A serving trolley is excellent for keeping stuff close when you're not very mobile.
It occurred to me that a kitchen serving trolley offered much more storage space, was easily movable on wheels, and even better it was cheaper than most hospital bed tables! I explained to Dad what I wanted and he picked up a flat-pack serving trolley at the local hardware store for me.
For your education and amusement, here’s a photo-essay of the steps we took to make the trolley as “Ricky friendly” as possible:
Convince your Dad to assemble the flat-pack trolley you bought
My Dad is a sweetheart and a fairly good handyman too, but the trolley wasn’t hard to assemble and all the tools needed to assemble it – except a screwdriver – came with the pack.
Remove cat from trolley
My cat, Anekin of cat scan fame, thought that this trolley was great fun and had to be removed from the proceedings on several occasions!
Add cup-hooks in convenient places
I got Dad to add a bunch of cup-hooks of different sizes to the trolley to make it convenient to hang things on it. I always seem to have stuff in bags that I want to have handy for a short while.
Line the drawer with cardboard so you can put small things in it too
Wire trolley shelves and drawers aren’t great for holding small items, so for the places I wanted to store small things I’ve lined the surface with cardboard. I later switched the drawer lining to a folded towel because it was easier to wash and wasn’t ruined if it got wet – I am always knocking cups over!
Add some containers on the shelves, for ease of storage and organisation
Having smaller containers with specific purposes helps me keep things organized for a bit longer. I always eventually have to have a huge clean-up where we empty out each level in turn and sort it, but this helps delay the need for big cleaning up sessions.
Hang a bag or three on some of your cup-hooks
I have a water bottle and some dry crackers that I keep handy for when I have to unexpectedly take tablets and don’t have any food and drink handy. I keep them just for taking tablets and end up using them about once a week. Keeping them out of sight in this bag helps remind me not to use them up without thinking!
Add a cup holder
I eventually figured out that a cup holder would help me knock over cups less often. This one’s just another plastic container – nothing special – and held to the surface with Blu-Tac. It tends to collect dust and muck inside so with the Blu-Tac I can easily get somebody to take the container and give it a wash.
Store an amazing amount of stuff within arm's reach
And here’s the finished product! With my uncarpeted floors and the casters on the trolley it’s easy to move, even with the lack of strength in my arms. I have another, smaller, trolley which I keep on the other side of the bed and the two of them together easily keep everything I need close at hand.
I’ll be posting more tips and tricks for surviving within four walls. What are yours? Leave a comment or contact me and write a whole article if you like!
- Ricky
Hey Ricky – when I looked at the top picture I really couldn’t see what was at the base until the picture of the shelf above appeared and I wondered if I would actually see a row of vintage wine maturing but I see that’s the part for bulky clothing.
I used a similar trolley when I moved my computer gear into this room. I didn’t want a very bulky computer desk but I had ‘add-ons’ so I used one of those trolleys they give to people to cart things around from room to room if they have broken bones (a pal bequeathed me hers her bones were all better) – my scanner fits on the top bit and luckily the printer nicely fits below – even the paper just fits under the rim of the shelf above.
It means also we can still access all the plugs behind without to much problems.
you often have to look outside the box when you want to do things that make life easier even if you are disabled or not
@Cathy: I was tempted to get a row of wine bottles filled with coloured water but it was too heavy. Actually since I got the pictures taken I got a piece of 3-ply cut to size to cover the wine bottle racks so I can put small things on the bottom. Less interesting, but more useful!!
you get something the size of a mailing round tube that then you could store a number of small things in that would save them from falling through the gaps or something.
i had a whole lot of wide tubes which I cut down and then sealed (one end) some nice heavy duty paper over the bottom of to fill with xyz…they are still waiting for xyz! I was going to put them along a window space at the back but I have since changed what was going in them!
I like this one with wood top, I got solid pine furniture in my bedroom, something like this would look nice in it.