Mama said they were magic shoes. They could take me anywhere.

Forrest Gump might not be quite the right image to toss out here, but the promise of Forrest’s Mama seems to be getting closer to reality. I’ve often said that technology will someday reduce the need to modify homes by helping people extend their abilities. Currently, for example, there are power chairs that stand and go upstairs. However they are cumbersome and according to one user I’ve met can be a bit frightening. The engineers at Honda keeps pushing this sort of technology forward and recently announced their prototype of robot legs. The legs are designed to be a “power assist” for people who are losing leg strength. For those of us old enough to remember, remember manual steering in a car? Think of this as power steering for your feet. It doesn’t change what we do, it just makes doing it easier and safer.

At first I wondered how you sit down, then I realized that you ARE sitting down. Technology like this might cause us to rethink a lot of things. While the prototype probably has a ways to go before it becomes practical for people who are infirm (how do you take the legs on and off?) this sort of technology has the promise of keeping people active and fitter longer. We tend to think of assistive devices as things for people who are already disabled. But as we boomers age, a large market will emerge in helping people prolong relatively normal activity. I met a man using a Segway for this purpose. Games to improve cognitive function are another example of this application of technology. Could robot arms to reach those things on the top shelf be next?

As Forrest said, “From that day on, if I was ever going somewhere, I was running!”

http://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/future-tech/honda-uses-asimo-robot-legs-to-help-the-infirm-325930

Design your kitchen for the future.

Yes, of course, I've been delinquent in posting again as the summer busy season has gotten underway, but here is a link to a just published article I authored for The Boomer Advisor publication.

http://www.advisor.com/boomer/story/design-your-kitchen-for-future

A well-designed kitchen can make cooking and entertaining more enjoyable. So if you're considering remodeling the kitchen, your focus is probably cosmetic. However, as you or your parents get older, there are safety issues to consider, too. This article gives some practical examples.

Aging in place is green.

I came across an article yesterday that does a good job of covering a topic we've touched on here before--that aging in place is by definition a green approach to housing. There is so much stored energy in a home that you can never be greener by building something smaller, even if you downsize and use new technologies, so we shold be planning, designing and retrofitting our current homes to accomodate long life spans and a range of life situations. This article profiles Palo Alto architect Jon Stoumen. What I like most is many of the simple, lo tech, low cost design elements--like grape vines as heat reducing sun shades. And his philosophy about going green perfectly reflects our philosophy about aging in place--do what makes sense now, but plan for the future.

"We're going for universal access, so we've laid the groundwork for the elevator, but the clients won't need it for a long time. When they do need help getting up to the second floor, they'll be able to put the elevator in because we've planned for it with the infrastructure. It's one of the things about this house that will allow the owners to age in place. And I can't think of anything greener than aging in place. When you move, you throw a bunch of stuff away, new people move in and they remodel everything and throw a bunch more stuff away," Stoumen said. For that reason, the ground floor of the home is at grade. In the future, wheelchair access will not be a problem.

The model of planning for the elevator also follows Stoumen's idea that taking small steps toward greener living is a healthy way to think about environmental improvements. "People see all that you can do to make a home greener, and they think, 'I want it all now.' But not everyone can afford to do it all now. I think it's better to do what you can now and plan for the future," Stoumen said."

Read the complete article at :

http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/show_story.php?id=8459

Lifespan of modifications--its not kid stuff

Because of In Your Home's consistently high ratings on Angie's List, we are getting a lot of calls from folks from outside our specialty--growing families who are looking to modify their home to accommodate the kids. Adding extra space, adding or updating a bathroom, removing hazardous conditions. Lots of similarity to what we do for our target population and we do often take these projects on. After all, business is business. But while we have long questioned why families are willing to modify for children and not for adults, a new thought struck. Comparatively, how long can we expect these modifications to be useful?

If we modify a room for a nursery, it's appropriate for five to 10 years, depending on how many children we have and at what intervals. By the time we get around to adding a separate bedroom or bathroom, maybe we get 15 years of active use. Same for a playroom.

But what if we are in our late 50's, our 60's or 70's and looking to modify the home for the long term? That playroom converted to an adult entertainment area, hobby or exercise space could easily serve us for over 20 years. A bathroom modified to be safer and supportive for adults will easily get 10 to 20 years of useful life. And, not only will these mods add value to the home (if done attractively and well,) but they have a higher payback since they can help us stay more independent and healthy so we can avoid the expense of assisted living and long or short term nursing care. And we can enjoy them so much--most people do tend to spend more time in their homes as they age, so its all the more important that the home environment be attractive and supportive for maintaining the activities we love--hobbies, cooking, gardening, etc. The earlier we do it, but more we will benefit from it.

You could easily say that you will get as many or more useful years from aging-in-place modifications, which indicates a better financial justification. Of course, we don't remodel for our young families just because of financial payback--we do it because we want things to be the best they can be during that phase of our lives. But many of us have this dismal thought that we are getting old and aren't worth investing in. Or it's that old refusal to acknowledge that while we feel 40 we are past 60 and need to think ahead. If we get past those thoughts, then the value of adding a shop, changing a floor plan or modifying a bathroom can make things the best the can be at these new phases of life. That makes a lot of sense--financially and otherwise.

Baby Bombs

I was rather confused to read the opening lines of Sara Lin's April 25th article in the WSJ:

"Baby boomers brought ugly grab-bars to bathrooms and wheelchair ramps to hallways to prepare for growing old at home. Now they can take credit for products that people without infirmities could appreciate."

Now, I'm not sure why the ramp would be in the hallway, but more perplexing is that I don't know how boomers could possibly be responsible for such installations since most of them have yet to reach retirement age. Even if there is some demographic link (like installing them for their aging parents) those actions need not relate to the implied lack of aesthetic sense. When we couple these words with the later passage that "marketing these senior-friendly features before they're needed requires a delicate touch. The older consumers don't want to be treated like they're ready for retirement" I think we see the real conflict. "Before they're needed" is the operative phrase--people continue to think "age=infirmity and disability" and we want to keep that image from our minds as much as possible.

The real point of Lin's article is that product designer and marketers ae anticipating the aging of the boomers an bringing better designed and more supportive products to market. All well and good and long overdue. But if the boomers are truly going to redefine aging as so many pundits predict, our mindset is the key of what needs to change. Not through denial of the potential realities of age, but through embracing our older years. Whether we call it life part 2 or our second life or whatever euphemism we think will make it easier for people to swallow, the reality is that aging presents a variety of challenges and presents them in a variety of different ways to different people. The only way to prevent being victimized by this is to make up your mind to be proactive, prepare for contingencies, control your path and proceed with confidence.

One of my employees was driving with her niece and was asked the question "Auntie, why do I keep hearing about all these "baby bombs." A very cute Art Linkletter moment, but if baby boomers don't more proactively plan for what they want their latter years to be like, they will be "bombs," both in the sense of being dangerous to society and being flops.

Which brings me back to Lin's comment--modifications are about so much more than grab bars and ramps, and it is only because most of us don't approach designing homes to support all our phases of life that we have to put up with aesthetically ugly solutions. If we don't envision what we want our retirement environment to be like, then we are creating a situation where our home will constrain and fight us rather than support and nuture. If we want to define the aging experience in new ways, we must understand that our elder years are a time for continued growth and enjoyment and not just a withering away. But that will only be true if we create it and do so early enough in our lives. We need to ready ourselves and not leave it until something happens that makes it so we can't deny any longer that we are "ready." That's the way we boomers can be different than so many of our parents.