Spend some time reading through the archives of our blog, and you’ll notice soon enough that nearly each one of the posts here describes or otherwise explains a scenario in which a stairlift can significantly improve the life of an elderly or disabled member of your family.
Perhaps that elderly or disabled person is you.
If so, we certainly hope you’ve found something on our blog that has convinced you that a stairlift—whether purchased new or used, or even rented temporarily—truly can make your day-to-day life less stressful and more pleasant overall.
But in this blog post, we’d like to introduce a slightly different concept. We’d like to explain to you the stair lift benefits for the other members of your family as well—family members who wouldn’t normally see a need for a home stairlift.
If you already have a stairlift installed in your home—or if you decide to buy or rent a unit before the holiday season arrives—try introducing some of the following ideas when the family comes by for a visit over Christmas, Hanukkah, or whatever end-of-the-year holiday your family happens to celebrate.
For Accident-Prone Toddlers
If you have stairs in your home and toddlers in your life, you’ve almost certainly had the nerve-wracking experience of standing by helplessly as they’ve raced excitedly up or down a staircase. Maybe they stumbled, or had a slip and fall, and maybe that experience ended with a skinned knee and tears, or even worse.
But the situation could have turned out differently. Because kids, as you surely know, love to ride on stair lifts. To them, a ride up and down the stairs on grandpa’s chair lift isn’t entirely unlike a ride at the amusement park.
So when the grandchildren come over for a visit this holiday season, consider sitting them down and explaining to them how a stair lift should be used: safely, responsibly, and while wearing the chair’s seat belt. As long as they can understand and follow the basic rules of chair lift safety, allowing them to use the lift while heading upstairs to the bathroom, or perhaps downstairs to the basement, could be the safest (and most stress-free) choice of all.
For Your Family’s Gifts and Food
While you may not be wealthy enough to own a home with its own dumb waiter, the truth is that a stair chair can come in quite handy when you need to transport items from one floor to another. If you already have a stair chair installation in your home, for instance, you’ve probably used it to bring laundry up from the basement or up to your bedroom.
During the holiday season, gifts and food are the two main items that tend to require a lot of heavy lifting. If you have an old home that still has a stove in the basement, you may need to bring trays of Christmas cookies up to the kitchen. And when Christmas morning arrives and it’s time to bring presents from the upstairs closet to the living room on main floor, there’s no reason your stair lift can’t be recruited to make the process easier, quicker, and safer.
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Of course, these are just some of the unusual ways we tend to put our stairlifts to work; certainly there are any number of other uses that don’t involve transporting people.
Do you use your stair chair installation to make a difficult task simpler or safer? If so, we’d love to have you tell us about it in the comments below.
And if you’d like to learn more about the stairlifts we sell, rent, and install here at PA Stair Lifts, get in touch with a phone call or an email. We’ll look forward to speaking with you.