Christine Sirette: Making sure your stairs are safe, adding lighting where there isn't lighting, decluttering your hallways. They're just smart ideas and they're honestly they're ones that that we should all be thinking about. I'm Christine Sirette.

Kyra Blackwell: I'm Kyra Blackwell and you're listening to the Wire Cutter Show.

Christine Sirette: Kyra, can I ask you a very personal question?

Kyra Blackwell: It's just you and I in this microphone.

Christine Sirette: I always wait until it's just you and me to get really personal with you. Um, no. This is a deep one. I want to know, do you think about getting old and what that's going to look like for you?

Kyra Blackwell: Frankly, no. I feel like I'm pretty far from that, but sometimes I do worry about my parents and like what I'm going to do in that situation.

Christine Sirette: Yeah, that's a good point. I I think about that. I'm also technically midway through if I get to 100, close to that. So, I am starting to think about that a little bit more, you know, like what does it look like to get old and where do I want to get old? And this is something we've been thinking a lot about at Wire Cutter recently because we just finished this big group of articles that we just published all about aging in place. And if you're not familiar with that term, it basically just means growing old in your home, not going to a facility, being able to live your life where you want to essentially. And so we published this great piece that is written by Doug Mahoney, our star guest, who has come on the show before to talk about home renovation. And he wrote a piece that takes you through a home room by room and really explains what you should think about if you are considering aging in place for yourself or if you are helping a loved one kind of figure out how they need to retrofit their home. And so we're going to talk to him about that today.

Kyra Blackwell: It seems like such a helpful thing because it can become so overwhelming and for Doug to be able to just kind of walk you through all the things you might need to think about or consider and give you an itemized list seems like it's great service journalism.

Christine Sirette: Yeah, it really is. He talked to a ton of experts for this. People who do assessments of people's homes and who work with a lot of older people to really pinpoint the trouble spots in people's homes that commonly come up over and over again.

Christine Sirette: Welcome back. With us now is Doug Mahoney. Y'all know Doug. He's a senior staff writer on the home improvement team. He also covers outdoor power equipment and pest control. He's already been on to tell us about how to fireproof your home, how to rid your house of rodents and pests and you know, talk about beday. Favorite conversation ever. [laughter] Doug, welcome back to the show.

Doug Mahoney: Hey guys, how's it going? It's good to be here.

Christine Sirette: It's good to have you back. I feel like we've come to rely on you quite a bit on anything homerelated. So, this is a big one today. Doug, before we get into all of the great reporting you did for this piece, I want to know, do you have any personal experience with helping someone in your life age and place?

Doug Mahoney: Yes, definitely. I am of that age where I have kids on one end and then parents on the other end. So, my father, he passed away maybe two years ago and he was living in his home. He was 90 years old. Uh my mother still lives in the home. She's 86 and she's by herself there. She's right across town, so it actually works out really well. She's like 5 minutes away. My in-laws, my father-in-law passed away a couple years ago. Also, he was in a nursing home. He had Parkinson's. And my mother-in-law was just moved into assisted living, which actually has been great. It's it's been like a really really good thing for her. Which I think brings up a point here that aging in place might be something that we all want to do and we all think it's going to be great, but there may come a point where it just doesn't make any sense anymore depending on the individual or the home. And then assisted living or nursing home, you know, will provide much better care and be much better for the person.

Christine Sirette: Yeah, I think that is such an important point, Doug. And I first want to say I'm really sorry to hear about your dad. That is really hard. and you have just a wealth of experience with your parents and your in-laws for this type of reporting. You know, we are really going to focus on prepping a home for aging in place today, but I think a lot of the guidance that you have in this guide could be relevant to a lot of people who are not, you know, necessarily considering themselves in that age bracket. Who else do you think might benefit from implementing some of the home modifications you have in this piece?

Doug Mahoney: Yeah, this is a really important point to make and one thing and I really realize that going through the research is how how universal many of these home adaptations are. I mean, you can think about them all under the banner of aging in place, but the reality is that they're, you know, tweaks and modifications that are going to benefit really everybody. Making sure your stairs are safe, adding lighting where there isn't lighting, decluttering your hallways. I mean, they're all just they're just smart ideas and they're honestly they're ones that that we should all be thinking about.

Christine Sirette: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I feel like reading through your piece, I kind of thought, "Wow, if I had a toddler in my home right now, a lot of these things would be relevant, but even as a person in my 40s, like tripping can happen any time, a loose rug or whatever." So, I I completely agree. Doug, there are a lot of factors that go into how well you can age in place, but in your reporting, did experts have any advice for things they've seen people doing in retrofitting their homes that have the biggest impact in allowing them to stay in their own home successfully?

Doug Mahoney: Yes, definitely. The most important thing to do is to look at your home through the lens of fall prevention. Falls are going to be the most important thing. I don't know about you all, but I know people who have they've fallen and you know the hip injury or the head injury and then all of a sudden that's the end of aging in place. So falls are going to be the most critical thing and and thankfully most of the solutions for fall protection is just fairly small adjustments.

Christine Sirette: So, let's get into some of the details that you have room by room because it's a very cool feature if you know listeners should go and look at it online because it it's beautifully done. It's got great illustrations and it really shows you kind of let you zoom in on different parts of a room and there are too many things in this piece for us to talk about today. So, we're going to kind of look at this at a high level with you Doug and move through the main areas of a home. So, we want to talk about the entryway and living areas, bathrooms, bedrooms, kitchens, and then the exterior of the home. So, let's start out with that first one, the entryway and living areas. We're kind of grouping that together. What are the biggest impact modifications that someone should consider for these areas?

Doug Mahoney: Yeah, that's a great place to start. I would say as far as an entryway goes, it's good to have someplace to sit as soon as you walk in the door. a nice little bench where you can either dump off a bag of groceries or you can sit and take your shoes on and off. You can take your coat on and off. You can look for one that has some storage underneath it so you have a place to put your shoes so shoes aren't just sort of spread out all over the entryway and causing, you know, potential trip hazard. Also, that would provide a place where you could tuck any like assisted devices that you might need for getting clothes on and off like a shoe horn or like a dressing stick. And a dressing stick is it's kind of like a a little rod with this oddly shaped hook on the end of it. And you can just use it to help get a a coat on. Like if you get your arm through one side and then you need some help swinging the coat around to the other side, like a a dressing stick can help with that.

Christine Sirette: Oh, interesting. Okay, great. And then what are some other things that you should think about in this area?

Doug Mahoney: Well, definitely an entryway there's often a set of stairs if you have a two-story house. And stair safety is obviously, it's probably not going to be a surprise, is extremely extremely important. What you want to look for, you want to make sure that you have railings on both sides. You want to make sure that the treads are not slippery. If you have polished wood stair treads, they can be a little slippery. So maybe think about a stair runner, just something that's going to allow your feet to grip in a little better. You can use grip tape, things like that. It's a little utilitarian. I think most people would probably prefer to go with a a carpeted route instead. And [snorts] then as far as railings go, you want them on both sides. You want the ends of the railings to turn and terminate into a new post or the wall. What you don't want is that classic basement stairway railing where it's just like a dowel that's cut off. Poke you in the eye. Yeah. It's it's going to poke you in the eye. If you're wearing like a robe, your sleeve could get caught on it. You know, your your your clothing could get caught on it on the way down. So there there's all kinds of little details like that to just take a look at. And also make sure the railing goes all the way down to the bottom step. A little bit beyond the bottom step.

Christine Sirette: What about the bathroom? This seems like a particularly hard room in the house because there are just so many places to trip or slip or fall.

Doug Mahoney: Yeah, the the bathroom is probably one of the most important rooms to think through. And again, fall prevention. Falls are going to be the most biggest concern. You've got wet feet. You've got tile floors. You want to think about grab bars and and like really grippy bath mats and shower mats. Um, and those are especially important with tub showers, you know, where you have to step over the curb to get into the shower. The mow and grab bars are nice. wire cutters done some work on those. And one thing that was really interesting that I picked up from my research is that like with grab bars, you want to place them where you're going to use them, which sounds like common sense, but but if you go online and you type in where should I put a bathroom grab bar, you'll get all sorts of information. Put it, you know, 42 in above the floor level. Put it oriented horizontally. This, that, and the other thing. But the people I spoke with who have actually done home assessments and walkthroughs with people, they said they just throw that all out. What they do is they will go into the bathroom with the individual and they will ask the individual to get into the shower and they'll watch where they put their hands to brace themselves as they get into the shower and they'll mark the wall and they'll say, "Well, that's where you need your grab bar." So, like say you have a tub shower, you could have a grab bar on the faucet side and that's great, but if you enter the tub shower from the drain side, it's, you know, it's not going to do you any good. So, make sure that it's put in a place where you're actually are going to use it.

Christine Sirette: That's so interesting. You know, I think what you're saying here is that a lot of the sort of standardized guidance, maybe it's like ADA compliant, these are sort of general guidance for a general population, but when we're talking about modifying our own homes, it's important to think about the specific people using the different items. Definitely. What about for people who have trouble stepping into the shower themselves? Are there any other things that you could add to your bathroom to make that easier?

Doug Mahoney: Definitely, you want to make showering as safe as possible. So, there's a number of things that that you can do in the shower. Um, first, you can get a shower head that has the removable sprayer. Um, they're easier. You don't need to contort your body. Mowen makes a nice one we recommend. I actually have it. Again, this is another great example of one of those items that is going to work for anybody. And there are also other ones. They'll have a built-in grab bar and an adjustable height of the shower head. You could if you have a shower chair, you can just be sitting down and when you're done, the the grab bar is there to help you stand up. As far as getting in to the shower, a transfer seat is something you might want to think about. They're especially important, I think, if you do have that tub shower setup with the big tall curb. Can you describe what a transfer seat is? What What exactly does that mean? It's basically the way to think about it. It's is it's a way to enter into the shower safely. So, the design that's kind of in my head right now, it's like just imagine like a bench that sort of straddles the the shower curb. So, half of it is outside the shower and half of it's inside the shower. So, you sit on that bench and then you're able to lift your legs and swing them up over the curb to get you into the shower and then you can either scoot your bottom over into the shower or some of them even have like sliding chairs and then you can also use that as your shower chair. So, it's just a really safe way so you're not making that big tall step up and over into the shower over that big tub curb. We do have a guide out for shower chairs and there's um all kinds a wealth of information there.

Christine Sirette: What about the toilet? It can be hard for people to constantly be sitting down and standing up. Do you have any guidance for that?

Doug Mahoney: This came up in my research and I was actually surprised at the the statistics around falls located around the toilet. So getting on and off the toilet becomes more of a challenge as we age. The first thing to think about I would say would be a taller toilet. Most manufacturers they make ADA height toilets which most people find to be more comfortable. It adds 2 to 3 in to the seat height and again it's one of those things that um a lot of people like. I installed three of them over the last couple years and they're just fantastic compared to the old lower toilet. But do you have to install a brand new tall toilet? Is that the only solution or do they have I don't know some kind of thing that you can add to your existing toilet to make the seat higher? Yep. They're called seat risers and you could install one of those too. They have ones they sit directly on the toilet and then there's other ones that are sort of in a frame that sort of sit around the toilet. And I think beyond the convenience of being able to just use your old toilet and use a a seat riser. I mean there are implications to to that design. It makes it harder to clean your toilet. It's it's kind of like having a bet where there's just more places for gunk to get into. So, if you do have the ability to put in that higher toilet, it looks nicer and you're probably going to have an easier time cleaning it. Yeah, definitely. And actually, a bet. It's kind of interesting you mentioned a bedet. That's another option too that Toto makes really good ones. But again, it's one of those things that, you know, I think a lot of people would benefit from and just generally enjoy. But when you have limited mobility, it may become essential. That is a really great point. It would give people a lot of autonomy in the bathroom if they otherwise might need some help. So, that's great. Definitely. Yes. And night lights everywhere. You know, motion activated night lights are are wonderful everywhere. [music]

Christine Sirette: Okay. So, now we want to tackle the bedroom. What should people be thinking about in this room specifically?

Doug Mahoney: There's a lot to think about in the bedroom. for one, an adjustable bed um that can raise and lower the overall height of your mattress and kind of help someone get in and out. [laughter] Yeah. See, see, it's another one of those things. I think it could also be great if you have sleep apnea, right? Like you like elevate your head and and then some will actually will even lift you into almost a standing position, which would certainly help someone get out of bed if they had limited agility, limited mobility. Another thing that I thought was actually really interesting that a number of experts talked about is a designated dressing area with a chair. You know, they talk about people getting dressed and they're sitting on the bed, which is sort of slippery. You know, you could kind of scooch and fall off of it. But if you have a specific area in a chair, you sit on the chair, you put your pants on, put your socks on. I mean, we've all been there. You got one sock on and the other one and then you're like hopping across the bedroom, you know, on on one leg. You [snorts] want to stay as far away from that as possible. And then a little designated dressing area. That's a place again to keep much like in the entryway a spot for a shoe horn or a dressing stick, you know, things like that. And then also, it's worth pointing out that if you have things like that, you want multiple versions of them. Like you don't want one shoe horn that's sometimes downstairs when you need it, sometimes upstairs when you need it. You want to reduce those trips up and down the stairs. So get one for your dressing area, get one for your front door.

Christine Sirette: What about any things that might not seem like they're totally necessary, but it might help you be more comfortable because it is the bedroom. You want to be able to relax and sleep well.

Doug Mahoney: Yeah. Um, one interesting thing for the bedroom would be if you can install smart curtains or smart blinds, smart shades. I also want these. [laughter] And just to clarify, they're on some kind of mechanical device that you control with your phone. Is that essentially open windows open? Um, yep. and and uh they're cool because you can set them to a schedule or they can be open remotely. So, they can be opened before you get out of bed. So, you know, that'll likely bring in a lot more natural light into the room, make it generally safer, and it also eliminates the overall hassle of blinds. I don't know about you, but I've got the kind that have the two little ropes and I mean, it's just they get like knotted and then the blinds kind of hang in halfway and there's a guide for that which has much more information. Very cool. Anything else? Yeah, you know, a bedroom is a good place to to talk about a smart thermostat, smoke alarm, CO detector. Getting [snorts] those in the smart version is going to be really helpful. You know, especially again with somebody with mobility issues, dexterity issues. We all know what a false alarm is like with a a smoke alarm where you're sort of scrambling around the house trying to get it to stop and hit the mute button, but if you can do that with just the push of a button on your phone, that's going to add a lot of convenience. And then as far as thermostats go, smart thermostats will learn your habits and then um they just sort of operate independently and if you need to make an adjustment, you can just do it through your phone while you're sitting on the couch. So they're just going to be a lot more convenient. And and again, these are topics that Wire Cutter has extensively covered.

Christine Sirette: When it comes to these smart features, I think something that we point out in this piece that you wrote is that if you are going to use technology like this, let's say maybe you're helping your parent across the country and you're trying to help caregive remotely, that it is actually quite important to be very transparent with whoever you're helping that you're using this technology, right? Like these smart devices, you don't want to be just installing this in your mom's house without being really open with her about that fact. Oh, yeah. I I certainly wouldn't do it with without letting someone know.

Christine Sirette: Now, let's talk about my personal favorite room of the home, which is the kitchen. What are the biggest risks in the kitchen, and how can you help mitigate those?

Doug Mahoney: The biggest risks in the kitchen probably center around the stove. And talking to experts, people recommended getting an induction cooktop. Yeah, if you switch over to induction cooktop, it won't use gas. It remains largely cool to the touch and there's no chance of any kind of CO poisoning. And that's going to be good once you get into, you know, if memory lapses start becoming coming into the picture. And then there's the idea of getting a large one of replacing your stove or your cooktop, but that's obviously a really big project. So there are little portable single burner ones that are available.

Doug Mahoney: Uh in the kitchen, you can do modifications to your dishwasher and oven. There are models available that have drawers instead of doors and those are going to be easy if you um have a walker, a wheelchair because if you think of getting an item out of an oven, you know, you're really kind of offbalance. You're sort of leaning forward. You're picking something up that that's pretty heavy. You can get a model of a drawer and you just kind of open the drawer and then there's your food. You could also get something like a convection toaster oven like a Breville or even an air fryer. Yep. Yeah, definitely. Um, things like an Instant Pot is another all-in-one cooking item that people recommended. Another good thing you could do in the kitchen is to get a little island that's on rollers, a little small tabletop. Countertops, they're usually on the high side, usually about 36 in, and you can't get your legs underneath them, so they can be hard to sit at. But if you have like an island on rollers or like a little butcher block situation on rollers, it's just lower, easier to sit at. You can move it out of the way if you don't need it. Or you could put it near the sink if you're doing sink work. You could roll it over the oven if you're doing something over there. It just adds this sort of versatile element to the kitchen that you can kind of customize based on what you're doing.

Christine Sirette: So, let's talk about the last area, which is the exterior of the home. What should people be thinking about here?

Doug Mahoney: So, basically, your home assessment should really start at the sidewalk. it it really should encompass your entire home. So, what you want to think about there is the path you take from the car or the sidewalk to your door. You know, which door do you use most? And and how do you get there? Do you have to walk down a a walkway? Is it uneven brick? Are there flag stones and there's big gaps in them? Are those things that might need to be repaired? Think about the pathway to the mailbox. Like, is that safe? And then also lighting. Are there nice flood lights? Is there lighting on the walkways? And for those, there's certainly smart systems available. Smart lights. I know wire cutters covered those. But then a much more inexpensive option are those like those solar lights that you can just get out of at a box store that just stick in the ground. Those will often shed enough light to illuminate your pathway. And then once you're sort of past the walkway, look at the front entrance of your house. You know, look closely at your front door. [snorts] Front doors are large. They're heavy. So, make sure you can easily open and close it. They often like swell with the weather. Like mine right now, it's like it's stuck, you know. See, if you need a grab bar like on the door casing, you know, a place to kind of brace yourself while you open it. Screen doors and storm doors, they can pose issues. My in-laws, they had a they had one of those screen storm doors with a panel that you switch out and they had this thing tensioned so tightly that you could hardly open it. And then when you were trying to get through the main door, it was like pushing you like against the door jam. [laughter] So just be aware of those things like like really try try and enter your home as if you've never been there before like with with an eye out for these things. And then also there there are things like automatic door openers available. What is that? The door will open with a little remote control. And I think there I think there's some that are voice activated too. [music]

Christine Sirette: Doug, you've mentioned a couple times that you talk to people who do home assessments. What exactly is that? How should someone think about whether they should find someone to do a home assessment for either themselves, for a parent, for someone else that they're helping to age in place?

Doug Mahoney: A home assessment is when someone often an occupational therapist will come to the home and just sort of go through the house with you top to bottom and point out these things that I'm I'm pointing out in our in our conversation here. although they will go into I mean is it it's worth noting that that what we're saying is just sort of scratching the surface here. I mean there's there's plenty more that someone should consider and an occupational therapist will know what to look for. Like I said they'll they'll have you step into the shower. They'll locate grab bars for you. They should help be able to to help you through the whole process. As far as how to find somebody, a good place to start would be sort of a local council on aging. There's a senior center in the area. your state has resources as well. Or you could just start googling around. I mean, there are a lot of independent organizations that help seniors living at home. Some of them they might help you with your finances as well, and they'll do home checks. There's a a sizable infrastructure out there.

Christine Sirette: I want to ask about the cost of it all. I wonder realistically how much somebody should expect to pay to retrofit a home like this.

Doug Mahoney: That's a very difficult question to answer as far as as what someone should expect to pay. I mean, it's a really really individual thing and it's based on like the status of the home as well as the health and the age of the individuals involved. Like for instance, a multi-level home might present more issues than a ranch would or an older home, it'll probably be less suited for these adaptations compared to a newer home. So, it's really individual. I mean, you may just be somebody who adding a few grab bars and cleaning up some clutter, maybe a few smart home items, and that will help you go a long way. And as far as um these modifications being renter friendly, the majority of them I would say definitely are. I mean, the the most important ones I would say are. You're not going to be able to renovate your bathroom, but you can definitely get better shower mats, add lighting, take advantage of all the smart home gear. I know that from watching people in my life who are navigating being caregivers for parents, for sometimes in the case of spouses, the cost of renovating things can be really overwhelming, especially if you're dealing with someone on a fixed income. Uh, so I wanted to mention this. We have another piece in this suite of articles that we just published about aging in place. It's a great piece by another writer Dan Copel profiles a bunch of different people who are aging in place and how they're doing it. And he has a resource section. He specifically mentions an organization called Rebuilding Together which provides no cost home repairs if you are eligible. So I think that's a great resource and we have a few more resources in that piece. Well, yep, you you got it. I mean, it's uh first thing is it would be fall prevention. So thankfully those actually are fairly inexpensive solutions, you know, as far as grab bars, bath mats, lighting, securing rugs down, an additional handrail to the stairs. All those things are fairly inexpensive. From there, I I'd say the next step would be getting into some of the smart home stuff and then maybe that's where you start kind of reorganizing your kitchen. And so, you know, this actually leads into another idea which a number of people mentioned, which is that it's really good to get ahead of these ideas as soon as you know, you feel like you're kind of established in your long-term home or maybe even even before then, just start thinking about these ideas because you don't want to be modifying your home in a stressful situation when you have to. So, if you approach this topic over a number of years, you can sort of spread out the cost. Always kind of know in your mind what the next thing might be. But if you're put in a position where something's happened and all of a sudden you need to modify a home, it just gets very, very stressful and you're doing a lot at once, there's better ways to approach it.

Christine Sirette: I also think it's important to say that your piece has a lot more guidance than we've been able to cover here today. There are a lot of great specific product recommendations. And I think a nice thing about a lot of the things that we recommend is that our team is also thinking about the aesthetics of these items. A lot of times assistive technology like grab bars, shower chairs, walkers, they are not the most aesthetically pleasing and I think that can be a barrier for some people to want to use them or have them in their home. And so wherever possible, we really do try to think about how will these look in somebody's home. So you could go to our grab bar guide and see that there are very sort of institutional looking grab bars that are very inexpensive. They're kind of what you would see in a hospital, but we have like you mentioned the mowen ones. There's some really pretty ones that actually you wouldn't even really be able to tell that they're a grab bar specifically. It's kind of slow progress in this product category. There are still a lot of ugly things, but there is some progress happening here. And so if you're listening and you are interested in any of these things, definitely take a look at Doug's piece because there are some really really cool products out there at this point for a lot of this stuff. Grab bar specifically. I'm I'm I'm glad you mentioned that Christine because there are these grab bars are becoming very subtle and very discreet. Like there is one that can help you get up off the toilet and it's this grab bar that's really integrated into a toilet paper holder. So like you don't even really know the grab bar is there, but it's it's there when you need it. Like you're saying, you don't need to make your home look like a hospital in order to get the added safety of some of these items.

Christine Sirette: Well, Doug, we've made it to our final question, which is, what is the last thing you've bought that you really loved?

Doug Mahoney: So, the last thing I bought that I really loved, and this actually vaguely is vaguely is related to this, is that when my father passed away, I ended up inheriting his record collection, and it's this phenomenal record collection. He lived in Puerto Rico for like 13 years in the ' 50s. And so, he and he was a record collector. So, there's all kinds of like cool old calypso, all this really wild world music. and and I'm not particularly like an audio file or anything like that, but I went to Wire Cutter and I got the budget turntable that has Bluetooth connectivity because I'm in a situation where like speakers and and uh like an amp, it would just kind of take up too much room. I didn't really want to deal with that. But once I saw that it had Brent Butterworth's approval, I I went ahead and got it. Brent writes a lot of our audio content at Wire Cutter and he's just as expert as someone can be there as anybody I trust cuz Brent's the man. Yeah.

Christine Sirette: Well, thank you so much, Doug, for joining us today. As always, like our unofficial fourth host at this point. We can't wait to have you back. I have to keep writing new things now. [laughter] Take care. [music] Well, if you were intrigued by anything that we talked about today, make sure and look in our show notes. We're going to link to Doug's article, a couple of the other articles that are in this big package around aging in place, and we will have links to all the products we talked about. Okay, well, that's it for us until next week. Thank you so much for listening. Bye bye.