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3 Technological Updates to Make In Your Home for the Future

Your home is your place of refuge. It’s where you live and where so many special memories have been created over the years. And as you and your family get older, it’s where you want to stay. Here are three technological updates you can make to your home to help you live a long and happy life there.

Install a stairlift

If your home has a staircase, this can be a tough hurdle for you and your family to deal with as you get older. Stairs are notoriously dangerous for older residents, falls are the number one cause of injury for seniors, so it’s imperative that you develop a safe solution for using stairs in your older age. You can always make easy adjustments first, like keeping the stairs clear of unnecessary objects, making sure you have proper lighting, and installing anti-slip tape and handrails.

If and when you get to a point where stairs are too hard to use multiple times a day, then adding a stairlift to your home has a number of benefits. Stairlifts are a much more cost-effective solution than installing an elevator, which can be incredibly expensive and aesthetically disruptive to the existing layout of your house. After a simple installation process, you’ll experience a drastic improvement to your quality of life, and an easy-to-use and technologically effective solution to continuing to use the existing stairs in your home.

Renovate your bathroom

There are so many improvements you can make in the bathroom to make your home easier to live in as you get older. One of the first things you can do is renovate the shower or tub to make sure that it’s walk-in friendly, as well as install non-slip floors, both in the tub and on the bathroom floor. A few well-placed grab bars throughout the bathroom and shower are also a good idea. When you make adjustments to the bathtubs, it’s also smart to install a bench or sitting area. Another age-in-place adjustment that’s commonly made to bathrooms is raising the height of the actual toilet so it’s easier to use, and users don’t have to bend down as far to use it. There are also seat extenders that accomplish this same purpose. If you can afford it, it’s also wise to adjust the actual entry point into the bathroom to allow for walking-assistance devices to easily pass through. If you can spare the room to actually widen the navigable areas within your bathroom as well, this will only help.

In the bathroom, as well as throughout the rest of the house, you should consider updating doorknobs and other handles to they are easy to open without having to grip. Translate this same concept to your sink by installing larger, single-level faucets

Update your kitchen area

The kitchen is the true heavy-lifting room of the home. You spend a lot of time there, preparing meals and eating with family, so your kitchen needs to age effectively with you. Especially if your kitchen is not open-concept, you will need to make some key adjustments to facilitate a comfortable life in your older years.

As you age, you should make adjustments that improve mobility in your kitchens, such as widening the distance between counters and tables, or counters and islands. This will help you navigate the kitchen more easily as you get older.

Other adjustments that you can make to your kitchen include updating storage space so it’s easier to reach, adding more easy-to-operate handles and appliances, and adding additional sitting areas to the kitchen, where you can comfortably sit while chopping vegetables and preparing a meal.

There are so many adjustments, both big and small, that you can easily make to your home to help with aging-in-place and creating a renovated space that you can navigate comfortably in the future. And with technological innovations, like the stairlift, only improving, you can expect a seamless transition in quality of life as well.

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