When Housework Hurts Too Much: 5 Tips to Manage the Pain

You're in the middle of a routine household task when a pain shoots through your hand that's sharp enough to stop you in your tracks and bring tears to your eyes. It's your darned arthritis, again!

These days, I can't open a package of salad greens without cutting it open with my kitchen scissors. It's not so much that products seem to be hermetically sealed, but that I've progressively lost strength in my hands to perform simple tasks. However, a woman's work is never done, as the saying goes, and that certainly holds true in my house.

If arthritis makes your household chores more challenging than usual, here are a few tips to help manage the pain:

1. Plan ahead - organize your tasks to conserve energy and minimize the pain
2. Prioritize - focus on what's most important for now
3. Break it up - cut your tasks into smaller, manageable parts doable in 15 minutes
4. Pace yourself - take a rest break, some things can wait
5. Be efficient - keep supplies in zones to avoid dragging them from one location to another

See more on Arthritis Pain: Tips for managing housework, MSN Health

See also:
Rheumatoid Arthritis, EmpowHer Encyclopedia

How do you manage your arthritis pain?