How do I organise storage for someone who cannot reach or lift much?

Most kitchens and wardrobes are built on the assumption of a standing adult with full range of movement, and they stop working the moment that is not true. The fix is rarely equipment; it is relocation. Almost every household has enough storage in the reachable band already — it is just currently full of things used twice a year, while the everyday items are on the top shelf and the floor.

Safety

Step by step

1. Define the reachable band and measure it for that person.Usually from about hip height to shoulder height, sitting or standing as applies. It is different for a wheelchair user, for someone with a frozen shoulder and for someone who cannot bend. Measure it rather than assuming, because everything else follows from it.
2. Move everything used daily into that band.Mugs, plates, kettle, tea, the frequently worn clothes, the everyday medicines. This one relocation does most of the work and costs nothing. Whatever was there moves up or down, because it is used rarely.
3. Put rarely used things high or low, and make them retrievable.High and low are acceptable for twice-a-year items, provided there is someone to retrieve them or they are light enough to be handled with a proper reacher. Never for anything needed weekly.
4. Reduce the weight of what has to be lifted.Decant the large bag of rice into two smaller tubs, buy smaller bottles, split the laundry into half loads, use lighter storage boxes. A tub that can be lifted with one hand is worth two that cannot.
5. Convert depth into drawers and pull-outs.The back of a deep cupboard requires bending and stretching simultaneously, which is the worst combination. Pull-out wire baskets, drawer inserts in base units and simple wheeled crates bring the contents to the person.
6. Put a turntable in every corner and deep shelf.It is the cheapest and most effective single change available, particularly for fridges, corner units and bathroom cabinets, and it removes reaching past things entirely.
7. Reconsider the doors.Taking cupboard doors off, or replacing a bifold wardrobe door with a curtain, removes one whole movement from the sequence. For anyone with limited grip or balance, the door is often the hard part rather than the reaching.
8. Improve grip and visibility.D-shaped handles rather than knobs, contrasting colours between the item and the shelf, and good light inside cupboards. Poor vision and poor grip compound reaching problems and both are cheap to address.
9. Remove the step stool.If someone is standing on a stool or a chair to reach a cupboard, the storage is wrong. Moving the contents is the fix; a better stool is not.
10. Ask about an occupational therapy assessment.In the UK a free assessment is available through the local council or via the GP, and it can bring equipment, adaptations and sometimes funding. It is chronically under-used and it is much broader than most people expect.

Tips

• Do the kitchen first. It is where the reaching is most frequent, the items are heaviest and the consequences of a fall are worst.
• A lightweight reacher-grabber is genuinely useful for light, high items and useless for anything with weight. Buy for the actual task rather than as a general answer.
• Clear floor storage entirely if bending is difficult. Things on the floor are both a reaching problem and a trip hazard at the same time.
• Label at a size that can be read without leaning in. Large print on a light background, on the front face.
• Where someone is being helped by family, agree where things live and write it down. Items relocated by a well-meaning visitor are effectively lost.

Questions people ask