A spinal cord injury won’t get you out of chores!

When you’re a kid, you’ll look for any excuse to get out of doing chores. If you’ve had a spinal cord injury, that could be a pretty good excuse to never do chores again too. But not for these guys. The people in the three videos below are intent on doing everything they could still do before, even the boring stuff.

From cleaning mirrors to mopping, how do you do it when you use a wheelchair? As I always like to say, if we can put a man on the moon, people with a spinal cord injury can do stuff too.  If you’re the kind of person who actually likes to make sure your household chores get done (I don’t know about you, but I hate looking at a mud spot on the floor, waiting for someone else to clean it), then you’ll love these videos of wheelers getting’ it done their way, domestic-style.

If you’re into a sexy European men (me), you’ll enjoy this video from fasteddy007 (he was paralyzed five years ago). And he reminds me a lot of myself, in that he’s very fastidious. Eddy has made a lot of videos showing how he does things now that’s he’s paralyzed and he’s made an impressive 9 minute video showing all tricks he’s figured out to do household chores. And let me tell you, his work-arounds are awesome.

If you have always wanted to clean a mirror that’s out of reach, do what he did – buy a squeegee brush and attach a 3 foot long handle. And he also shows how he does his laundry when you have stacked laundry units, why he nixed using the vacuum (getting laminate floors instead, and he talks about his favorite floor cleaning machine), and he show how to iron (safely). Watch Eddy’s more than engaging video

The second video shows a paraplegic vacuuming from his wheelchair (not all paraplegics can afford fancy new flooring). It’s a pretty straightforward video – a guy vacuuming his living room from his wheelchair – but it shows it can be done without hiccups, despite all of the crazy things you can imagine happen (the cord getting stuck in the wheels, namely).

While this vacuuming skill is reserved for paraplegics and low quads (I would only try this myself if I had a cordless vacuum), if you have the manual dexterity to keep the cord wrapped in your hand as you’re vacuuming, it can be done. Watch him do his thing

Our last video shows a SPINALpedia member Wheelchair Style who’s been in the game longer than any of the other folks profiled today. He too makes videos showing how he has learned to do everything since his spinal cord injury.

In this video, sans shirt, he shows how mops his floor (another incredibly tricky thing to do from a wheelchair), and how not make marks on the wet floor with his wheels.  He starts in the bathroom, which is attached to his bedroom, and backs up his wheelchair as he finishes the floor in front of him. Essentially, he mops driving his chair backwards. Watch him mop to classical music

Chores may not be fun or glamorous, but they’re one of those necessary things in life that needs to get done spinal cord injury or not. And now you know there are no excuses (hate me now?).

What wheelchair cleaning tricks have you figured out since your spinal cord injury? Share your knowledge!

Watch the videos!

– fasteddy007’s 9 minute how-to cleaning video

– Vacuuming from a wheelchair after a spinal cord injury

– Mopping from a wheelchair after a spinal cord injury