Accessible Spring-Cleaning Tools & Tips

For people living with physical disabilities, household tasks and chores can often present their own slew of challenges and barriers. Limitations in mobility, range of motion, energy, and muscle use can make it difficult to maintain a clean home. These spring-cleaning tips, tricks, and tools can make cleaning your home a more accessible, efficient, and independent experience all year long.

Choose products that can do the work for you

With so many self-cleaning products on the market today, it is easier than ever to work smarter, not harder. Choosing products that you can set and forget alleviates the challenge and exertion of scrubbing surfaces that are often hard to reach. Cutting out the hard labor of scrubbing a shower or toilet also saves valuable energy and time. Daily shower sprays, like the Method’s plant-based spray or SC Johnson Scrubbing Bubbles cleaner, or weekly shower sprays, like Wet & Forget shower cleaner, only require application to the surface that you wish to clean. Self-cleaning toilet products, like Scrubbing Bubbles Fresh Gel Toilet Cleaning Stamps, also do the work for you with easy application and affordable refills.

In addition to opting for cleaning products that can make maintaining a clean home easier, choosing from the variety of cleaning tools that increase independence can also lighten the load. Dishwashers, front-loading washers and dryers, and robot vacuums create less work and easier access. But if these appliances aren’t in your home or budget, there are smaller-scale products and choices that can make these chores easier.

Try these tips:

• For washing dishes, soak dishes in hot water prior to washing, use a dishwand scrubber or dishwashing scrubber gloves instead of a standard sponge, and simplify cleaning cups and glasses with a cup scrubber tool.
• For all-surface cleaning, try using a long-handled, electric, scrub spinner. Scrub spinners have multiple adjustable brush heads to fit a variety of surface needs and typically have more than one speed, a lower speed for daily cleaning and a higher speed for deep cleaning. And if you have difficulty gripping and squeezing a spray bottle to dispense cleaning products, you can take advantage of battery powered spray bottles designed for plants and fill them with liquid cleaning sprays instead.
• For cleaning your floors, be strategic in your choice of products. Use a push-broom or an extendable micro-fiber floor duster instead of a regular broom. Use a long-handled and extendable dust pan. Flat mops with washable refills for wet and dry use or products like Swiffer wet and dry mops can also make cleaning your floors easier. For vacuuming, opt for a lightweight vacuum with an easily detachable and extendable wand.

Increase your reach

Like the extendable mops and floor dusters, increasing your reach can make a world of difference, especially for wheelchair users. And products that offer extended reach can be used for a variety of needs. You can designate a floor mop or floor duster to be used only to clean counters and tables instead of floors or you can use a home surface cleaning tool with an extendable handle. And there are a wide variety of surface dusters with extendable poles to keep your bookshelves, blinds, and other surfaces dust-free. If your duster isn’t long enough to reach a desired space in you home, you can tape an empty wrapping-paper roll to the duster’s pole and increase your reach!

For tidying your home and picking up items from the floor or hard-to-reach places, use a grabber/reacher tool with a long handle. Grabbers designed with magnetic tips also make picking up dropped keys easier.

Make storage make sense

Accessing the cleaning tools and products that you need is also important. While many people tend to store cleaning products under their sink or in lower cabinets, these locations are often hard to reach for those living with a disability. Choose to store your products in a cabinet or closet with shelving at the best level for you. Use a wall-mounted broom organizer to hang your cleaning tools within your reach.

When you are actively cleaning, take advantage of wheelchair and walker side bags to bring your products with you. Or organize cleaning products on a light-weight rolling cart that can easily travel with you from chore to chore.

Create a cleaning schedule

Don’t try to do everything in one day. Creating and utilizing a weekly cleaning schedule with tasks and chores designated to specific days serves the benefit of staying organized while also limiting fatigue, over-exertion, and exhaustion. Don’t assign more than one big chore per day and include days for rest. A consistent schedule will help you stay on task and make maintaining a clean home easier. Choose a schedule that works for you and your life.

For individuals who have caregivers and/or family members who are able to assist with home support and household tasks, creating a weekly schedule can alleviate some of the daily work required to manage care. By assigning specific tasks to specific days, your caregivers will know exactly what and when you need assistance with to keep your home happy, healthy, and clean.