-Friendly Faucets

When your hands are hurting, the last thing you feel like doing is trying to grip a tap while turning on the water. Kitchen faucets are now available that incorporate touchless technology. A wave of your hand over the sensor will turn the faucet on and off as you need.

Not only are these faucet designs perfect for those with arthritis, they also cut down on the amount of food contamination that takes place as you never have to touch the faucet while you have dirty hands. This results in less cleaning of the faucet, and another task removed out of your sore hands.

Cupboard And Drawer Knobs

Just like having to grip a tap, moving sore fingers into position to grasp a round cupboard or drawer knob is painful for arthritis sufferers. During your kitchen redesign you can eliminate this problem by choosing user-friendly cupboard door and drawer openers:

• Lever handles are a good option for cupboard doors. These can be pushed down with elbows if necessary on days when the pain is particularly bad.
• "U" shaped handles for drawers allow for several straight fingers to slide under the handle to open it, rather than bent fingers being used.

Since you are going to redesign your kitchen anyway, using this opportunity to make it more friendly to your arthritis will go a long way to reducing the amount of pain you have to cope with each day. While it will not remove the pain completely, you will surprised at just how much difference you experience after these design tips have been put into place. For more information, contact a company like Wallspan Kitchens & Wardrobes.

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