Tips For Making Your Home More Accessible To Those With Mobility Scooters
If you have family members that use mobility scooters, there's a good chance that your current home set-up is not going to be able to accommodate them or their scooters. This could cause a huge problem if they try to visit you for the holidays or for your birthday. In order to avoid alienating these family members, you will need to be certain that your home is more accessible to those with mobility scooters when they come for a visit.
1. Remove All Throw Rugs
If you have any throw rugs that you often keep on your carpeting or hardwood floor to add some color or comfort to the room, you will need to remove them in order to make sure that your relatives are able to easily navigate the floor of your home. Simply throw them in a closet or somewhere else that is out of the way. This will allow you to avoid making your family members have to take special care in navigating the floor.
2. Widen Gaps Between Furniture
Your next step is to temporarily shuffle your furniture around so that the space between any two pieces of furniture that need to be passed in order to reach other areas of the home is at least 32 inches. 32 inches is the space that it takes for a wheelchair to fit through a doorway, so if you allow for 32 inches between all pieces of furniture, you can feel certain that any mobility scooter will be able to pass through without a problem. If you need to move furniture to a back room in order to make this gap possible, try to push the furniture as far back as possible in the room so that there are no parts of your apartment that are cut off from your relatives.
3. Hang a Temporary Curtain Over the Bathroom
Finally, if you have a small bathroom that is unable to accommodate a mobility scooter and the person riding it, then you will need to hang a curtain over the bathroom door so that your relative can park his or her mobility scooter in the threshold between the bathroom and the rest of the home but still get the privacy that he or she needs since the curtain will drape over the scooter and create a temporary wall.
For more information, talk to a company like Action Health Care that specializes in mobility scooters.