money saving ideas for your bathroom.

Before you assess the best money saving ideas for your bathroom, remember the three big questions.
You need to answer those three questions to optimize your savings. With the questions answered, you are saving instead of wasting.

Keep also in mind that although these tips seem to take care of the here and now hazards, they can save you a bundle down the line.

How?

Let's say that grandma trips over a throw rug and breaks her hip. We already know that about one in five hip fracture patients will die within the first year of their injury.

This a relatively fast decline with no doubt many dollars spent to fix the decline (albeit AFTER the fall has already happened).

Money saving ideas for your bathroom after the fact will likely be spent at first on handy hip fracture helps, a transfer tub bench (not covered under Medicare) and various comfort items.

Later, money will be poured into possibly a lift chair, a manual wheelchair and later an electric wheelchair and maybe handy power chair accessories for your van or car.

Consider the loss of sleep, the time off work that you may have to take now, the stress and perhaps money needed to pay for a sitter now that grandma is incapacitated and can not stay home alone.

Take this same circumstance and remove the throw rug and follow good judgment and safety tips and a $20 low shag bath mat and a $7 pair of no slip slippers could save $100's if not thousands and give Grandma the quality and quantity of life that everyone deserves and wants.

Money saving ideas for your bathroom look at the short term CHEAP fixes in order to spare your from the long TERM expenses.

traffic patterns.

Money saving ideas for your bathroom will pay off in the long run if you take care of the basics first.

Many bathrooms are in and out... enter through door A, walk to the sink, the toilet or the shower/tub and then walk back out through the same door A.

Other bathrooms are round trip style... enter through door A, walk to the sink, toilet or tub/shower and then make you way out through door B.

Traffic patterns are those areas on which you walk over and over again. They focus on the path we take to get from point A to point B and any obstacle on the path from point A to point B.

Remember traffic patterns affect mostly from the waist down.

When identifying traffic patterns in the bathroom, consider the following:

• Threshold differences
• Walking surfaces
• Throw rugs
• Sharp corners
• Glass mirrors, shower doors

Your money saving ideas for your bathroom will begin to pay dividends simply by identifying the hazards that need to be fixed.

We'll talk about how to fix these areas under hot spots.

functional use patterns.

The three most used areas in the bathroom are the sink, the toilet and the shower/tub area. When it comes to money saving ideas for your bathroom, these three areas can run up the tab. So, let's find out what is necessary.

Consider focusing your money saving ideas for your bathroom on the following functional areas:

• sink and counter top area
• toilet area
• shower and tub area

We'll talk about hot spots below.

hot spots.

We'll take care of traffic pattern hot spots first:

• Threshold differences - be sure that the floor surface change from your hallway to the bathroom floor is not huge. This can be a tripping hazard and also tip a wheeled walker.


• Walking surfaces - tile or linoleum may be ideal in a bathroom but these surfaces must be kept dry at all times. Most patients are not walking in the bathroom with shoes on. No-slip socks are the safest for these surfaces.
• Throw rugs - throw rugs make a bathroom cozy but they can also be land mines. Any type of rug or bathmat can be dangerous. I recommend that you get a low shag throw rug that covers most your bathroom floor surface instead of several high shag rugs that can spell disaster. Low shags keeps a degree of comfort with less safety compromise.


• Sharp corners - ouch. Ever stubbed your toe or ran into a sharp or blunt corner right at your thigh level? How about your shin! That is the worst! Ouch! Your bathroom set up could be hiding these land mines. Without notice a disoriented or groggy patient is now less likely to remember where the sink corner, the bathroom scales or the dirty clothes hamper sits. Stubbed toes can also turn into deadly falls with these obstacles in your pathway. Clear your pathway and wrap sharp edges and corners with protectors. These obstacles can stub a toe in the dark or kill when struck due to a fall.


• Glass mirrors and shower doors - although both are glass and both could be deadly, I'm not too worried about glass mirrors as they are usually not in the pathway of falls. Glass shower doors, however, can be deadly. Most falls happen in the shower or close by. The best way to make this safer is to strip the shower of glass door and the sliding frame. Replace with a simple curtain rod and curtain and you are good to go.
• 
  

Traffic pattern hazards must be tended to and resolved or your money saving ides for your bathroom become less effective and therefore more expensive!
Next we'll look at functional use patterns. coming soon.

Learn more about money saving ideas for your bathroom

Don't miss any tips! Home Care Blog/RSS Feed

Home