The Independent Living Guide

Written for Australia, September 2026. Everything in Part Three is a real Australian funding pathway with the current figures — check the dates before you rely on them, because aged care and NDIS rules have both moved in the last eighteen months.

This guide is about the small jobs that get harder first: the jar, the knife, the fork, standing at the bench. Most of what follows costs nothing. Some of it will save you buying anything at all, and we have said so where that is the case.

There is a short section about what we sell at the very end. It is the last thing in the guide on purpose. Ignore it if you like — the rest still works.

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Part one: five techniques that cost nothing

These come from joint protection principles — the same set occupational therapists teach after an arthritis or stroke diagnosis. They are not folk remedies. They work because they change which part of your body takes the load, not how hard you try.

1. Move the job to a bigger joint

The order runs: fingers, wrist, elbow, shoulder, body weight. Whenever something is hard, ask what the next joint up could do instead.

• Carry the shopping bag hugged against your chest, not hooked on your fingers.
• Push a drawer closed with your hip or forearm rather than your hand.
• Open a jar by pressing down through your palm and leaning your body weight into it, instead of squeezing with your fingers.
• Slide the pan across the bench rather than lifting it.

2. Hold everything looser than feels natural

A tight grip is the single most damaging habit in a kitchen, and almost nobody notices they are doing it. Grip force accelerates joint wear, and most of the force is unnecessary.

The fix is usually thickness. A thin handle forces a hard squeeze; a fat one does not. You can build up any handle you already own with a strip of pipe lagging from the hardware shop, a length of foam tubing, or a few wraps of self-adhesive bandage. This costs about four dollars and works on knives, peelers, pens and toothbrushes.

3. Stop before it hurts, not after

The rule occupational therapists use: if an activity leaves you sore for more than an hour after you stop, it was too long. Not too hard — too long.

This is the principle people most often get backwards. Pushing through builds nothing in an arthritic joint, and the day of rest it costs you afterwards is a worse trade than stopping ten minutes earlier.

4. Break the job up and let gravity do the rest

Little and often beats one long session. Peel the vegetables in the morning and leave them in water. Chop in two sittings. Sit down to prep — a stool at the bench turns a standing job into a sitting one and costs nothing if you already own a kitchen chair.

Fill the pot at the sink using a jug rather than carrying the full pot, or fill it on the stove with the kettle. Drain pasta with a slotted spoon instead of lifting a full pot to the sink.

5. Set up before you start, not as you go

Get everything out first. Every time you stop mid-task to fetch something, you put the load back through the same joints and you lose your rhythm. Cooks call it mise en place; occupational therapists call it work simplification. Same thing.

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Part two: working with one hand

If one side is weaker after a stroke, or one arm is in a sling, or one hand simply cannot be relied on, the problem is almost never the cutting. It is the holding. Two-handed tasks are two-handed because one hand stabilises while the other works.

So the whole of one-handed technique is about finding something else to do the stabilising.

• A damp tea towel or non-slip matting under a bowl stops it spinning while you stir. This is the single most useful free trick in the kitchen.
• Wedge things into a corner — the corner of the bench, or a drawer opened slightly and used as a brace.
• Cut a flat side first. A round vegetable rolls; the same vegetable with one flat face sits still. Take that slice off first and lay it flat.
• Use your teeth and knees deliberately, not desperately. Gripping a packet between your knees to tear it open is a legitimate technique, not a defeat.
• Buy the job already done where it is cheap. Pre-chopped onion, jarred garlic, tinned tomatoes. There is no prize for peeling.
• A rocker knife beats a straight knife with one hand, because it cuts by rocking through the food rather than by holding the food still and sawing.

The one job that genuinely resists all of this is holding food still while you cut it. That is what spiked boards exist for, and it is the one place where a tool does something a technique cannot.

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Part three: who pays for it in Australia

This is the part most people do not know, and it is worth more than the rest of the guide put together. There are four separate pathways and most people qualify for at least one.

If you are under 65 and on the NDIS

Anything under $1,500 counts as low-cost assistive technology. That means no quotes, no separate approval and no assessment before you buy. If it relates to your disability, helps you pursue your goals and is safe, you can buy it from your existing plan and claim it.

The NDIS's own examples of low-cost AT include modified eating utensils, adjustable-height chairs and hand showers — so adaptive kitchen equipment sits squarely inside this category. Self-managed and plan-managed participants can act on this immediately.

One caveat worth stating plainly: "no quote required" is not the same as "anything goes". It still has to be reasonable and necessary and related to your disability, and the NDIS suggests keeping a recommendation from an allied health professional on file. The NDIS is also mid-way through updating its guidance to match new legislation, so check the current page before a large purchase.

If you are 65 or over

Aged care changed substantially in 2025. Under the Support at Home program there is now a dedicated Assistive Technology and Home Modifications (AT-HM) scheme, separate from your ongoing services budget, with three tiers over a twelve-month period:

• Low — up to $500
• Medium — up to $2,000
• High — up to $15,000 (and more with evidence)

The scheme explicitly names "products used for preparing and eating food, such as adaptive cutting boards, or modified cutlery" as covered items. You do not apply for AT-HM separately — you find out whether you are approved at your aged care assessment, and it appears in your Notice of Decision and support plan.

If you have not had an assessment, that is the single most valuable phone call available to you, and it is free. Start at My Aged Care.

Everyone: five subsidised sessions with an occupational therapist

This is the most under-used pathway in the country.

If you have a chronic condition — arthritis counts, and so does the aftermath of a stroke — your GP can write you a GP Chronic Condition Management Plan. Since 1 July 2025 this single plan replaced the old GP Management Plan and Team Care Arrangement, and writing it is generally bulk-billed.

It entitles you to five subsidised allied health sessions per calendar year, and occupational therapy is on the list. Medicare rebates roughly $56–58 per session; some OTs bulk bill the lot. The five reset on 1 January and unused sessions do not carry over.

An occupational therapist who visits your kitchen will tell you in one visit what no guide can: which specific jobs are the problem for your hands, in your kitchen, and which of them a technique will fix without spending anything. Ask your GP about item 965.

State and territory equipment schemes

Every state runs an equipment scheme: EnableNSW, Victoria's SWEP, Queensland's MASS, the SAEP in South Australia, CAEP in Western Australia and TasEquip in Tasmania.

Be realistic about these: they are built mainly around mobility and major equipment — wheelchairs, walking frames, pressure care, bathroom equipment — rather than kitchen aids. Several, including WA's and SA's, are explicitly for people not covered by the NDIS. Worth a look, but not usually the answer for a cutting board.

Independent advice, free

The National Equipment Database (askNED) is a free, impartial national listing of assistive technology from suppliers across every state and territory. It sells nothing itself. If you want to compare what exists before you talk to anyone who has something to sell you — including us — start there.

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Part four: judging an aid before you buy it

Most adaptive equipment that gets abandoned was not bad equipment. It was the wrong equipment, bought for a job the person did not actually struggle with.

1. Name the exact job it replaces. Not "help in the kitchen" — "holding the tomato still while I slice it". If you cannot name the job in one sentence, do not buy yet.
2. Check the free version first. The four-dollar test above.
3. Look at where it will live. An aid kept in a cupboard stops being used within a fortnight. If it will not fit on the bench where you cook, it will not get used, no matter how good it is.
4. Check the actual measurements, not the photo. Photographs have no scale. Size that turns out wrong on arrival is the most common reason this category gets returned.
5. Find out who pays return postage. Ask before you buy, not after.
6. Give it a fortnight before judging it. The first attempt with any new tool is the clumsiest. Two weeks in is a fair test; one afternoon is not.

And one more, for anyone buying this for a parent rather than themselves: how it is given matters as much as what it is. Being handed an aid can land as being told you are going downhill, even when the truth is the opposite. "I saw this and thought it looked useful" works. "I got you something to help" often does not.

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What we sell, and when not to buy it

Still Able sells a small range of kitchen tools for people who want to keep doing things themselves: jar and can openers, a one-handed board with a rocker knife, easy-grip cutlery and a floor mat for standing at the bench. Eight products, not eight hundred, because we order, unpack and use each one before it goes on the site.

Do not buy from us if:

• you are eligible for geat2GO and it stocks something that does the job — that is free, and free wins;
• you have not tried the four-dollar version yet;
• you have not named the exact job you want solved.

If you do buy, everything sits under the NDIS $1,500 low-cost AT threshold, it ships from Australia in two to five business days, and you have thirty days to use it properly and send it back if it does not help.

Questions are answered by email, usually the same day, by us rather than a chatbot.

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This guide is general information about everyday tasks and Australian funding programs. It is not medical advice, and the products described are everyday tools rather than medical devices. For advice about your own hands, joints or recovery, speak to your GP or an occupational therapist. Funding figures are current as at September 2026 — NDIS and aged care rules change, so confirm with the NDIS, My Aged Care or your plan manager before relying on an amount.