Thanks for sharing, I loved your thoughts, Frances. I have a rotary dryer so I can still manage to hang some washing. I've had a couple of near falls stepping sideways to hang out washing on a linear line, so that one has gone. I just stand still and haul the line around to come to me, and lean on my garden wheely bin for support if needed. It works.
There are some other things that have come to mind, so here they are too.
For keeping tidy - bins! Lots of bins everywhere. I have mini bins on the kitchen worktop and hang a bin bag off the corner of a drawer when prepping food, so the rubbish goes straight in to that.
Not that there is always much rubbish. You can clean new carrots and new potatoes with one of those green scouring pads you use for scrubbing pans - preferably one kept for the purpose.
I also use big plastic tubs - sold as garden tubs or horse feed tubs - for carting stuff from A-B. They can be kicked along the floor easily, or nudged with my stick. They are more stable than washing baskets but serve this purpose, as well as doing things like carting parcels from the postman/Amazon delivery bloke.
To have small items about my person, I use a waist pack/waist belt. I also use this when I go shopping, I put my debit card, cash and any other cards I think I may need in to this. My favourite pack has a pocket for a water bottle and is bright green, so keeps me visible on the trike.
A word about my trike. I can still cycle and do so regularly for knee health, he is without question, my favourite possession and the only inanimate thing that I can say that I truly love. I wish more people would consider using a trike rather than a mobility scooter. I often see scooters laden with shopping and bags threatening to fall off at the next set of pelican crossing bumps.
I have a deep box on the trike's luggage rack and karabiner clips attached to the springs of my saddle so that bags piled in the box won't fall off.
My other tip is for getting stuff up and down stairs safely. I have a cross bodied handbag that transports a lot of little things, up to the size of a magazine or book. For other items I often pop them in one of my backpacks. My stairs are a trial so I like to keep both hands free to haul myself up them and the backpack enables this.
A backpack always comes shopping with me too, to hold my jacket if I get warm. It also holds light, bulky items like bags of kale, multipacks of crisps, boxes of cereal, loaves of bread, boxes of tissues, etc coming home (and my empty reusable shopping bags on the outward journey).
