One non-confrontational solution is this battery disconnect switch. It’s easy to install on the battery terminal; turning the knob disconnects the battery, making it impossible to start the car. When the car must be driven, the knob is screwed back down, and the battery functions again.

It’s much easier, emotionally, to accept that the car just isn’t working today than it is to accept that a lifetime of independence is gone. A mechanical solution like this may minimize conflicts, while, at the same time, keeping the roads safer for everyone.

“No Start” Car Battery Disconnect Switch, $19.95 (USD) at The Alzheimer’s Store

If you’re considering home modifications and working from blueprints, or just from graph paper, a tool like this offers a quick and easy way to see if you’ve got the right clearances built into your plan. This kit looks sturdy, and it’s probably fun to use, but if you have $45 (USD) to spend on a couple of wands and three pieces of plastic-and-acrylic, you’ve probably got enough money to hire an architect who will have his or her own tools.

Come to think of it, an architect’s office is probably the only place where this device will get enough use to justify the price. For the rest of us, maybe a little DIY is in order: How about cutting appropriately scaled disks from transparent plastic packaging and crazy-gluing pencils to them? You’ve got your “footprint”, you’ve got your transparent disk, and you’ve got an extra $44 (USD) left in your wallet. Good deal all around.

Visualizer Set (and outrageously priced rubber stamps, too) — Good thing for professionals, maybe, for the rest of the world, not so much.

These rubber ramps won’t work where you need considerable length, but they’d probably be a fine choice for many entryways and porches. They’re available in one-and-a-half and two-and-a-half-inch heights and can be combined with risers for a height up to four-and-three-fourths inches.

The 48 inch width should be fine for just about any home door width, including most sliding glass doors. It’s too bad that a cheaper, 36 or 38 inch version isn’t available for standard doorways, but these can be trimmed to fit if they’re too wide. No installation is necessary; push them flush to the step and they’ll stay in place.

Maximum weight of user and equipment is 850 pounds. Users of all weights can feel good about the rubber — it’s from recycled tires. Lovers of the discreet will be pleased at how much they resemble common rubber door mats.

Available from Active Forever, and elsewhere on the Internet

What is a Skinner Box? In this context, it’s a temperature-controlled, enclosed baby crib that requires no sheets, blankets, crib bumpers or other bedding. The essential ideas are to allow babies maximum freedom to move around and sleep without being constricted by clothing; to reduce laundry quantities to the minimum; and to allow the room the baby sleeps in to be used as more than just a nursery. Best of all, an air crib puts the baby at adult eye level — great for interaction, and also easy on backs.

These aren’t plans, per se . . . one of the advantages of the air crib is its flexibility, and adapting it to your circumstances is pretty much the point. Implementation is up to you — make it quick and basic, get a pro to draft a blueprint, or hire the whole job out and have a craftsperson make it out of old-growth-forest walnut. (Now that’s an heirloom!)

Here’s the short version — the ‘what-needs-to-be-done’ list:

• Build a big box with an open front
• At about waist level, build a ledge to support the mattress
• Below the mattress supports, cut holes for two ventilation screens, making sure they face each other for best air flow
• Add two light bulb sockets at the right and left sides, below the mattress ledge (these provide heat)
• Link the sockets to an external switch on the crib
• Build a protective shelf (screening or perforated) above the light bulbs (lift-out, if you’re not going to have access through the front) below the light bulbs
• Build another shelf (also of screening or perforated material) (also, lift-out, if you’ll need access from the top)
• Install a thermostat outside the box where adults can reach it
• Place shallow evaporation pans below this second shelf (these control humidity)
• Install a small fan in the ceiling
• Make a mattress frame and lace a mesh mattress to the frame
• Attach door(s)
• Add legs or a cabinet beneath

Details:

The two cribs my siblings and I used were identical and made from Masonite (lightweight but strong) and were set on wooden legs — probably 2×2s. You can just barely make out the legs in this black and white picture of our first Baby Box.

The doors were heavy glass, and opened just like any cabinet; they had latches all over the place to ensure that nobody took a tumble. The dual doors on our childhood boxes opened across the entire width of the crib; my daughter’s had a single door, not nearly as wide, but perfectly suited to the job, just the same.

My daughter’s box was built-in, and took up approximately the space of a small closet. Hers had the single door in the front, but also had a non-opening window on one end, making it very light and airy. The interior walls were tongue-and-groove-pine. The dimensions were about 46 inches wide by 24 inches deep; my daughter’s crib was about 4 1/2 feet high. This size gave her plenty of room, since she was quite small. The ones my siblings and I used were a fair bit larger; a standard full-size crib mattress in the USA is 28 inches by 52 inches.

All of these boxes were technically quite simple — you could get elaborate if you wanted to, but it’s definitely not necessary. The light bulbs are the heat source; I think we used 40 watt bulbs in my daughter’s box.

Our thermostats (and later, my daughter’s) were sold for use in chick brooders; if you don’t happen to live either in a time warp or a rural area, you can probably find something just as effective at any hardware store. Our childhood boxes plugged into ordinary outlets; my daughter’s electricals were hard-wired, just the way you’d install a bathroom fan or light fixture.

Our mattresses were composed of a rectangular frame which was supported by the ledge. A canvas pocket (like a large pillowcase) slipped over the frame, and was removed for washing.

A modern mesh fabric made my daughter’s mattress much easier to use than the ones from my childhood — it was laced across the underside of a frame made of conduit pipe. PVC pipe could work, too, but would probably require wooden dowels inside for reinforcement.

To make the mattress, I finished the edges of the mesh with a binding tape and grommets along all sides. On the ‘wrong’ side, the fabric wrapped around about 25% of the area of the mattress on the each side. (You can just barely make out the shadows of the edges in the image above left.) Having two would be most convenient.

The shelves above and below the light bulbs were a metal screen (ours) or perforated metal (my daughter’s). The shallow evaporation pans for all three of these boxes were ordinary baking pans. (Four, brownie-sized — 9 inches by 9 — in my daughter’s case.)

Screens on either end of the lower part of our childhood cribs allowed for air flow, and there was a fan above to circulate it. My daughter’s was designed so that air flowed up from below; a fan was installed in the ceiling.

The air cribs from my childhood were light enough that they were moved around the room occasionally. I think one of Deborah Skinner’s boxes had wheels or casters beneath it — a better plan, especially if you want to move yours from one room to another. Our boxes had simple curtain rods at the top, and lightweight curtains to pull across the front so that anyone moving around the room didn’t catch the baby’s eye when said baby was better off sleeping. Deborah’s had a pull-down shade.

Maintenance was pretty straightforward. Rinse, wash or scrub the mattress as needed and check the water in the evaporation pans. The water is what controls the humidity; you’ll want to keep an eye on it.

Other tips and notes:

Air-conditioning was not a consideration where we lived (southern Michigan before global warming; rural northern Michigan later), though I do think I recall my parents putting ice cubes in the evaporation pans during one hot summer. In more extreme climates, it might be necessary to make some more formal provision for cooling the air crib.

If you use a wheelchair, you’d probably want to shift things around a bit so that you’re slipping the chair right under the center of the mattress. In that case, you’d end up with the internal bits on either side of the wheelchair access, rather than placed all the way across the box beneath the mattress.

I added a toy bar at one end of my daughter’s crib, with a rather nice little music box which she loved to play (pictures above) — and this appliqued ’sky’ to the ceiling.

Previously: A Better Baby Crib for Parents Who Use Wheelchairs

A less-invasive, easier, and far less expensive alternative is to install offset door hinges. These z-shaped hinges allow the door to swing free of the frame, widening it by approximately 2 inches. They’ll usually replace existing hinges without modification; a little bit of chiseling may be necessary if the plates don’t match perfectly.

You can buy them at Dynamic Living (where you can also read some helpful comments) — local hardware stores may have them in stock as well.

When you put aside everything you already know, or assume, about them, it’s not hard to recognize that traditional baby cribs are kind of a pain. They’re not easy to get a baby into or out of, they demand abominable amounts of linen, and they require the baby to sleep behind bars. For parents who use wheelchairs, cribs are doubly cursed — wrestling a baby in and out of bed is twice as tough, and who needs to be hauling around all that extra laundry, anyway?

So this post is about a different alternative. Back in 1946, B.F. Skinner and his wife, fed up with the considerable amount of labor involved in raising a child in a conventional crib, came up with the idea for an “air crib” which a baby could sleep in sans clothing (except a diaper) and all that bedding.

The idea wasn’t only to save labor, but also to let the baby move in a temperature and humidity controlled environment without being restricted by layers of clothes. The Skinners’ second daughter, Deborah, was the first beneficiary of this enlightened thinking — and yes, she turned out just fine, thank you very much.

My grandparents were professors at Harvard with B.F. Skinner and thought that his Baby Box — as it was later popularly dubbed — was a good idea. We had two in our family — the first two kids were only 14 months apart — and the amount of drudgery saved under those circumstances was considerable, as you can imagine.

Our boxes, like the Skinners’, were built so that the ‘bed’ portions were about waist level on a parent. Getting a baby in and out of the air crib didn’t involve any bending or stooping. We were almost eyeball-to-eyeball with whoever was greeting us in the morning or after a nap, allowing for lots of immediate interaction. That’s fantastic for babies and parents, whether or not there’s a wheelchair in the picture.

Naturally, I had a Baby Box for my own daughter. If I hadn’t already been sold on it, seeing her dance around the box when she woke up, and the enormous pleasure she took in luxuriating in the comfort of her clothes-less environment certainly would have done the trick. But there was so much more: No PJs to wash! No undershirts! No sheets, or bumper pads, or quilts or blankets! Just swish the mesh mattress under the faucet and let it dry — it took about ten minutes — in the bathtub.

All the time I didn’t spend on laundry, I got to spend with the kid. When she woke in the middle of the night, she was absolutely comfortable bouncing around like mad before flopping down for more sleep until morning — part of her lean good health, and her great sleep habits, were due, I think, to not having to fight nightclothes if she wanted to turn over or move around.

Because the box is essentially a baby-sized room, it can be put, or built, just about anywhere. If it’s more convenient to have it in a family room, instead of a bedroom, that works fine. I worked and sewed and did bunches of stuff right in the room with my sleeping baby, next to her Skinner box, all through her baby- and toddler-hood. When the curtain was pulled across the front, it was sleepy time for her. We lived in an extremely small farmhouse then, and it was wonderful that the baby didn’t have to have a whole house-sized room to herself.

My daughter loved her air crib — can you tell? These pictures are more than 20 years old; my baby graduated from an excellent liberal arts college last May and is out in the world and on her own now — her current ‘box’ is a New York apartment.

If you want one of these things, you have to build it yourself, or have one built — and therein lies the beauty of it. Want to slip a wheelchair underneath the box, or right up to the edge of the mattress? Easy pie. (Unlike Skinner’s original model, ours were on legs, open at the bottom; my daughter’s had a cabinet beneath.) In my next air crib post, I’ll describe how my babyhood box, and my daughter’s, were made.

Greg, over at Daddytypes, has a great article about the backstory (and there’s a long comment there by me, too — you’ll have to scroll down to see it; mine’s second).

Last week, one of his nurses found these high-traction strips at AliMed, and my dad’s nursing home has installed two of them on the bathroom floor in front of the toilet where he’s most likely to put his feet when pivoting and standing. The strips are thin, barely rising above the level of the floor, and textured like a heavy vinyl sandpaper.

AliMed calls these “anti-slip adhesive tape”; these particular strips are six inches by twenty-four inches and come in a pack of fifty for over $200 (USD). The same material is available in continuous rolls at a similar cost. Unfortunately, this kind of pricing isn’t really reasonable if you’re buying for an individual home.

A better solution might be something like these “anti-slip tread strips” offered by Sporty’s Tool Shop. At just under $8 (USD) per strip (three or more for just over $7 apiece), they don’t require a major bankroll if you’re just buying a few. Both products are “peel-and-stick” and claim to be water- grease- and oil-resistant. Sporty’s are also available in glow-in-the-dark or reflective styles.

Today I used these neat little clips to keep the phone line pressed against the wall, away from wheels and legs. Instead of clamps or hooks, these clips are tube-shaped, with one long edge open so that you can pop the cord into the channel inside the tube. The clips hold the line effectively, stay in place beautifully, aren’t at all obvious, and are an excellent antidote to the hazards posed by flopping cords and lines.

These clips use 3M’s ‘Command’ adhesive, a really terrific product that sticks well, but removes easily without leaving any residue or marks on most surfaces. It’s a great, low-impact way to stick whatever you need to, wherever you want it, without leaving a mess behind. You can buy most Command products just about anywhere hooks and such-like are sold, but if you’re having trouble finding these particular clips, the product number is 17017; they should turn up readily in an Internet search.

It was a very simple idea: a frame, a tent/shower curtain, a base (about 4 inches deep if I recall it correctly), a hose-and-faucet arrangement for the spray, and a pump and hose to return the used water to the sink. Great, huh? Except that the selling price was right around $2400. That’s two thousand, four hundred dollars, mates.

For twenty-four hundred dollars I could have my bathtub ripped out, the floor tiled, and a nice Collapsible Water Dam ($70) installed. Heck, at that price, I could even have my toilet moved if I needed to.

But say I wanted a Collapsible Shower Stall instead. Couldn’t I just run down to the local camping supplies store and pick up a shower frame? Drop in at Tarjay for a handheld shower spray? Pick up a small pump and hose at Home Depot? The basin might be a little tougher, but somehow I think I could find something that would contain up to three inches of water for less than $2,400. Maybe just a fiberglass shower floor set on the kitchen floor, with a no-slip mat under it.

In fact, I might just be tempted to make my own wheelchair shower using Paha Que Wilderness’ Teepee Shower with Fiberglass Poles ($169) and the accessory Teepee Drain Capture Floor ($50). Add a hand-held shower head to clip onto the kitchen faucet ($24 on up to wherever, depending on how fancy), and that’s enough to shower right there, all for for say, $250. Modification might be necessary, but, hey, I’d rather cut the front of the Teepee shower away than spend an additional $2250 for a kludgee-looking commercial version.

I admit the return pump is a bit trickier, although there are aquarium pumps out there which don’t electrocute fish and might do the job effectively. Or, alternatively, it might just make sense to let the water collect in the Capture Floor and empty it before leaving the shower. I’m guessing that drain plug could be adapted to take a short length of garden hose, if it doesn’t already.

I haven’t tried this, and I can’t say how practical it really might be — caveat emptor! And clearly, if there are long-term needs involved, a portable shower in the kitchen isn’t necessarily the answer — whether it costs a couple of hundred or a couple of thousand dollars. But some of these “disability aids,” and their price tags, leave me wanting to scream. Don’t you just know that that one word — “disability” — can cost you hundreds (or thousands), for seemingly no reason at all. Why? How hard is it to build a cheap, portable, roll-in shower?

Paha Que Wilderness (It’s another stupidly designed site: scroll down the page and click on “Paha Que Store is now open” to get to the products.)

I think all door knobs should be replaced with levers. Accordingly, here are some options:

Dynamic Living carries the Leveron knob adapter, which slips over an existing knob. Not too esthetic, though — it’s plastic, colored brass. About $12.

A quick check at any home improvement store will demonstrate that there are a whole slew of levers to choose from in the $12 to $25 range (and higher). If they’re affordable, these might be a better choice, and perfectly fine for DIY — replacing a doorknob is a pretty straightforward job. (Where is that handy niece or nephew?) Then you’ve added a nice toney touch to the house along with making life easier.

When I first started replacing ours, I bought somewhat elaborate levers with a scroll at the end, mistakenly thinking it would be an advantage. It wasn’t — the lever blade isn’t as wide on other models, the squared-off edges are harder (and less comfortable) to hold — and the scroll end feels gnarly and unpleasant. The plain ones work better (and, I think, are a lot more attractive).

Did I say “first started replacing”? Why yes . . . where there are budgetary constraints, identify the most critical knobs, replace those, then work around the rest of the home. The levers blend nicely with existing hardware, so the change won’t be terribly obvious.

If you need a little grippier surface on your levers, try egrips on the level surfaces.