Is Your Home Safe? Here are our Top 5 Home Safety Products

June is national safety month in the United States and it is a great time for us to look at our homes, our loved ones' homes, and our daily environments for safety traps and improvements that we can make.  

More than 60% of falls occur in the home with most falls occurring in the bathroom.  Wow!

Do you have the proper safety products in your home?  They keep you living at home longer, and not in assisted living or a nursing home, so what are you waiting for?

Here is a roundup of the Top 5 Home Safety Products you need if you live at home or with a caregiver.  These products are designed to not only keep you safe, and possibly prevent an accident, but they are also designed to make your life easier.  At first glance, these may look like regular wholesale medical supplies until you look at how many ways they can keep you living independently.  And isn't independence what we all want as we grow older?

1.  The easiest home safety tool is a Grabber.  A reacher, grabber, claw grip, whatever you want to call it.  These tools are as necessary as insulin to diabetics or incontinence supplies to the bed-bound.  A reacher or a grabber is a Daily Living Aid that is ergonomically designed for reaching items out of normal reach.  Great if you are in a wheelchair or if you should not be climbing step-stools to reach items off of a high shelf.  These tools are versatile for left or right-handers and usually have non-slip grips on the grabber end.  

2.  Grab bars for the bathroom, kitchen, anywhere you need help getting up and down, are the second essential home safety item.  Grab bars are the easiest and most effective medical supply on the market.  You can easily install them anywhere and they are cheaper than replacing a hip.  Now coming in an assortment of metal tones, brushed metals, and colors, grab bars don't have to look industrial.  They provide safer support than using a chair or the edge of the tub and since you can grip them, they won't slip so you won't slip.  

3.  A bed rail is similar to a grab bar but it attaches to your bed (since most beds won't be next to a wall where a grab bar is feasible).  Bed rails are designed to help you sit up in bed after lying down all night.  Joints get stiff in your sleep.  We get it!  They also are a sure safety tool to helping you get out of or back into the bed.  Sometimes all we need is a little boost and sometimes we need a big helping hand.  If your bed is higher off the ground, and you use a step stool to climb in, a bed rail is essential to helping you safely into bed.  A bonus plus of bed rails is that they prevent you from rolling or falling out of the bed.

4.  A bath chair, tub board, transfer bench, or similar bathroom safety item is also at the top of the list.  If most accidents happen in the bath, we guarantee they happen because of water.  Slipping getting in and out of the tub is a scary thought.  Bath chairs, transfer benches, and tub boards are all ways to prevent these kind of accidents.  Make sure you buy a product that is designed for the bath.  It should be rust-proof, slip-proof, mold-resistant, easy to clean, and be adjustable to fit your needs.  They come with backs or backless.  Make sure you buy one that can hold your weight.  If you buy the correct bath safety product, it will reward you with an easier, less stressful time in the bath.  

5.  Whether you think you could use one or not, a walking aid like a cane, rolling walker, or traditional fold-out walker might be just the thing to help you relax around the house.  How would that work?  If you're at home, you are either moving constantly or not moving at all.  The resulting fatigue, joint stress, and joint stiffness means you could use a little help.  A mobility aid like a cane is much safer than holding on to the wall or praying your don't trip and fall.  Certainly something to consider seeing as how mobility products come in such cool colors and patterns now.

With this information, we certainly don't want to scare you or worry you unnecessarily but we are also firm believers that you have to be in charge of your own health and well-being.  Let us hear your recommendations for keeping yourself safer at home and what works and what doesn't.