Many people define happiness as a spotless kitchen, a dust-free bedroom, or a lush garden. However, for individuals with arthritis, the effort required to get there can be painful. Streamline cleaning chores to increase cleanliness while reducing strain and joint pain. Here are some cleaning tips for those with arthritis:
1. Rethink Your Products
There is a plethora of specifically designed products available to help you with cleaning and other tasks while minimising strain.
Take kitchen cleaning, for example. Get rid of that old pump spray you’ve kept for years. Squeezing them can be as difficult as squeezing a tennis ball! If your hand is in pain or damaged, a product like deft can help you clean with ease. Deft products are 95% easier to squeeze than conventional trigger sprays. Deft is also 2x faster to apply, allowing you to clean in less time.
2. Break Up Chores To Make Them More Manageable
Vacuuming your whole home or doing the same task for an extended period of time isn’t a joint-friendly method to clean. It pushes you to repeatedly use the same muscles and joints, which may lead to discomfort and suffering. Instead, divide tasks into smaller chunks and combine them with others. So you may clean one area, then empty your dishwasher, vacuum another room, then fold a load of clothes.
3. Time It Right
Do you feel your best first thing in the morning after a good night’s sleep? Or do you feel the most energised and pain-free after a day of exercise?
Work at the time of day when you are feeling most productive. If you have the least discomfort in the hours following taking medicine, this is a good time to get some tasks done.
4. Clean More Frequently
It may seem counterintuitive, but cleaning in chunks every day or so is preferable than letting things pile up. Wiping off your kitchen countertops on a daily basis requires less work and puts less pressure on your joints than scrubbing away dried-up muck and dirt that has collected over many days.
This helpful approach is coined as “interval cleaning.” While you’re waiting for the coffee to be made or the oven to heat anything, you can do a small task like empty the dishwasher.
5. Lighten Your Load
Lifting large objects puts a lot of pressure on your joints, so seek methods to replace them with lighter items. Switch to detergent sachets instead of a large bottle of laundry detergent.
You can also store cleaning supplies, such as laundry soap, in smaller bottles. When you’re walking stairs with a laundry basket full of clothing, this will make things much simpler to manage and less heavy.
Another tip is to place countertop equipment in your kitchen, such as a stove or coffee machine, on cloths so that you can slide rather than lift them. You can also use floor gliders beneath the dining room table and other heavy furniture to make cleaning and sweeping simpler.
